Part of the problem that the Jurassic World franchise has had since it started in 2015, is its association with the original trilogy, or more specifically the 1993 original film. Already it was fighting a losing battle as it could never be as impactful as Jurassic Park.

To combat this, the film makers seemingly decided to go bigger and faster. More dinosaurs and more action. And, to an extent, this worked. Jurassic World was a fun, if imperfect, summer blockbuster.

But where do you go from there? 2018’s Fallen Kingdom experimented with a story smaller in scale, but bigger in it’s social commentary, but despite making over $1.3 Billion, reviews suggested it was an experiment that would be deemed a failure.

And now, with Dominion, we have something which falls uncomfortably between the two. The dinosaurs are bigger and more plentiful. The story spans continents, rather than containing itself, for large portions, to one mansion, as Fallen Kingdom did, and the stunt budget has clearly been increased. But it is also trying to deliver a message, which gets muddied in the numerous, and increasingly tedious dino tussles.

It’s easy to forget that in Jurassic Park the dinosaurs are only on screen for approximately 15 minutes. The tension, and excitement, that build in their absence makes the film what it is.

When you have dinosaurs wandering into shot every 30 seconds - regardless of how good they look - they begin to lose their allure. The law of diminishing returns is real, and Dominion is proof of that.

We also have the nostalgia factor well and truly in play. At the end of Fallen Kingdom we got the return of Jeff Goldblum as Dr Ian Malcolm, and he plays a larger role in Dominion. Goldblum has some of the best lines in the movie, and it is always a pleasure to see him on screen, but it’s easy to think that his appearance is something that has been shoehorned in to appeal to the fans. Much like his appearance in Fallen Kingdom which, coming right at the end, left me feeling it was a cynical ploy to leave viewers on a note of excitement, rather than the apathy it would have no doubt otherwise garnered.

Laura Dern and Sam Neill are also back for Dominion as Doctors Sattler and Grant respectively. Again, it is initially fun to see them return to the franchise. Unfortunately, however, they are quickly turned in two paleontological Mr. Bean-esque characters, blundering about the place, arguing about Modern Coffee and falling over every ten minutes.

Again, it felt like the characters were brought back purely for the nostalgia factor, and then once they were their the writers didn’t really know what to do with them.

Bryce Dallas-Howard and Chris Pratt also return and do what they’ve done for the past two films. They’re both convincing in the roles, but they don’t particularly offer anything new.

Rounding off the main cast is Isabella Sermon, reprising her role of Maisie Lockwood, the clone of Charlotte Lockwood - a character we have never met before, but are, for some reason, expected to care about. Sermon, channelling Kiera Knightly throughout, gives it her all, but it doesn’t quite work. She is supposed to be the emotional heart of the film, but the storyline and performance falls flat. Almost certainly a failure in directing, rather that on her part.

It isn’t all bad though. There are some fun action scenes - the scenes in Malta a definite highlight - and there is some effective imagery - the swarm of locusts towards the start particularly harrowing. Dominion is at its best when it leans into the absurdity of the premise. Chris Pratt, on a motorbike, being chased by raptors. An underground, black market trading in illegal, and sometimes modified, dinosaurs.

I also enjoyed the redesigns of some of the dinosaurs, taking them, as Doctor Henry Wu says, back to their purest form, and seeing the feathery dinosaurs - as it’s now thought they were - next to their scaly counterparts was an interesting design choice, and one that really paid off.

There were a lot of fun and interesting ideas in play in Dominion, but ultimately that was part of the problem. There were too many of them. Meaning none of them really got the payoff they deserved.

It isn’t a bad film, there were large sections of it I enjoyed, but it is certainly flawed, and, though it pains me to say it, would likely have been much more than it ended up being, without the return of the original cast.

In the end, after nearly 30 years and 6 films, the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World franchise has gorged upon itself so much that almost nothing that made the original so great remains. Too many characters and too many dinosaurs has left the series with almost no emotional stakes.

It does offer some popcorn fun, and there is a certainly a place for films such as this in cinema, but it wilts in the shadow of its origin. Proof, if it were ever needed, that bigger creatures do not, necessarily, pack the bigger punch.