A few months ago I re-read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park for the first time in over 25 years and… wow!
Somehow, time and my increasingly aged memory had made me forget just how completely different it is from Steven Spielberg’s movie.
Outside of a few characters, the general concept and a couple of notable scenes, it is completely different. It skews a lot darker and way more into the horror, for a start. It is violent and bloody, a world away from Spielberg’s crowd pleasing blockbuster.
The novel is also notable for a large number of scenes that didn’t make it into the movie, but did appear in various forms elsewhere in the franchise.
The family on a yacht trip to an island, fleeing a T-Rex into a cave behind a waterfall, a juvenile T-Rex, and an escape from an aviary all turned up in later movies.
Jurassic Park III also cribbed from the novel for the scene on the boat on the river.
Those of you familiar with the book will know that the written version features an attempt to sneak past a sleeping T-Rex which ends badly.
The sequence was in an early script, but was soon cut for technical reasons.
Apparently it is coming back for Jurassic World: Rebirth. An article in Vanity Fair confirms, straight from producer Frank Marshall, that they use this scene in the new movie.
Not only that, but Marshall also says the new movie leans into the tone of the original book and features a horror tone.
Jurassic World: Rebirth picks up years after Jurassic World: Dominion with the world proving inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those that are left have coalesced on tropical zones near the equator.
A team makes their way to an island in such a zone, one that was home to the very first InGen genetic research lab. Their mission is to recover genetic material from several different dinosaurs that still roam the island that is key to treating heart diseases.
Of course, things will go wrong and mistakes that InGen made in the past, big bitey mistakes, will come back to haunt them.
Director Gareth Edwards has already said he was inspired by Jaws and Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom. In fact he said a Jaws-like character trio is key.
The first trailer could drop any minute now, ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday where there will be at least one spot for Jurassic World: Rebirth.
Update
Now with added trailer!