Jurassic World: Dominion prologue is five minutes of dinosaurs blissfully ignorant of extinction
This five-minute Jurassic World: Dominion prologue is pretty much all dinosaurs being dinosaurs
Aux News Jurassic World: Dominion
We’re coming to the end of this phase of Jurassic Park sequels. Following Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, this third part, Jurassic World: Dominion, brings director Colin Trevorrow back for another bite at the dinosaur resurrection series.
But the five-minute prologue released today won’t be in the movie. Instead, these surprisingly quiet and human-free few minutes show what dinosaurs were up to shortly before their number at the extinction deli was called. It’s all very BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs by way of 2001: A Space Odyssey. So enjoy the splendor of these feathered, chicken-like creatures as they eat eggs and drink water. If only they knew what horrors await them.
Everything’s going great for these dinosaurs. That is until a pesky mosquito shows up, and the clip cuts to “65 million years later.” The earlier footage of dinosaurs enjoying their time on Earth won’t be in the theatrical cut. However, it’s not clear if this short scene of the tyrannosaurus rex interrupting a drive-in double feature of American Graffiti and Flash Gordon will be.
Of course, it makes sense that this wouldn’t be in the movie because it’s all stuff that was sufficiently cleared up in the first Jurassic Park. Who needs a whole sequence when you can just show an amber excavator looking at a mosquito preserved in an egg of tree sap.
Treverrow’s first Jurassic World faired as well as J. A. Bayona’s Fallen Kingdom with our critics. A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd wrote of the Treverrow’s first dino adventure:
Much more than the other sequels, Jurassic World recalls the original, working in some of the iconic locales of its iconic predecessor and leaning hard on that rousing John Williams theme. And yet director Colin Trevorrow, making the leap to the big-budget big leagues after Safety Not Guaranteed, can’t match the more tactile thrills of Spielberg’s seminal summer movie.
Jurassic World: Dominion finds a way into theaters on June 10, 2022.
107 Comments
This was beautiful. I can’t wait for the movie. It’s pure, dumb entertainment with great-looking dinosaurs.
That clip was beautiful, but—unless I misread the article (completely possible)—the footage before T-Rex Fugitive will not be part of the movie.
That’s how I read it, too. Pity.
I’m fairly certain that the article has misinterpreted the whole point of this clip and that this *is* the opening of the film. That’s how I remember it being promoted when it was shown before Fast & Furious 9 this summer.
I can’t believe it’s taken them this long to realize that people really, really, really want a a longer version of the T-Rex running amok in relatable areas from The Lost World. This movie had really better be a bunch of dinosaurs running around being terrible in grocery stores and car dealerships and stuff because damnit we want that more than more island crap.
I thought that was supposed to be the whole promise of Fallen Kingdom. “The Island Is Gone”, the promo shit said. The movie had it literally blow up. They had a backup island and the movie was like no, fuck that island, we’re not doing islands anymore. Here’s some asshole’s mansion. Coming soon: everywhere.
So they’d better be serious with this shit. I’m an easy lay for dinosaurs stomping around chasing humans but even I will start to feel teased eventually.
I genuinely think having a weird genetic freak dinosaur chasing people around a lunatic’s mansion is so delightfully fuckin weird that it completely saves the movie for me.
Jurassic World was wayyyy up there in terms of being a good time at the movies. I went in without having seen any of the Jurassic Parks (I know, I know), but hot damn! The T-Rex’s heel-face turn at the end had me actively invested in a big dumb CGI ending spectacle. I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again, but good memories.
They’re remaking Disney’s Dinosaur?
Just no Love Monkey. Please, for the love of God, no Love Monkey.
God that’s a weird movie
If they played The Egg Travels theme that would be amazing.
Best thing about that movie, and one of the best things James Newton Howard’s ever written.
Without question, James Newton Howards career peaked with that track.
Honestly, I love the first Jurassic World.Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies of all time, but the issue is that it is an incredibly effective horror movie. Not just a dumb horror movie mind, but one that from its opening is oppressive, dread-filled, claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing – often with characters we both love (Muldoon) or don’t love (Nedry) dying horrifically. It honestly exhausts me by the end, in the same way that Aliens does, though obviously the latter is far more taxing.Jurassic World on the other hand feels like a vacation from your sofa with a packet full of sweet chili and sour cream chips. It is dumb, it is stupid. I can get up and leave for the toilet without pausing. Its mostly set in a very photogenic day time setting that washes away any queasiness (save for that poor woman) of any gruesome deaths. Could it be better? Absolutely. Is it a horrific reflection of how far modern day blockbusters have fallen. The argument has merit. But, it basically barrels from one fun idiotic set-piece to another with the same in-your-face cadence of its progenitor’s Universal Studio’s theme park ride, and honestly, I think that’s an achievement.Fallen Kingdom was gob-smackingly terrible though, so I have tepid expectations for this.
