The Dinosaurs

Most of the dinosaurs will be created using CG but they did create animatronic raptor heads for the squeeze cage in Owen’s raptor paddock. A practically-built animatronic dinosaur was created for a sequence filmed in Hawaii, but we were not told much about that scene as its a spoiler. (Thus, we probably also won’t see it in the marketing of the film.)

The dinosaurs in Jurassic World will be created using performance capture. Humans are playing the T-rex dinos. Colin Trevorrow went to ILM before production and conducted a ton of tests. They found that when a human is behind the movements you can feel the weight and it feels unlike what we’ve seen before.

They have actors on set who wear lifesize models of the dinosaur heads for the actors to respond to on set.

The film features four key raptors, each of which will be played by a different person to keep the movements consistent from scene to scene.

No dinosaurs in the movie do anything that the closest real animal equivalents can’t do.

One of the themes in the movie is that all of the dinosaurs are organic and the synthetic must die.

All of the issues of the first Jurassic Park have been supposedly “fixed”. The dinosaurs in Jurassic World can mate in the wild but all of the dinosaurs are monitored and tracked at all times. Even the surviving dinosaurs in the closed off section of the island have microchips and are tracked. However those areas of the park like the old visitors center don’t have the security camera monitoring systems of the new areas.

The T-rex from the original Jurassic Park will make an appearance in Jurassic World. She looks a bit older now, and Trevorrow describes her as having a bit of Burt Lancaster thing going on.

Jurassic World will not feature weaponized dinosaurs from the infamous abandoned Jurassic Park 4 script. Screenwriter Derek Connolly actually never read that script.

Colin Trevorrow came up with the idea of featuring Mosasaurus, the film’s main water dino which you see in the trailer. He pitched the idea to Spielberg of having the Mosasaurus feed on a shark in front of bleachers filled with park guests. Spielberg loved the idea of the Mosasaurus eating the shark but suggested that when the animal grabs the shark that the whole bleacher section submerge underwater using a hydraulic system so that the audience will be able to see the Mosasaurus feeding underwater. 200 extras sat in the bleacher section. The dino jumps out of the water and soaks the crowd. This was Colin’s favorite moment of shooting.