Jurassic World Dominion’s extended edition is half fluff, half repair job

polygon.com:

Thanks to COVID-related delays in production and visual effects work, Hollywood’s blockbuster-release pipeline has slowed down considerably. So it makes sense that precious billion-dollar hits are being recycled, with a spate of extended editions that recall the DVD boom of the 2000s. Two particularly high-profile expansions are now available. 2021’s gigantic hit Spider-Man: No Way Home is back in theaters with 11 minutes of new footage and a subtitle, “The More Fun Stuff Version.” And an extended version of Jurassic World Dominion with 14 extra minutes of footage is available for streaming on Peacock, for digital rental, and on Blu-ray. So many extended editions can be categorized as an attempted repair job or a cash grab. It’s fitting for Jurassic World Dominion’s kitchen-sink quality that the newly bulked-up version functions as both.

It certainly has more potential fan mandate than a longer No Way Home. The Spider-Mansequel gets some extra character comedy in its longer version, but it was also a widely beloved movie; a longer version is really just a victory lap. Dominion, however, received a more mixed reaction from both critics and audiences: It’s both the worst-reviewed Jurassic movie on Rotten Tomatoes and the lowest-grossing of the Jurassic World trilogy in the United States.

Jurassic World Dominion is already the longest Jurassic movie by close to 20 minutes, since it assumes the responsibility of both wrapping up the Jurassic World trilogy and serving as a reunion/postscript for the first three Jurassic Park movies. Essentially, it’s two unwieldy movies fused together. It’s a warmly performed but wan Jurassic Park legacy sequel, with older scientists visiting yet another dinosaur sanctuary and research