JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
Every few minutes, the swells of John Williams’s iconic score stir up again, and the vocal terror of thousands of families being scared by an animatronic T. rex can be heard ringing through the Universal Studios Hollywood amusement park, where Jurassic Park—the Ride remains a hugely popular attraction. What most riders don’t know is that just several hundred metres away on the movie studio’s back lot, director J. A. Bayona ( A
Monster Calls) is combing through footage of the latest instalment in the series, Jurassic
World: Fallen Kingdom. After seeing Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original, a young Bayona was transformed. “I remember perfectly that I felt I was watching a moment in movie history,” says the Barcelona native. “I thought from that moment on, everything you could imagine, no matter how crazy that could be, would be possible to see on-screen in a realistic way. It was movie history.”
Now Bayona is poised to make his own history with Kingdom, which arrives in cinemas on June 21 and is the highly anticipated sequel to 2015’s Jurassic World. That film, co-starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, finally opened the dinosaur theme park promised in the original film and, naturally, led to bloody chaos. (The film would also gross more than $2.1 billion worldwide, making it the most successful instalment in the series.) Bayona’s Kingdom is perhaps the most ambitious Jurassic film to date, with a genre-shifting twist halfway through the film. The island is destroyed and the action moves to an enormous American estate where characters are trapped indoors with a rampaging new terror, the Indoraptor. Think Jurassic meets Panic Room. “The first half, you have a whole dinosaur movie on the island, so you have what you expect from a Jurassic movie,” says Bayona. “Then the second half moves to a totally different environment that feels more suspenseful,
darker, claustrophobic and even has this kind of Gothic element, which I love.” The only other time the Jurassic franchise has seen the dinosaurs leave their tropical locales was the climactic moments of 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, when the T. rex stampeded San Diego, California. Adds Pratt, “At the end of the day, we’re all trying to make something that will be part of the Jurassic empire and tonally match the previous movies, but we’re going off in a new direction.”
So will audiences be OK with this whole new World? “I feel like anxiety is a burden of the hyper-intelligent,” says Pratt with a laugh. “It’s someone else’s job to worry about that. I just show up, stand on the X, say the lines, and give them all three of my scared faces.”
Kingdom picks up four years after the events of World, with Jurassic World in ruins and the dinosaurs now roaming free. But the threat of an erupting volcano brings about a debate over the previously extinct creatures. Explains writerexecutive producer Colin Trevorrow, who directed World, “You have this extinction-level event on that island, and the world is looking at these creatures that we created and asking, ‘ Well, what is our right? Do we let them die because we created them and they shouldn’t be here in the first place, or do we have a responsibility to save them?’ ”
Jurassic World’s former operations manager, Claire (Howard), used to think of dinosaurs as only a monetary tool, but in the new instalment we find her leading the charge to save them, founding an activist organisation called the Dinosaur Protection Group. “Basically, her sense of purpose now is to ensure that these animals have the same protections as any other endangered species,” explains Howard. Joining forces with Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), who’s the former partner of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the pair launch a rescue mission to save dinos from the island and bring them back to a sanctuary that Lockwood has created in America.
The change in Claire extends to more than just her dino feelings. After the internet complained about Claire spending the entirety of World running in heels, the character has found a happy medium in her footwear. “I wanted it to be clear from the beginning that Claire has changed, but she’s still wearing heels. A person can have an inner journey and still love heels!” says Howard with a laugh. “But she’s prepared to go to the island, and she also has boots.”
Though Claire’s love of Louboutins hasn’t diminished, her romance with Pratt’s Owen has definitely fizzled. She is, however, able to woo the island’s former raptor trainer back by playing on his feelings for his favourite dino. “She appeals to my better self when she brings up Blue, because she’s still alive,” says Pratt. “Claire’s going to try to get the dinosaur out of harm’s way, and I can join her if I want. And, of course, I do. Spoiler alert: We go back. I’m in the movie!” But in typical Jurassic fashion, everything goes to hell pretty quickly after the volcano explodes and decimates the island—but not before Owen, Claire, and fellow activist Franklin ( The Get
“‘WHAT IS OUR RIGHT? DO WE LET THEM DIE?’” —Producer Colin Trevorrow