The T-Rex Was Almost Killed Off in JURASSIC PARK
Jurassic World blew up at the box office this summer, and many of the fans of the original like myself loved it! I really liked how it harkened back to the original film and paid tribute to it. One of the things they did that I loved was bring back the T-Rex from the first film. At the end of both films, the T-Rex swooped in and saved the day. But that came close to never happening in this film or in the first one, because Steven Spielberg almost killed off the iconic dinosaur in Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park producer Kathleen Kennedy was a recently a guest on the Nerdist Podcast, and she revealed that the T-Rex was originally supposed to be killed off in the middle of the first film. Thankfully, she managed to stop Spielberg from doing it! She recalls the story of what happened saying:
"I was sitting by the monitor one time with Steven on Jurassic and about halfway through the movie we killed the T. Rex. He was sitting there and he goes, 'Guys, guys come here—we can’t kill the T. Rex!' He had been watching the movie in his head as we’re shooting, and we’re halfway through the process and we’re nearing the moment where we’re gonna shoot the scene where we kill the T. Rex and he’s like, 'No, the T. Rex is the star of the movie. We can’t kill him.'
"So we called the production designer Rick Carter over and we, literally right by the monitor, started to talk about how we were going to change the next scene and the entire end of the film as we were making it, so that we could keep our leading actor, the T. Rex, alive."
It’s pretty crazy to learn how close this movie was to killing off this iconic franchise dinosaur. I’m happy they ended up not taking that route. Who would have saved Dr. Grant and the rest of the characters at the climax of the movie when they were about to be torn apart by the raptors?!