Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt Talk Jurassic World

By: Lynn Barker

In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaur researcher/trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is asked by former Jurassic World park operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) to help her save the remaining dinos on the island, including Owen’s fave velociraptor Blue, when a volcano is about to erupt but, of course, this won’t be easy.

It’s great to see these two actors again playing their popular characters with more at stake this time around. In L.A., the actors talked about the movie’s premise, physical stunts, working with their new director and more!

Q: What is the premise of this new Jurassic movie?

• Bryce: This movie starts at a crisis point. There is an extinction level event that is going to occur on the island. There is an active volcano and it’s going to erupt and all of the dinosaurs are going to die unless Claire does something about it and that is where we start this movie. That’s where we begin. What we’re starting with is we now have over twenty years of dinosaurs co-existing with human beings. Did we make a mistake? Is this nature’s way of correcting itself? Should we let nature run its own course or should we step in and protect these animals that we have created ourselves?
• Chris: The Jurassic movies have always been movies about science and imagination merging through thrillers with dinosaurs chasing people around. But, at the core of it, they are relationship movies about people and the relationships those people have with one another and the relationships those people have with nature. So, we’re exploring that relationship further. We’ve got a pretty great cast, a deep cast in a really cool story. It’s the new chapter. It’s bigger and better and more exciting. It’s Jurassic and people are gonna love it.

Q: Cool! Bryce, how has Claire changed since the first Jurassic World?

• Bryce: At the beginning of the first Jurassic World we see a woman who has kind of lost her sense of values, compromised her sense of values in the name of profit. Now what we see is a completely different person who is deeply in touch with her values, deeply in touch with her sense of responsibility and is singularly focused on protecting the animals that she didn’t even acknowledge the value of prior to this. So, she’s a very different woman in the beginning of this film because she has found a sense of purpose and she has found her mission really and she will not stop at anything.

Q: Chris, does this movie require more physical action than usual?

• Chris: The last movie was pretty physical as well but this one is really physical. It’s live dive-rolling out of the backs of trucks and diving off of stuff and landing in water. We have a whole sequence that we shot in water that took maybe a week or something. We’ve got great big fight sequences. They’ve taken the action hero element that worked in the first movie and expanded on that for this movie.

Q: Bryce, what are new characters Zia and Franklin like?

• Bryce: Zia is a paleo-veterinarian and Franklin is a programmer and they are sort of this motley crew that goes to the island together and Zia proves herself to be a tremendous bad ass and Franklin proves himself to be more capable than he considers himself at the beginning of the story.

Q: Chris, how was working with Bryce again?

• Chris: Bryce is a pro. She’s (director) Ron Howard’s daughter and she has an incredible work ethic. And I say Ron Howard’s daughter because she has that gene. She’s a filmmaker; a director, a producer and a storyteller. She really lives for this. She’s very passionate about every step of the process.

Q: Bryce, what is the overall threat in the film?

• Bryce: This is a new world in which dinosaurs and human beings are cohabiting and coexisting and it is no longer then dynamic that we saw in Jurassic Park or Jurassic World where dinosaurs are caged and imprisoned, where we are in control of the dinosaurs. What you see is that we’re not actually in control of those dinosaurs at all and they are far more dangerous than we could ever imagine.

Q: Chris, how was working with the animatronic dinos like Blue?

• Chris: She’s so life-like. They had one person controlling dilating the pupils, one controlling the eyelid, the nostrils, the cheeks as she breathed, her jugular as it pumped (blood), each of her hands and claws and her neck. There was a team of like twelve guys underneath doing a very fine choreographed dance to make her look real.

Q: Can’t wait to see her. Bryce, what is the scariest thing about the movie?

• Bryce: You would think that the scariest thing that could happen would be facing a dinosaur but that’s not the case in this movie. What we see is that there is something more menacing, more evil and more bloodthirsty and that thing is Mankind.

Q: Both of you, how was working with your director?

• Bryce: J.A. Bayona is an incredible filmmaker and particularly genius when it comes to frightening people. He just understands suspense and particularly creatures, monsters and what is so scary (about them). Oftentimes what is so scary is when you don’t see the monster until the very, very last minute and, at just the right moment and just the right way, the monster is exposed in a way that will haunt you for the rest of your life…but you love it!

• Chris: He’s a huge movie buff. He loves all kinds of movies but he really does love a movie that has an edge and a bit of danger to it and he’s bringing that to this film. It’s really exciting to see the music, the slow pace, the suspense, not so much what is there but what might be around the corner. He’s bringing it back and that’s always what these movies have been. They’re science and imagination suspense thrillers. That’s what we’re doing here and J.A.’s really good at that.
• But, everything you do when you are doing a Jurassic Park movie, you have to give credit to (the late novelist) Michael Crichton. He created this extraordinary world and it’s from that idea that all of these movies are extracted. So, you definitely have to give credit where credit is due.

 

See Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in theaters Friday!

Have Your Say

Are you a fan of the Jurassic films? Did you enjoy Bryce and Chris as stars of the last one? Are you stoked to see this new film? Chat it up by leaving a comment below!