It still bugs me that, at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the main characters stood back and allowed a child to decide if dangerous dinosaurs -- who otherwise would have died -- should be released to wreak death and destruction on an unsuspecting world.

Obviously, she made the wrong choice, or Jurassic World: Dominion -- the third installment of the Jurassic World series and the sixth of a franchise that started nearly 30 years ago with Jurassic Park -- wouldn't have a body count. While the movie avoids becoming a Godzilla-style flick with dinosaurs rampaging through major cities, there are certainly a fair number of messy, toothsome deaths that would not have occurred if dinosaurs weren't living among us.

One also wonders just how fast dinosaurs can reproduce, given that the handful of beasties freed in the last movie shouldn't have been able to populate the entire world quite so quickly.

But, however we got here, we have finally arrived at the place we always knew was coming -- dinosaurs are loose and cannot easily be contained. Cue the heroes, and kudos to the director for uniting the main protagonists of the Jurassic World series with the original trilogy of heroes from Jurassic Park ... grayer perhaps, but still knocking it out of the park.

Jurassic World: Dominion is unquestionably an exciting thrill-ride of a movie, but it's not the one I was hoping to see. The movie I think we all wanted and expected this time was the one teased in the trailers: a world where dinosaurs are out in the wilderness, interacting with people in the suburbs, coming into cities and adapting to live in the wilder places. In fact, if you watched the official five-minute preview on YouTube -- which, for reasons unknown, was not included in the movie -- you saw exactly what Dominion should have been.

But no, we only get a few snippets of that tantalizing world. Instead, filmmakers had yet another evil scientist build yet another Jurassic Park, of sorts, and much of the action takes place within that contained environment. Again.

Also, far too much of the movie also was taken up with scenes that seemed more appropriate to a James Bond movie. Full marks to Dichen Lachman for her sinister turn as black market dino-smuggler and kidnapper Soyona Santos, but she felt more like a Bond villain than was necessary for this film. Also, in the filmmakers' desire to use again the "cool" assassin raptors first revealed in the previous film, they neglected to acknowledge that, if you have to shine a laser beam on a person to command the dinosaur to attack them, it would be easier for you to just shoot them yourself. (Although it does set up a pretty cool raptor-vs-motorcycle chase sequence.)

But let's look at the rest of the cast. As mentioned, we have two sets of trilogy stars in play here. First, the Jurassic World headliners, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, are back as dinosaur wrangler Owen Grady and former Jurassic World executive Claire Dearing, who are living off the radar. With them is Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood, the orphaned clone who freed the dinosaurs and allowed all this to occur.

And, perhaps the most exciting part for fans of the original trilogy, the original stars are back, too -- Sam Neill as archeologist Alan Grant, Laura Dern as botanist Ellie Satler and Jeff Goldblum as chaos theorist Ian Malcolm. They all come together through their separate efforts to foil the machinations of Lewis Dodgson (Bruce Campbell), who wants to harness dino science to unleash a plague of jacked-up locusts and control the world's food supply.

Other characters to keep an eye on include DeWanda Wise as sympathetic pilot Kayla Watts, Mamoudou Athie as Dodgson's assistant Ramsay Cole and BD Wong, who returns as the genetic scientist Henry Wu, who, since the first film, has masterminded the dinosaurs' reentry into the modern world.

That said, it must be noted that Dominion eliminates the hybrid dinosaurs that the previous Jurassic World movies employed, focusing instead on real species of dinosaurs, including old favorites from the previous films as well as some new and redesigned models. (Purists, rejoice: some of them have feathers!)

There's a familiar T-rex on the prowl, as well as a velociraptor who's been with us for the last few films. There's also a new big baddie, the giganotosaurus, who's big enough and strong enough to give the T-rex a run for her money.

Still, it feels like director Colin Trevorrow made the wrong movie. I'm not sure people wanted another Jurassic Park when they were promised a Jurassic World. As he himself said in an interview, in the world of this movie, "a dinosaur might run out in front of your car on a foggy backroad, or invade your campground looking for food. A world where dinosaur interaction is unlikely but possible -- the same way we watch out for bears or sharks." He teased us a little, revealing the excitement of that world, then executed a hasty bait-and-switch and dumped the dinosaurs (and the audience) right back in a park.

Also, although the ultimate villain in the franchise is mishandled and misapplied science, it somehow feels weak to make the true threat of this movie giant locusts, rather than, y'know, dinosaurs.

Dominion delivers plenty of thrills, but it delivers more missed opportunities. We needed more scenes of dinosaurs evolving to live free or die in this new world and, perhaps more importantly, how humans are adapting to live with dinosaurs. An underground black market scene -- where dinosaurs are bought, sold, eaten or forced to fight -- is full of potential that's almost completely squandered.

But, let's give credit where credit is due -- the dinosaurs still look fantastic, and their green-screened interactions with the human cast look impossibly real.

The studio is being coy about the potential for more Jurassic movies. Given the money-making potential, I'd be surprised if another trilogy isn't already on the drawing board. Let's hope next time, filmmakers give a little more thought to the exciting possibilities implied by having dinosaurs living among us.