“When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth”: a phrase familiar to anyone who watched Jurassic Park in the years since its 1993 release, a reference to a bygone era, printed on a banner in a welcome center that never saw the light of day. Well, nearly thirty years on and that phrase has moved well past a reference on decorations, and into the world of Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth film in the Jurassic Park franchise that sees dinosaurs living large (quite literally) among humans.
On the heels of the five-minute prologue released as an audience primer in November, Universal Pictures has released a new image from the threequel coming to theaters in 2022, highlighting the dangers its characters are in now that the series’ prehistoric monsters have escaped captivity for good. Released by Total Film, the new image sees Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) literally neck-deep in trouble, as she wades through a swamp with an unknown monster lurking at her back.
“This is a rare film where it is so different from anything that I’ve ever seen before,” director Colin Trevorrow told Total Film of Dominion’s divergence from the traditional Jurassic formula. “I didn’t know what to watch as inspiration. Honestly, we watched a lot of nature documentaries. I watched a lot of Planet Earth. The movie does rely on the animals acting and reacting in ways that feel natural.”
Dominion will also see not only the return of classic dinosaurs well-known to Jurassic fans worldwide, but familiar characters as well: Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and everyone’s favorite wisecracking mathematician, Ian Malcolm, played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Trevorrow describes their appearance in the film as a kind of “tension” within the film, having to live up to years and years of fan expectation that Jurassic Park’s original protagonists might return someday:
“Laura, Sam, and Jeff have as much screentime in the film as Bryce and Chris do. They’re not together the entire time, but we are following both of their stories equally, and you have a sense that they’re going to collide at a certain point… there’s this tension. It’s not structured necessarily in a way that we’re used to seeing our Hollywood movies structured. But it works.”
Jurassic World: Dominion, also starring Chris Pratt, Daniella Pineda, and Justice Smith, with a script co-written by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, roars its way into theaters on June 10, 2022.
via Collider