Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park
For the first three films, the animatronics were created by special-effects artist Stan Winston and his team, while Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) handled the CGI for the entire series.
[59] The 2019 Jurassic World short film, Battle at Big Rock, utilized CGI and reference maquettes by ILM,[60][61] and an animatronic by Legacy Effects.
[32] Tim Alexander, visual effects supervisor for ILM, said that colorful dinosaurs were excluded because they would look out of place in the film: "It's very forest greens and taupes and park rangers.
[49][52][47] Producer Patrick Crowley was initially hesitant to have an animatronic built because of the high cost, but Trevorrow persuaded him that fans of the series would enjoy it.
[7] Brachiosaurus returns in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, including a scene in which one individual is stranded on Isla Nublar and dies in a volcanic eruption.
[148][149] The film's Dilophosaurus also has a fictionalized neck frill that retracts, and the dinosaur was made significantly smaller to ensure that audiences would not confuse it with the Velociraptors.
In the prologue, a Giganotosaurus kills a T. rex in battle during the Cretaceous, and two cloned versions face off in the subsequent film, set during the present day.
[194] At Trevorrow's request, battle scars were added to the animal's face, similar to Jack Nicholson's Joker character in the 1989 film Batman.
Trevorrow chose to rewrite it as a genetically modified hybrid dinosaur named Indominus rex, to maintain consistency with earlier films, which had generally incorporated the latest paleontological discoveries.
[197][205][206] The creature is sometimes referred to as the I. rex for short, although producer Frank Marshall stated that the film crew abbreviated the name as simply Indominus.
In the film, it is created by Dr. Henry Wu as a weaponized animal, using a bone fragment recovered from the deceased Indominus rex, which included Velociraptor DNA in its makeup.
[43][218][219][220] The Mosasaurus was suggested by Trevorrow, as part of a theme-park feeding show in which guests watch from bleachers as the animal leaps out of a lagoon and catches its prey: a shark hanging above the water.
ILM was concerned about making the animal appear too large, but Horner advised the team that an increased length would fit within the realm of possibility, as larger aquatic reptiles were consistently being discovered.
[230] For Jurassic World and its sequel, ILM referenced footage of breaching whales, which helped the team determine how to create realistic shots where the Mosasaurus leaps from the water.
[224][230] The Mosasaurus makes a brief return in the short film Battle at Big Rock,[231] and in Jurassic World Dominion, where she is shown sinking a fishing boat.
[218][18] Earlier drafts of the script had featured Pteranodon in a larger role,[235][44][6] and Spielberg insisted to Jurassic Park III director Joe Johnston that he include the creature in the third film.
[140] An earlier draft of Jurassic Park III had included a storyline about Pteranodons escaping to the Costa Rican mainland and killing people.
[122] Escaped Pteranodons make an appearance in a post-credits scene for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, set at the Paris Las Vegas resort, where they land atop its Eiffel Tower replica.
[192] For reference, designer John Nolan created an animatronic model representing the head and neck, covered in real, red-colored feathers.
[97] Spinosaurus had a distinctive sail on its back; director Joe Johnston said: "A lot of dinosaurs have a very similar silhouette to the T-Rex ... and we wanted the audience to instantly recognize this as something else".
[34][97] An early script featured a death sequence for the Spinosaurus near the end of the film, as the character Alan Grant would use a Velociraptor resonating chamber to call a pack of raptors which would attack and kill it.
[272] However, Trevorrow decided to remove the animal from the final script after his son made him realize that having multiple hybrids would make the Indominus less unique.
Discussing the Indominus and his decision to remove the Stegoceratops, Trevorrow said: "The idea that there was more than one made it feel less like the one synthetic among all the other organics, and suddenly it seemed entirely wrong to have it in the movie.
[275] Stegosaurus instead made its film debut in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, after writer David Koepp took a suggestion from a child's letter to include the dinosaur.
[217] Horner was surprised by the inclusion of Stygimoloch, whose existence was considered doubtful by him and other paleontologists; they believed the animal to actually be a juvenile form of Pachycephalosaurus rather than a separate dinosaur.
This inspired a scene in which the Stygimoloch is captive in an anti-ramming cage; the animal's front half was constructed and visible, while a puppeteer performed its thrashing movements from behind.
[283] Winston was caught off-guard when Spielberg decided to shoot the Triceratops scene sooner than expected,[284] making it the first dinosaur to be filmed during production.
[293][294] Michael Lantieri, the film's special effects supervisor, said, "The big T. rex robot can pull two Gs of force when it's moving from right to left.
[44] As in the novel The Lost World,[37] a baby T. rex is also depicted in the film adaptation, through two different practical models, including a remote-controlled version for the actors to carry.
[35] Weeks before filming began, Spielberg decided to change the ending to have an adult T. rex rampage through San Diego looking for its baby, saying, "We've gotta do it.
