The 'Jurassic World: Dominion' Villain Is A Dinosaur Director Colin Trevorrow Has Been Saving For The Third Movie
Jurassic World: Dominion doesn't arrive until next year, but some footage from the film is making its way to IMAX theaters in front of F9 this month. We've seen the footage, and it takes viewers back in time to when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. A prehistoric prologue shows non-cloned dinosaurs going about their business – and also introduces us to Jurassic World: Dominion's villainous dinosaur. It's a dinosaur that director Colin Trevorrow says he's been saving for the third and final film in his trilogy.
An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making
Jurassic World: Dominion footage will play in front of IMAX screenings of F9, and we've already seen it (read a description here). The footage shows dinosaurs, obviously, but these aren't the cloned dinosaurs that inhabit the Jurassic world. Instead, these are real dinos living in their natural habitat 65 million years ago. As a result, the dinosaurs on the screen are designed to be more historically accurate. In other words, get ready to see some dinosaurs with feathers, kids.
One of the dinosaurs revealed in this footage is the Gigantosaurus, a creature we haven't seen in the franchise yet. And there are a few reasons for that. First of all, the Gigantosaurus wasn't discovered until 1993, the same year Jurassic Park hit theaters, so there was no time to include the beast in the first film. While there was always a chance the Gigantosaurus could appear in subsequent sequels, that hasn't happened until now. And according to director Colin Trevorrow, that's by design. He wanted to save the Gigantosaurus to be the big bad in his final Jurassic World movie.
The Largest Carnivore Known to Humankind
In the footage, the Gigantosaurus gets into a brawl with a T-Rex, and the Gigantosaurus ends up winning. According to Trevorrow, that sets up a rivalry between the cloned dinosaurs. "If you were brutally murdered 65 million years ago, [you'd] probably [be] pretty mad about it," Trevorrow said, because I guess he thinks the cloned dinosaurs have memories of their past lives?
In any case, the Gigantosaurus is the movie's dinosaur villain. "The Giganotosaurus, who's the one that takes down our T-Rex [in the footage], I knew that that's the largest carnivore known to humankind and I really wanted to make sure that we held her back to make sure that we had a villain for the third movie," Trevorrow said. "We are introducing a major villain and a rivalry in a lot of ways."
The filmmaker also touched on some other dinosaurs that appear in the movie. "The Morus Interpidus was the one that's eating out of the Giganotosaurus' teeth. It was discovered only a couple of years ago and I'm sure it probably popped into your feed if you follow dinosaur stuff," said the director. "They called it the tiny T-Rex, and I just got fascinated with it immediately. That's one of the great joys of making these movies. I marched into the office and said, 'We're putting this guy in the movie, this is cool!' It's fun."
He added: "We chose the ones that seem cool, but it's a combination of also knowing that if we got to make more than one movie, that we wanted to keep certain species in the tank to really hold back for scientists and fans who follow this stuff."
You can read our complete interview with Trevorrow here.
Gigantosaurus Facts!
The Gigantosaurus was a "genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Argentina, during the early Cenomanian age of the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 99.6 to 97 million years ago," and it was "one of the largest known terrestrial carnivores, but the exact size has been hard to determine due to the incompleteness of the remains found so far. Also, the genus name translates as "giant southern lizard," which isn't relevant. I just find it very funny.
The giant southern lizard and all her pals will stomp onto the screen when Jurassic World: Dominion arrives on June 10, 2022.