Back in November of last year, Universal showed off 5 minutes of Jurassic World Dominion footage that they dubbed “The Prologue,” which was originally attached to F9 only in IMAX theaters. A first for the franchise, the footage brought us back 65 million years ago into the Cretaceous period, showing us the world as it appeared when dinosaurs ruled the planet.
Jurassic World Dominion‘s prologue then jumped ahead 65 million years, showing the franchise’s iconic T-rex attacking a drive-in theater. The idea was to convey that dinosaurs once ruled the planet and now they’re ruling it once more, the 5-minute prologue serving as an epic introduction to the film that was set to finally unleash dinosaur mayhem on the mainland.
Of course, the movie didn’t quite end up delivering on that premise, and that entire 5-minute prologue wasn’t actually even included in the film itself. So what happened there?
Universal had actually noted last November that “The Prologue” is “not featured in the film itself,” but why would Universal and director Colin Trevorrow spend so much money on what essentially ended up becoming bonus content for a future physical media release? And why was the drive-in sequence heavily featured in subsequent marketing as well?
As it turns out, “The Prologue” very much was originally supposed to be in the movie.
Trevorrow explains to The Wrap this week, “[The Prologue was] maybe too Malick-ian for a big summer movie. It was the beginning of the movie, it’s the first five minutes of the film and something I’m very proud of. In our negotiations for how long this movie could be, and it’s still a pretty long movie, we realized that it was going to have to go.”
He continues, “Universal supported my request to just give it to everyone for free and let people watch this prologue as a way to bring them into the world that we were creating. Hopefully, and I could almost say assuredly, someday you will be able to see it again.”
At 2 hours, 26 minutes, Jurassic World Dominion is indeed the longest film in the Jurassic franchise to date, and it seems Universal wasn’t interested in bloating the runtime any further. And thus, the epic 5-minute prologue was ultimately removed from the film entirely, instead beginning with a re-introduction to Owen and Claire after the events of Fallen Kingdom.
Trevorrow does tease a potential “Director’s Cut” of Jurassic World Dominion that will have the prologue footage included, noting in the chat with The Wrap, “we’ll see how things go.”
You can watch the full prologue for Jurassic World Dominion below.
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