I remember The Lost World being terrible and Jurassic Park 3 being okay, so we can hope the pattern will hold. Maybe?
touché 🙂
I want the new movie to just be a couple of hours of conversation between Dr Grant and a raptor. ‘My Dinner With Alan’, perhaps.
The Lost World is one of the most messily written blockbusters of all time, it’s a miracle it made it to screen as is. There’s some makings of a great film in the first act up until Richard Schiff’s character dies and then the structure and pacing go completely out the window from then on. Had they excised the San Diego portion (and Vince Vaughn) it might have held together better. It’s a pity too because there’s some great stuff in there: Pete Postlewaithe, John William’s dark expedition score, the atmosphere in general.III is good! It feels a little direct-to-video in its concept and execution despite the budget and set-pieces, but one could do much worse for a lazy popcorn movie.
My favorite part of III is how it just… ends. Like, middle of the action, rescue team just pops in and says lets go
I think I was the right age for the Lost World and the worst age for 3 and it’s colored my view ever since. Because I love the Lost World a whole lot and struggle to finish 3. Then again I loved gymnastics and lived in LA and loved raptors so that might’ve heavily played to my bias.The giant bus scene is so good though, and the googy SF stuff with the Mama dinosaur and the world’s most awful crying baby dinosaur. So memorable for me.
>. Had they excised the San Diego portionNo, it was good to have a big fun finale, unlike the dreadful 3rd film.
Spielberg literally phoned it in with the former, as he directed much of the film remotely
I thought I’d remembered the same thing, until I went back and watched JP3 for the first time since it opened. Uh, it is not okay. It is not okay at all.
To be fair it’s been years (decades?) since I watched either and I have no particular desire to revisit them ever.
Hey, Lost World has one of the best monster movie sequences ever (the cliffside accordion research vehicle bit) and a girl kicks a fuckin velociraptor out of a window. And yes, the series of events that leads up to that cliffside t-rex attack are mindnumbingly stupid, but it rules! And I will never not be delighted by seeing the world’s dumbest Checkhov’s gun pay-off ever when her feet crack that thing in the mouth.
“I remember The Lost World being terrible and Jurassic Park 3″
Wrong way round, lost world had a ton on great scenes, 3 had none.
Yeah the message of “saving the dinosaurs” doesn’t really hold water you remember that these aren’t dinosaurs. They’re genetic abominations that approximate what we thought dinosaurs looked like in the 90’s.Not to mention that fact that if they escaped on the mainland, and they have in previous movies, it’d be an ecological disaster that would wipe out countless species. Hell Isla Nubar and Isla Somar’s ecosystems have probably been fucked over as is. Even though he was a climate change denier and a misogynist, Crichton had the right idea of how to deal with the dinosaurs: Kill them with fire.
It also ignores the fact that the park and the dinos must have wreaked ecological havoc on the island ecosystem. Islands tend to be centers of endemism with species found nowhere else. One of the biggest threats to endangered critters on islands is introduced species. Mind you this generally doesn’t stop me from enjoying watching dinosaurs on the screen for some mindless popcorn fun, but the scientist in me feels like it should be noted.
Honestly, would dinosaurs be an ecological disaster if let loose? Wouldn’t they almost immediately be wiped out by humans, just like all other large predators? It’s not like we’re afraid of packs of wolves. We actually have to work hard to keep any large predators around at all. Nobody is afraid tigers or polar bears are going to escape the San Diego zoo and become endemic to California.
Big dinosaurs sure (then again, Colombia has that hippo trouble). The ecological disaster would be with the small ones. Compys, for example, fast, mid-sized, scavengers, would easily spread to the level of Australia’s feral cat problem (that is, if they weren’t bioengineered with a Lysine contingency).
Yeah, but those little ones aren’t going to get off the island. Unless another evil corporation starts marketing them as pets, I guess.
In the original book the Compy is the first one discovered on the Costa Rican mainland, it’s how the book starts. Like rats, they stowed away on the ship.
