New images from Jurassic World: Dominion revealed

As the third entry in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World trilogy nears its June 2022 release date, we’re starting to get a few new looks at the upcoming film. Jurassic Park was one of the most groundbreaking films of the ’90s, using the cutting edge of special effects and animatronics paired with a great story about human hubris set against a dinosaur theme park going off the rails. While the first two installments, Jurassic Park and 1997’s The Lost World were based on novels by Michael Crichton, the series has since gone its own path.

Trevorrow injected new life into the franchise with the release of Jurassic World in 2015. While the second installment, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, received a more lukewarm response from critics and audiences, expectations are high for the final installment of the trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion.

Some SPOILERS for the ending of the second Jurassic World film follow below.

Jurassic World: Dominion new pics

The end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom set up a question that was always at the heart of the earlier films as well as Crichton’s novels: what would happen if these genetically engineered dinosaurs ever actually escaped their island and made it to the mainland? Fallen Kingdom’s climax saw the terrible lizards doing just that. And as we can see from the images that Universal Pictures has been releasing alongside various interviews, the film looks to examine what a clash of species might look like.

The image above sees Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) wrangling a Parasaurolophus. You might remember these herbivorous dinosaurs from Jurassic Park: The Lost World, where they were captured by the big game hunter Roland and his crew in hopes of bringing them to a theme park on the mainland. They’re generally docile creatures, which makes them a prime target for poaching. Trevorrow revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that Grady will be helping round up the Parasaurs to keep them safe from those who would hunt them for sport or profit.

Next we’ve got a shot of Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) neck-deep in a swamp, with the clawed feet of a Therizinosaurus looming on the shore behind her. Trevorrow, who is directing Dominion and cowrote the screenplay with Emily Carmichael, was evasive when asked about Claire’s story in the film.

“I don’t want to say just yet,” he responded. “But she’s at a point where she’s questioning her methods, and whether she can stay safe and fulfill the responsibility that she has to the other people in her life that care about her.”

Then there’s this shot of Chris Pratt riding his motorcycle down the stone stairs of a building, a brand new dinosaur hot in pursuit. While it might look like a Velociraptor — which the preceding films have made so famous — this is in fact a cousin of the raptor family: the Atrociraptor. (No, it is not a made up dinosaur in case you’re wondering. Trevorrow and his crew have just done a great job of bringing lesser known dinosaur species into the mix for this film.)

“It’s a sequence set in Malta. And the picture speaks for itself – it’s Chris Pratt being chased by an Atrociraptor. And if they catch up, he’s gonna die, I can tell you that,” Trevorrow told Empire. “I think when people think of what Dominion might be, they’re assuming it’s going to be a T. rex walking through New York City. We made a lot of different choices. And one of them is that I wanted to see dinosaurs around old stones, around something that’s ancient to us, just to illustrate how much more ancient these things are. Also, the Atrociraptors are made to blend in with that background. There are oranges and tans and bronzes and all these colors we haven’t been able to see before, which I’m really fired up a about.”

The Velociraptors of the other films were sneaky and highly intelligent, but to hear Trevorrow tell it, Atrociraptors have an even more “brutal” tenacity. There’s no hiding out in a kitchen to get away from these guys.

"“Where the Velociraptor is a little bit more of a stealth hunter, the Atrociraptors are a bit more brutish. These things will just come at you. And in this particular case, they’ve picked his scent, and they’re not going to stop until he’s dead. They’re pretty brutal. They’re pretty vicious.”"

Trevorrow also went on to describe a few of the other dinosaurs who will be appearing in the film, including Pyroraptors and a smaller cousin of the Tyrannosaurus called Moros Intrepidus.

The last new image we’ve seen comes straight from the Jurassic World Twitter account. This one is of Chris Pratt’s Owen and series newcomer DeWanda Wise, whose role has not yet been announced, facing off against something off-screen. Based on the knives, the looks of stoic concern, and the fact that both actors are looking up, it seems like a safe guess that there’s some kind of dino bearing down on them.

Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum return in Jurassic World: Dominion

While Fallen Kingdom felt uneven at times, there are an awful lot of reasons to be optimistic about Dominion. Not only will it be exploring the idea of dinosaurs coexisting with us in our world, but it will also see the return of original trilogy stars Sam Neill (Alan Grant), Laura Dern (Ellie Sattler), and Jeff Goldblum (Ian Malcolm) — and not just as cameos, but a major part of the film.

“Laura, Sam, and Jeff have as much screentime in the film as Bryce and Chris do,” Trevorrow told Total Film. “They’re not together the entire time, but we are following both of their stories equally, and you have a sense that they’re going to collide at a certain point… there’s this tension. It’s not structured necessarily in a way that we’re used to seeing our Hollywood movies structured. But it works.”

Dominion will also see the return of Lewis Dodgson, who was in the first two Jurassic Park films. Dodgson was the one who hired Denis Nedry to steal the dinosaur embryos from the island in the first movie, which in turn set off the catastrophic chain of events that led to the park getting out of control. In Dominion, Dodgson will be played by Campbell Scott, owing to the fact that original Dodgson actor Cameron Thor is currently serving six years jail time.

“[Dodgson] is the main villain throughout both of [Crichton’s] novels, and I think what Campbell’s done with the character is just amazing,” Trevorrow said. “I can’t wait for people to see it.”

Jurassic World: Dominion is due to hit theaters on June 10, 2022.

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