Jurᴀssic World Rebirth
director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter David Koepp tease the arrival of two new mutant dinosaurs in the upcoming film. Serving as a soft reboot for the franchise after Jurᴀssic World Dominion (2022), the new installment stars Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, the leader of a mission into Earth’s dino-heavy equatorial regions to recover valuable DNA for a medical breakthrough. As teased in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth trailers, the film will introduce several new dinosaurs into the mix, including a monstrous beast that was bred in a lab.
In a recent interview with Empire, Edwards reveals that this new dinosaur is called the Distortus Rex, or the D-Rex. Though the creature is glimpsed only briefly in trailers, Edwards confirms that it features six limbs, lots of teeth, and is very hungry. Check out Edwards’ comment about the D-Rex below:
“It’s kind of like if the T-Rex was designed by H.R. Giger, and then that whole thing had Sєx with a Rancor. It’s a design that I was really happy with. I’d like to buy the toy of it when it comes out.”
ILM’s David Vickery offers further details about the D-Rex, revealing that the mutant dinosaur has a tragic element to it as well, due to the nature of its lab-grown body:
“It’s as if another animal has been wrapped around the T-Rex. Gareth wanted us to feel sorry for it as well as terrified, because its deformities have caused it some pain, and there’s an encumbrance to it.”
The D-Rex isn’t the only mutant dinosaur set to appear in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, however, as Koepp teases that the film will also introduce the winged Mutadons, which are “a combination of a pterosaur and a Raptor.” Koepp explains the dinosaurs’ origins below, revealing that executive producer Steven Spielberg had a hand in its creation:
“Those came from my strange mind. We saw in some of the previous Jurᴀssic World movies that their experiments made dinosaurs bigger, meaner, scarier, and it occurred to me and Steven [Spielberg] that those can’t all have gone well.”
What This Means For Jurᴀssic World Rebirth
The Film Ups The Ante From Past Installments
In past Jurᴀssic Park and World movies, there have usually been one or two species of dinosaur that serve as the main sources of terror for the characters. A lot of the time, this is some combination of Velociraptors and a Tyrannosaurus rex or two. Jurᴀssic Park III introduces the Spinosaurus, a new threat. Jurᴀssic World Dominion features the Atrociraptor, which can essentially be laser-guided towards targets like weapons. The new dinosaurs in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, then, continue a franchise trend when it comes to upping the dinosaur threat in each new movie.
The introduction of the D-Rex and the Mutadon as new threats the Jurᴀssic World Rebirth characters have to deal with also speaks to the story’s setting. Much of the film will take place on Site C, an island that once housed the research facility for the original Jurᴀssic Park. It was here that scientists carried out various experiments, and where the most dangerous dinosaurs were kept. This connection to the original film tracks with past comments from Edwards and Koepp, who tease that Rebirth goes back to the franchise’s roots in terms of its tone.
The T. rex and Velociraptors are also confirmed to be returning in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth.
Our Take On Jurᴀssic World Rebirth’s New Dinosaurs
The Film Has The Ingredients For Success
Jurᴀssic World Rebirth is shaping up to be an interesting mix of the old and the new. Tonally, the film clearly harkens back to the original Jurᴀssic Park, but the introduction of mutant dinosaurs opens the door for entirely new forms of terror, leaning into the franchise’s monster-movie elements. After the poor Jurᴀssic World Dominion reviews, this could be just the kind of refresh the franchise needs.
For some, this creature could stray too far from the franchise’s core design language.
The introduction of the D-Rex could be divisive, however, as the brief glimpses in the trailer suggest the creature looks less like a typical dinosaur and more like an actual monster. For some, this creature could stray too far from the franchise’s core design language. In any case, Jurᴀssic World Rebirth looks to be making some exciting changes for the franchise while also bringing back some beloved elements.
Source: Empire