Eating a baby. The first JP is an extremely effective horror novel
Also the book explains that they can get access to lysine by eating chickens and soy so really all it really means is that they’ll be more likely to frequent human populations.
And yet you have stuff like Pablo Escobar’s hippos breaking free and running rampant in Columbia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus_in_Colombia).
Not really comparable to the “Dinos running around the suburbs” stuff they’ve been pushing for these movies. I guess it depends what kind of dinosaurs and where they get out. I suspect dinosaurs released in winter in South Dakota would be a self-correcting problem (for example).
To be fair to our monstrosity, it took tens of thousands of years for humans to wipe out the large animal species of the planet. We’re talking about a tiny island, usually with unique small populations of technically endangered species. For several dozen species of dinosaur and ancient plant (the point of Laura Dern’s character) to completely upend the ecosystem of a small island like Isla Nublar, especially if any of the animals were a high reproduction scavenger species, I’d give it less than a month.
The carnivores would die from not having an ample diet pretty quickly.
Depends on how stupid durable the dinosaurs are meant to be. Like most of them would become roadkill but the sturdier ones might be troubling…as the dinosaurs also seem to be a weird horror movie intelligent.
Well except Michael Crichton had the dinosaurs destroyed by a branch of the Costa Rican Armed Forces, one of the few countries in the world who actually don’t have one.
Most of them would die off near instantly, particularly the larger ones. For one, there aren’t enough to have viable breeding populations. That aside, there’s the food issue. A T-Rex and similar size predators wouldn’t be able to catch food. Modern mammals are far too fast for them. The herbivores likely wouldn’t be able to digest modern flora either. There’s also the issue that all these dinosaurs lay their eggs on the ground and are dependent on the proper environmental temperatures for the eggs to survive. As far as we know, most didn’t protect their nests and they were incapable of thermoregulating the nests themselves. The only dinosaurs that have been shown in the movies that could possibly be problematic and thrive are the Dromaeosaurids species (raptors basically). They were extremely fast and would likely have no issue hunting modern mammals. There’s also indications that some species protected their nests and may have even thermoregulated them like modern birds. It’s conceivable that some species of Dromaeosaurids could thrive in the right modern environment.
Yeah I feel like in real life those islands would’ve been napalmed SO fast…
The cozy factor. It counts.
Too many tonal issues with Jurassic World.At least Fallen Whatever made for a decent haunted house movie at the end
Fallen Kingdom wasn’t great, but it was definitely an improvement over Jurassic World. I loved the idea of turning the film into a haunted house movie, which was unexpected from a Jurassic Park film.
I love how stupid monster movie Fallen gets in the second half. The First Jurassic World was like weirdly mean spirited…and awkward.
I really liked how the park in Jurassic World looked exactly like you know a dinosaur based theme park would in this day and age.
I really, really don’t like Jurassic World. It has these really dumb and unlikeable characters being chased by a made-up ‘generic monster-movie dinosaur’. But the key for me is that 95% of the film takes place in daylight. A T-Rex, some raptors and darkness is all that’s required to make a decent Jurassic Park sequence. Hell, even Lost World (a bad movie) has much better peaks than the new series because it at least seemed to understand this. JPIII is probably a bit overrated because it has a certain B-movie charm, but it’s not a good film. It’s no coincidence that the best sequence in JW is the motorcycle/raptor chase sequence. For a minute or two, the tension just gets ramped up, and it’s because the darkness hides how extremely CGI the dinosaurs are while adding a horror vibe.I know Fallen Kingdom is worse, but it’s not by much.
Friend, I too loved Jurassic World, and Jurassic Park is also my favorite movie! The thing about Fallen Kingdom I didn’t like was how much it depended on cartoon villains and on people screaming unnecessarily rather than being quiet so as not to be eaten. In so many instances the person could have easily gotten away if they didn’t scream for no reason. Anyway, I still watch it every damn time.
I liked Jurassic World but the concept behind it was so dumb. A park with actual dinosaurs would not need to add excitement to get people to continue coming back. People still pack Disney World on a daily basis.
The weakest part of Jurassic World is the characters you’re forced to follow and the aspect of a super dinosaur. They definitely would’ve just made it for fun not because people got bored with dinosaurs.
*fared
Feathers! Fucking finally.
I cannot wait – looking forward to a Feather Boa in its natural habitat.
