Dino-mite comes in big packages in Jurassic World: Rebirth

Five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, the escaped dinosaurs survive only in isolated equatorial environments around the tropics. On Île Saint-Hubert, the base for InGen’s (the dinosaur=making company) original experiments, three colossal creatures – Mosasaurus, Titanosaurus, and avian Quetzalcoatlus – hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous, life-saving benefits to humankind and, more importantly, to record-breaking profits to pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix, in Jurassic World: Rebirth. 

Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, Canary Black), an executive at ParkerGenix, hires former special forces operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, Lucy) and her long-time friend Duncan Kinkaid (Mahershala Ali), who’s a mercenary and the captain of military patrol boat The Essex, to provide transport and security for DNA-extractor paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Wicked), a former student of D. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), on a mission to go get that dino DNA. 

While the movie world has InGen, behind the scenes Jurassic World: Rebirth’s dinos were engineered by director Gareth Edwards, visual effects supervisor David Vickery, visual effects producer Carlos Ciudad and CFX creative supervisor John Nolan. Read on to find out what’s in store from them, in dinosaur terms. “At times, it’s like Jaws, at other times, it’s like Indiana Jones, and in between, it delights in the majesty of nature like a David Attenborough film,” hints Gareth (Godzilla). 

Stream Jurassic World: Rebirth on Showmax now. And scroll down for a reminder of which Jurassic movie is which, before you pick a favourite to enjoy, or binge the lot. 

The big three

“Designing the dinosaurs was one of the craziest six weeks of my life,” says visual effects supervisor David Vickery, who worked with around 50 concept artists around the world, under the guidance of Rebirth’s dinosaur consultant, Steve Brusatte, an evolutionary biologist and professor of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh. Thousands of VFX artists and traditional animators at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) then brought the dinosaurs to life on screen, rather than jumping between physical builds and animated creatures during the movie. Their key dinosaurs were the big three:

Mosasaurus (sea): The “Jaws” of the Late Cretaceous period. “The Mosasaur is a strange animal. It’s a little bit like a whale; it’s a little bit like a crocodile, but it’s something all its own,” says Steve Brusatte. For Rebirth, ILM redesigned the Mosasaurus first seen in Jurassic World. Modelled after a tiger shark, it now has a greenish/grey colour and leopard-like pattern.  

Titanosaurus (land): This herbivore from the Late Cretaceous period (whose name means titanic lizard), is the elephant of the Late Cretaceous, but at least five times bigger. David Vickery hints that his artists studied certain nature videos involving giraffes and swans as inspiration for the Titanosaur mating rituals. 

Quetzalcoatlus (air): Quetzalcoatlus is a gigantic pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, and one of the largest known flying animals of all time. With a scant fossil record, not much is known about them, so plenty can be imagined! “We don't know a lot about the heads or beaks of these giant pterosaurs. What colour should we give these things? What sort of soft tissue should we give them? What should the beaks look like? What should those crests look like?” asks Steve Brusatte. There was one main guideline, though: steer clear of feathers, since pterosaurs were reptiles, not birds, and had wings made of bare skin. 

Old favourites reborn

Dino fans can look out for Jurassic franchise favourites, including Spinosaurus, which has gotten an upgrade since recent discoveries indicated that it hunted in water as well as on land. “We’ve given it more powerful hind limbs, a much bigger, broader tail, webbing in between its feet, and the appearance of a shorter, more powerful neck by adding fatty deposits and extra skin folds,” reveals David Vickery. 

And what would the Jurassic universe be without its iconic T rex? Rebirth’s T rex has been on Île Saint-Hubert all its life, so there are some differences. “This new T rex is a healthier, heavier, more muscular, more bull-like T rex,” David Vickery says. “It looks like a Jurassic Park T rex, but the best Jurassic Park T rex you’ve ever seen.” And it doesn’t just roar and claw and snap its jaws, it swims! “It was incredibly satisfying to finally bring to life a moment from the book that fans had only imagined for decades,” hints screenwriter David Koepp.

Fans can also look out for the flying Anurognathus, two new Velociraptor designs inspired by Jurassic Park III, the return of the double-crested, spitting Dilophosaurus, the armoured Ankylosaurus with its clubbed tail, and the packs of little, scavenging Compsognathus.

The new kid in the dino hood

There are also new dinosaurs to thrill us (and Dr Loomis), including Aquilops, which was first discovered in 1997, but only described and named in 2014. "My guess is that the Aquilops was a cheeky little dinosaur. It was maybe a few feet long and weighed as much as a little puppy,” reveals Steve Brusatte. 

Rebirth’s Aquilops, nicknamed Dolores in the film, came to life through teamwork between David Vickery’s special effects department and John Nolan’s creature effects team, who had to create three 18-inch (around 46cm) animatronics for use on set, operated via remote control by a team of puppeteers. The version that the cast dealt with the most often was named Dorothy by the crew. Another, Simba, was used for moments when characters pick up the creature. The third was a stuffed “toy” used for lighting cues. 

