Jurassic World Dominion, the sixth chapter of the blockbuster franchise, will be the conclusion to the entire Jurassic Park saga, which was first released by Steven Spielberg in 1993. The film is directed by Colin Trevorrow and is the sequel to Jurassic World – The Destroyed Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World (2015). The production of the film started in 2020, but it was interrupted due to the pandemic. To know more about the making of Jurassic World trilogy, Animation Xpress got in touch with creature FX supervisor John Nolan, who has worked on various projects including The Witcher, Guns Akimbo, Into the Woods etc.
The latest chapter has been produced by Universal Pictures and it takes references from the previous two films. The special effects and sets of the film have been inspired by Steven Spielberg’s original film Jurassic Park. Talking about the association with the great franchise, Nolan said, “The association with such a huge franchise was incredible. It is a film where many creative minds worked together to make the film possible. About hundreds of artists worked in the creature effects (CFX) department to create the environments, objects, and creatures to look real. We worked collectively to reach the expectations of people from such a huge franchise. So the journey with the franchise was incredible.”
The official storyline reads: the future of mankind hangs in the balance as humans and dinosaurs coexist following the destruction of Isla Nublar. The story takes place four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar following the volcanic eruption, which was shown in the previous film. As the destruction happened in the last film, dinosaurs will share the planet with humans. It is quite interesting to see who will rule the planet.
According to the FX supervisor, there are more animatronic dinosaurs used in the film than the previous chapters. Nolan shared, “In this film we made use of many animatronic dinosaurs, which helped us to control the dinos mechanically to give it a sense of reality. We almost created 14 different types of dinosaurs and a total of 38 dinosaurs. Giganotosaurus was the largest dinosaur which took three months to complete. We have just created the head and neck of the dinosaurs and the visual effects team has created the entire animated dinosaurs. Working on this kind of film was quite challenging but it was great fun to create the real like creature through CGI.”
Sharing an anecdote from the making of the film, Nolan narrated, “The creature FX and VFX department worked closely. We captured many in-camera shots to create more lively effects. This film included more practical effects rather than visual effects. The moment I enjoyed most was when we were shooting the character’s movement as we used joysticks to make the movement of the characters. The most interesting part was when we created the fighting sequence of the dinosaurs, it was very challenging. We have almost a 1,000 plus computer generated effects in the film.”
The FX supervisor also highlighted the role of animatronics in the film as he mentioned, “Animatronics made our work easier. We chose it over CGI and stop-motion animation to acquire a real time in-camera movement. It enabled us to create a creature that doesn’t exist in reality and made the actions, movement possible which can never be obtained by living things.”
Jurassic World Dominion sees the return of Trevorrow, who also serves as executive producer along with Steven Spielberg. Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley also return as producers. Alexandra Derbyshire joins as executive producer. In addition to the original trio, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard star as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing. The Jurassic films always performed well at the box office collections, especially Trevorrow’s Jurassic World was the only film to ever make $500 million in a weekend and the fastest to ever gross one billion dollars. The latest chapter opened in Korea and has collected six million dollars in its first day of release, making it the fourth biggest pandemic opening day of all time in the market. It clearly shows that the fans are very much excited to experience the Jurassic movie once again with all new fresh twists and spins.
It will be interesting to see in theaters if the dinosaurs and humans will co-exist and who will be the dominion. The film is set to hit theater screens on 10 June.