They’ll probably just screw it up by depicting feather boas as being venomous rather than constrictors.
Those bastards!
1) JW1 was so UNenjoyable I never bothered with the 2nd.2) Is this on youtubes or a player that isn’t absolute shite?Anyway, for all who enjoyed the World movies, power to you I guess. I know I have things I like that the (seeming) majority does not. Like what you wanna like! Don’t take my shit!
The original trilogy is on HBO Max atm
Excavators aren’t amber. They are Caterpillar yellow. ….Ohh, never mind.
Can’t I just watch a three hour movie of those first few minutes? That was incredibly soothing.
I remember thinking the same thing about Avatar when I saw it. Get rid of all the people and Na’vi, turn it into a Pandora nature documentary and add narration by Sir David Attenborough and I could have watched that all day.
No lie, I genuinely got more enjoyment from those first few minutes than from the rest of the franchise.
I would totally love a remade “Walking with Dinosaurs” without the painful early aughts CGI.
Word on the street is that something like that might be cooking over at the BBC—a couple of paleontologists who worked on the initial show have gotten very tight-lipped when the subject of a remake comes up. Hopefully something comes of it!
So how do I convince Universal that showing Earth with Laurasia and Gondwana is a better gag than that stupid T-Rex silhouette?
Missing opportunities is a hallmark of this series but even so, that is a big one. Especially considering Universal did pretty much what you just described when they released Waterworld.
Seriously, how has it taken this franchise this long to do a serious “dinosaurs stomping around modern society fucking shit up King Kong-style” installment*?* Not counting the last fifteen-odd minutes of The Lost World, since that’s kind of more of a glorified epilogue to yet more dicking around on a tropical island.
I don’t really know what to make of three minutes of ancient dinosaur shenanigans. Like, sure. Is the movie really going to open that way?
The bit in the present day made me grind my teeth, though. Like, there’s what’s effectively a giant, aggressive, killer monster rampaging around, and apparently the response is “one helicopter carrying a guy who can’t aim.” Not “get the fucking National Guard,” not even “notify everyone’s cellphones of an emergency using the WEA system.”
Apparently, if a tiger or buffalo got loose, they’d send one guy with a taser to deal with the problem…
There’s no realistic way to warn people of this sort of thing. If I got an emergency text that said “DINOSAUR WARNING!!!” you could bet my idiot ass would wander outside and look around.
Me but with tornado warnings.
Spot on. People stand around and rubberneck bears.
“Look, the federal budget has space for an effective anti-dinosaur services, or millions of dollars in tax breaks for the oil industry. Not both.”
Have we considered the cost efficiencies of massacring dinosaurs in order to make more oil?
They’ve spent all the funds on the Bear Patrol instead.
Well, I don’t see any bears in this trailer, so I guess it worked.
lisa, i want to buy your rock.
Let the dinos pay the dino tax! I pay the Homer tax!
This is the modern Spielberg-iverse. Guns don’t work here. Remember the retcons to ET where men were given walkie-talkie- radios instead?
This sequence must have happens SHORTLY AFTER the ending of JW: Fallen Kingdom, so it makes sense that the response team would be unprepared for this.I wouldn’t be surprised if this intro sequence is only a prologue for the dinosaurs’ eventual dominance over the mainlands over the next few years.
How are dinosaurs going to dominate over hundreds of millions of humans with firearms? They’re still just animals. It’d be like saying bears are going to overrun us all.
If they breed pretty quickly and can hide, they can overrun the mainlands. At least, the smaller dino can.But yeah, I dunno how the big ones would be able to evade humans since they’re easier to spot and follow.
I don’t know if we’re using “overrun” to mean the same thing. Small mammals and very small insectoids can overrun places in an ecological sense, but they’re not going to be rampaging around, destroying everything while humans run screaming. Larger animals cannot reproduce that fast and cannot hide effectively compared to humans’ ability to root them out.
You wouldn’t want these dino to swarm and munch ya.They would be dangerous nuisance to any unwitting humans.
I guess we can assume that what’s depicted in the films is canon, and so despite the fact that in the real world no animals that size would gang up to attack something 30 times larger than them (it’s a simple question of weight ratios) it’s potentially a risk in the world as depicted… but it crosses the line of verisimilitude, which is why I ridicule it.
That’s been my problem with this. Dinosaurs on an island where yea it’s believable that corporate skimped on security. Yea I buy that.A T-Rex going up against an AH-64 Apache, yea I know who’s winning.
