Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has everything: a volcanic eruption, a house haunted by dinosaurs, the return of chaos man Dr. Ian Malcolm, a new prehistoric mutant hybrid, Chris Pratt cracking one-liners. Director J.A. Bayona, best known on this side of the Atlantic for The Orphanage and A Monster Calls, is new to the Jurassic universe and told Uproxx about the process of making the movie, from what it was like adding a sense of empathy to these classic monsters, to why he feels this story is still so relevant in today’s uncertain world. What drew you to the script in the first place? Colin Trevorrow told me that he thought about me because of The Orphanage. And that came as a surprise to me. And then he told me that the second half of the movie was going to be a haunted house story, and I was immediately in love with that. If I think about the first Jurassic Park, one of the things that I loved the most was the sense of suspense that Steven was able to create in that movie. And for me it was a way of having fun. I was coming from these pretty intense films, and it was a way of working in Hollywood, working with Steven Spielberg, and having the chance of creating memorable things like the ones I saw in the original movies. Was there anything that you drew on from the first movie that you wanted to echo in this one? From the very beginning when Colin told me about suspense, we were on the same page. Bringing back this sense of horror and fear that we all remember from the very first movie. We all love to be scared by dinosaurs and the intention was to create a story that had to be fun for the whole family but at the same time being back those same feelings that we had the first time we had a T. Rex in front of us. The scene where the raptors learn how to open the doors, I’ll always remember that. Exactly. You have often stuck to fantasy and ghosts and horror in your work, so what was it like directing an action movie?

It was something new to me. I’ve never shot a fight, I’ve never shot an action scene. I did the tsunami in The Impossible — it’s not an action scene but there’s a lot of visual effects involved and very complex choreography. But it was the thing that I was attracted to by this project, to be able to shoot comedy and to shoot action and fights, stuff that I’ve never done. What do you like about movies with monsters? This is a story that tries to make us accept what we do not understand. There’s always a sense of empathy towards the dinosaurs. And then it’s not about dinosaurs anymore, it’s about us. The film takes the Jurassic universe out of the island and makes it a global situation. I thought that was a major step forward. Even in the first movie there’s that final shot where they’re in the helicopter and they see the Pterodactyls flying beside them, and then nothing really happens with that. Yes, exactly. And I feel like this movie is a continuation of, what if they’re really here? With a twist. You don’t have birds anymore, you have Pteranodons. It’s a way of telling the audience, this is going to a different place. It’s the same thing with that shot with the mirror, and you don’t see a T. rex anymore, you see Owen [Chris Pratt]. I liked that callback. As a director, you play with that, you play with the iconic shots that display the meaning of the story. There’s a moment where you see the dioramas and you see Claire [Bryce Dallas Howard] looking at those dioramas at the beginning of the film. And at the end of the story it’s Claire inside of the diorama, and a dinosaur outside looking at them. I loved that Pachycephalosaurus, too, just running around and causing havoc. It’s a bigger sequence, it’s a bigger movie, and so we have the chance to have the same dinosaurs that we had in Jurassic World and add new ones. And it’s kind of fun for us, it’s very exciting to see new dinosaurs. You put the camera on a Baryonyx or a Suchomimus, and everyone gets very excited.