The prologue for Jurassic World Dominion takes us back 65 million years, rewinding time to when the dinosaurs ruled over the Earth. Its beautiful, almost serene depiction of natural dinosaur habitats was first seen in IMAX ahead of showings of Fast 9, but Universal has now released it for all to see. To get a deeper understanding of what that prologue means for the full movie, we spoke to Jurassic World Dominion director Colin Trevorrow, who revealed just how much of a dinosaur nerd he is while breaking down each scene.
“Initially we had considered that this would be part of the film,” he says of the five-minute prologue, which now stands alone as a short film rather than being part of the final cut of Jurassic World Dominion. It’s a novel way to get these scenes out into the world, rather than leave them on the cutting room floor.
“It's extremely important for me, as a storyteller, because I believe the dinosaurs are characters, and so this is the origin story for the T-Rex,” he says. “I wanted it to be told, and so Universal was totally down with experimenting with sharing five minutes of finished move as a ‘prologue’ six months in advance.”
A prologue set during the Cretaceous Period not only provides an ‘origin story’ for the film’s dinosaurs, but also offers context for humanity. “What Jurassic World is about, for me, is the humility of recognising we've only been on Earth for this very small slither of time,” explains Trevorrow. “For us to have the ability to take people back to that time, I think there's a great sense of context that it gives us for our place in world history.”
The prologue features seven species of dinosaurs that have never been seen in a Jurassic movie before, including the egg-stealing oviraptor, the ferocious giganotosaurus, and the newly-discovered moros intrepidus. Some of these creatures have been waiting in the wings to star in a Jurassic film for some time.
“The best part of my job is being able to choose which dinosaurs go in which movies,” Trevorrow says. “As somebody who cares a lot about our films and about dinosaurs, I’m able to hold onto some and meter them out carefully. Every time I get a request from a fan on Twitter asking 'Why not this dinosaur?’, my answer is always I'm just trying to hold onto a couple. We just want to save some surprises.
“In this movie we really get to show some dinosaurs that I love that we've been holding onto for a long time, knowing we had the chance to go back to the cretaceous period and see the oviraptor and the giganotosaurus,” he says. “Several of these are going to play major roles in the film itself.”
“I really like the moros intrepidus, a very recently discovered dinosaur,” notes Trevorrow. “It looks a little bit like a T-Rex, but it’s [much smaller]. It's in the movie too, but we're introducing it [in the prequel]. I like small dinosaurs, maybe because as a kid I imagined having one as a pet. I love that we managed to take something that really was discovered months earlier. We saw an article about it, we looked into it, and we were able to put it into the movie.”
The prologue seizes the chance to show dinosaurs in their natural prehistoric environment, and so we get to see dinosaur ecology in action. Rather than tearing apart an amusement park, we see different creatures living harmoniously together, be that sharing the same water source or even cleaning their teeth. This more peaceful depiction is something that Trevorrow was passionate about creating on-screen.
“I think we bring our own humanity and instincts into dinosaurs, because we usually have dinosaur toys going 'raaawww',” he laughs, imitating a child with battling T-Rex figures. “We just make them fight, that's us. In reality, some dinosaurs are predators, but if there's a shared water source they will all come to that lake and drink together.”
It was important to show this side of dinosaurs in order to reinforce one of Jurassic World Dominion’s themes. “A big part of this movie is making the connection between animals that live on the planet today and how we treat them, and how they coexist with us and dinosaurs,” says Trevorrow. “For us to really be able to see them in their natural habitat, just see them drinking water and moving in herds. The first time you watch it might almost seem a little quiet, it's not the kind of aggressive action that we show in our blockbuster movies. But that was the opportunity in [the prequel] for me. As a dinosaur nerd, I found that very exciting.”
Talking of Trevorrow being a dinosaur nerd, you may notice in the prequel that the tyrannosaurus is covered in a coat of feathers. Science has discovered many new things about dinosaurs since the creation of the original Jurassic Park, and so setting the prequel in a time before genetically engineered dinosaurs gave Trevorrow the opportunity to make something more scientifically accurate.
“I think we have a really good logical explanation for why these are dinosaurs that look different than the other Jurassic dinosaurs have looked in the past,” he says. “In this case, it's that we're showing them in their original habitat. There was no frog DNA used to bridge the gaps in the genomes, so it gave us an opportunity to show dinosaurs with feathers.”
That feathered tyrannosaurus is an important character in the legacy of Jurassic Park; one day its DNA will be reconstructed used to create a living, breathing T-Rex in the year 1993. “It's an origin story, in the way we might get to do in a superhero film,” says Trevorrow. “The T-Rex is a superhero for me. It really allows us to take this brilliant concept that [Jurassic Park author] Michael Crichton conceived, that is the foundation that all of this has been built on, and show it in its absolutely purest form.”
“As you'll see in this prologue, our T-Rex – and it's the exact same one – looks a little bit different now whatever gaps existed in her genome had to be bridged. We didn't want it to be unrecognisable, this is a heroic character we love and care about very much, but it allowed us to give context to what those 65 million years really represent in world history.”
The prehistoric segment of the prologue ends with a showdown between the tyrannosaurus and the giganotosaurus. “The drama between these two characters is as if they were circling lions,” says Trevorrow. “The fight is mercifully short, as often fights in nature are. We watched a lot of nature videos for this movie. Hopefully the audience won't like seeing the T-Rex die. I hate it, it's painful for me, it's a character that I love. I don't mind if you hate the giganotosaurus!”
With the T-Rex dead, we see the fateful mosquito that will one day be used to recreate dinosaurs fly into shot. It draws blood from the defeated tyrannosaurus before flying away. “This particular mosquito causes a lot of problems at a drive-in [movie theatre] 65 million years later, which is a lot to put on the shoulders of one mosquito, but it's what happens,” laughs Trevorrow.
Flash forward to the present day, and we see the modern recreation of that T-Rex causing havoc at that aforementioned drive-in. “When she roars in front of the screen and the film burns up, the idea is that she is breaking out of the movie screen and now she's going to exist among us,” Trevorrow reveals. “It is something that Emily [Carmichael] and I found to be pretty crucial as a way to start the film.”
The roar itself is a throwback to the iconic T-Rex roar from Steven Speilberg’s original Jurassic Park, although Trevorrow notes that it’s a less triumphant cry than before. “I feel like that roar is one of desperation and confusion,” he says. “She's on the run and there's a helicopter chasing her, and she just does not know what world she's in. Being able to juxtapose the natural environment that we find her in, where she’s essentially on the run from the cops, I found to be such an awesome contrast.”
The T-Rex isn’t the only returning character whose legacy tracks right back to the Spielberg original, though. Jurassic World Dominion will also see the return of Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattle, and Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm.
“Being able to have our legacy characters and our Jurassic World characters together in one film to me was important because [Dominion] is as different as a film that we've ever made in this franchise,” says Trevorrow. “And I think when you're pushing something as far forward as we are, to have an element of it that's familiar, to have characters that you know and love venturing with you into the new space, feels crucial.”
“Ellie and Grant and Malcolm are on this full adventure, they’re a huge part of it, and equal partners to Owen and Claire and Maisie and our new characters we've brought in,” he continues. “The challenge of a movie like that is to give every character their due, to honor everybody. That's part of what this prologue is about; I felt that if we didn't have this in the story, that the t-rex wasn’t being honored. She's a character too.”
For more on Jurassic World Dominion, read about the footage that was shown behind closed doors, and how this movie will act as the finale of both Jurassic trilogies.
Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.