I had the same thought, although I guess it depends what you mean by “shortly after,” since Chris Pratt’s hair/beard is all different.
True. But, then again, this is the franchise where Bryce Dallas Howard responds to a T-Rex sized threat by sending out a handful of men armed with cattle prods and a single net gun, so…
But will all scenes in the present take place at night? IRL all it takes is one person with a smartphone camera to out what’s happening and what the authorities don’t want the public to know.
Oh, there’s no plausible way it wouldn’t get out instantly. Statistically there would almost certainly be at least 2-3 people recording with their phones or taking pictures at any given time during the drive-in movie, meaning that no matter when the T-rex shows up, it would get caught on video effectively instantaneously, and posted online within seconds. At least a couple other people would whip out their phones and take videos too (even though most people would run screaming). There’s no way the government could respond fast enough to suppress it.
That early footage just reminded me of when ‘Walking With Dinosaurs’ came out, and how thoroughly I lost my shit. I’m sure the effects look terrible these days, but at the time they were awe inspiring.
“Walking With Dinosaurs” lol.As pleasant as those kinds of specials are, the abundance of that much CGI just doesn’t do anything for me. Unless it’s cartoon. I do expect more from a franchise as big as Jurassic Park to aim higher than cable TV schlock. Make the prehistoric prologue with as much practical effects as possible, and then I’d be impressed. But the chopper also somehow lost sight of a giant 7 ton T-Rex, so the schlock may just come with the territory at this point.
I found one error in this article:faired as well as J. A. Bayona’s Fallen Kingdom—> fared as well as J. A. Bayona’s Fallen Kingdom
Next sequel idea – Return of the Meteor.The dinosaur movies I’m sure are potentially fine, I’m thinking about everything else.(Though that Jurassic World sequel, saw a bit of that on TV in my hotel room in Singapore was absolutely dire. We were all returning home to Australia in January 2020 – in my case from Sri Lanka – but had a day’s delay due to technical problems with our plane. Then a couple of months later the world shut down. Portents of things to come, I guess – just got my parents back in time the following month – February 2020.)
“A mosquito landed on the Chicxulub Meteor as it crashed to the ground. That mosquito carried that Meteors DNA inside of it and got stuck in amber.We have now replicated Chicxulub in a lab! But oh, no! Some clone kid let it escape and now Clone Chicxulub is going to crash itself into Earth again! Only you can stop this, Chris Pratt and your raptor friend!”Come on, its hardly that much more insane than this franchise already is now.
I’d swear I’ve seen this prologue already. Like, months ago. Was it just a smaller excerpt? I remember at least part of the Paleozoic footage, then an excerpt of the drive-in show footage. Oh well. good stuff, in any case. wonder why they picked those two films for the drive in?
I’m so glad you said that mate cos I definitely saw it a few months ago – it was several minutes of uninterrupted pre-historic footage, then a shorter section in the modern day at a drive-in theatre. I wondered why so long after the fact it merited its own article!
Wasn’t it exclusively in front of some movie?
sigggggghhhh
I watched that whole neat little sequence of really excellent dinosaur nature footage, then came back to “oF cOuRse NOt iN moVie! jUsT rEhAsheD CUz mOsquitO.”
Yeah Matt, you suck.
Quick, go write a new article about how Who Even Cares About The Avatar Sequels Anyway?
That’s a hot take I’m also not seeing anywhere else but everywhere.
Anyone else immediately think of the Dinosaur teaser?
Unless this one has a girl doing gymnastics to kick a raptor out a building, I’m not interested. THE LOST WORLD was bad, but at least it had its moments. FALLEN KINGDOM had…. Nope, can barely remember it other than that daft underground supervillain lab.
Now I’m curious about a Terrence Malick helmed dinosaur movie, set back before the meteor hits, following a middle-aged, depressed T-Rex, with whispered interior monologues. I don’t think these movies pretend at scientific accuracy, but haven’t we learned by now that dinosaurs had feathers? Which would frankly look cooler in their designs.
Why they didn’t use Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon (Movie Film for Theaters)‘s opening is beyond me.
All I wanna know is if this movie fulfills the promise from the stupid awesome Jurassic World 2? Are we gonna get Dinosaurs taking over California?That’s all I care about. Are we basically gonna get a Dinosaur Hunter movie with more dumb science and silly characters. If so I’m pleased.