Senior animatronics designer Karl Gallivan had Dorothy’s skin made of waterproofed silicone, which helped protect her from the hot, humid rainforest conditions in Thailand, where Jurassic World: Rebirth was filmed. She had seven motors in her head, six to operate the eyes, one to operate the jaw. She had five motors in the neck to turn the head, one motor in each side of the chest to generate the illusion of breathing, and two motors in the tail to make it wag. The result was, frankly, adorable. “I wouldn't be surprised if the Aquilops is everyone's favourite character in the film,” says Rupert Friend. “It's probably mine.”

The birthplace of monsters

Aquilops is cute as can be, but Rebirth also builds on the idea of hybrid dinosaurs by imagining that InGen’s R&D department had a secret laboratory on Île Saint-Hubert, where scientists kept meddling with nature in more extreme ways. “They started to do hybrids,” says screenwriter David Koepp, “but they ended up creating mutants, some deformed and deranged.” 

One monster, in particular, was inspired by David Koepp’s close encounter while working on his house. “We had these old columns that were rotting, so we had to replace them. I was spraying off one of these things when two clawed hands came crawling out of the column at the top. They were followed by these long arms that just kept coming, followed by the head,” reveals David. “It was this huge bat, soaking wet from the water. I thought: ‘I’m putting you in a movie!’” And now here it is, as the inspiration for the Mutadon, a mixture between a raptor and a pterosaur. 

VFX producer Carlos Ciudad and his team also needed to settle on designs for the Distortus rex, a gene-splicing abomination. “We’ve created this creature that is based on a T rex but has two additional powerful gorilla-like arms, and extra bloated bulk over the back of its head,” says David Vickery, who reveals that director Gareth Edwards really wanted designers to push the limits. “When we first met, he said, ‘If you come back to me with 10 different designs of a thing and at least six of them aren’t ridiculous, you haven’t gone far enough’.”

Want to know more? Stomp right over and stream Jurassic World: Rebirth on Showmax now. 

Every Jurassic movie on Showmax  

Jurassic Park (1993): Based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name. Palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neil), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and chaotician Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are invited to assess the safety of businessman John Hammond’s (Richard Attenborough) top secret new theme park on Isla Nublar – which features genetically engineered dinosaurs created from ancient DNA – following a deadly attack on a park worker.

It’s the one where: A T rex eats a lawyer right off the toilet. Ewww, spit that out!

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997): David Koepp’s sequel script was loosely based on Michael Crichton's 1995 novel The Lost World. Four years after the incidents at Jurassic Park, InGen’s new boss, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), is plotting to take dinosaurs from InGen's second island, Isla Sorna, to stock a new dinosaur theme park in San Diego. John Hammond sends Dr Ian Malcolm, behavioural palaeontologist Dr Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), and photojournalist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) to Isla Sorna to document the new dinosaurs. 

It’s the one where: A baby T rex's angry parents try to scoot Ian Malcolm's RV off a cliff near their nest. No parking in the pram zone!

Jurassic Park III (2001): Palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is desperate for funding for his Velociraptor research when rich couple Paul (William H Macy) and Amanda Kirby (Téa Leoni) offer to cover his costs in exchange for an aerial tour of Isla Sorna. But after getting knocked out during the flight when he urges them not to land, Dr Grant wakes up back on Isla Sorna, running for his life, while the Kirby’s look for their son Eric (Trevor Morgan), and Dr Grant finds out that his assistant, Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola), has stolen Velociraptor eggs.

It’s the one where: Spinosaurus and T rex go head-to-head. Dash the science, there’s always a bigger dinosaur.

Jurassic World (2015): Set on Isla Nublar 22 years after the events of Jurassic Park, the film takes us inside the now successful Jurassic World theme park. Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a Navy veteran and ethologist, has the world’s coolest job as the park’s Velociraptor trainer and handler, along with Barry Sembène (Omar Sy). But they and operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) have a dino-sized disaster on their hands when the Indominus rex, a transgenic dinosaur created by geneticist Dr Henry Wu (BD Wong) escapes, just as Jurassic World owner Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) arrives for an inspection. 

It’s the one where: T rex and a pack of Velociraptors team up against Indominus Rex, only for Mosasaurus to be the hero. Oh, and Chris Pratt and Omar Sy join a hunting pack of Velociraptors on their motorbikes. Stop it! That’s almost too cool. 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018): Six months after the Jurassic World incident, Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) sponsors Owen Grady and Claire Dearing to return to the now abandoned Isla Nublar to help rescue and relocate the remaining dinosaurs before an upcoming volcanic eruption. But mercenaries led by Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) have their own orders to play Noah’s Ark to a boatload of dinos destined for the black market, and for further mutation and weaponisation.

It’s the one where: A Brachiosaurus raises its teeny tiny head to the sky one last time before it’s choked by volcanic ash. Nooo, not our sweet baby!

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022): Jurassic worlds collide as Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, BD Wong, and Omar Sy return along with Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill. Four years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs and other de-extinct prehistoric animals are now living around the world alongside humans. While Claire and Owen are on a new rescue mission, the Jurassic OGs join forces to expose a conspiracy led by the Biosyn genomics corporation.

It’s the one where: Raptors chase Barry, Owen and Claire over the rooftops, down the stairs, and through the busy, narrow sidestreets of Malta, where Claire clotheslines a raptor! No boarding this flight without a pass, raptors!