Ryan Shoots First: Battle at Big Rock
So I’m minding my own business scrolling the Internet when I learned that a new 8-minute short set after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom just came out. Apparently after the FX premiere of 2018’s Fallen Kingdom they aired this short titled Battle at Big Rock to help set the stage for where the franchise is going. So I fired up the YouTube machine and checked it out and decided I needed to write about it.
If you want to check it out before you read more you can find the link below.
The short starts with news audio clips describing multiple sightings and events involving dinosaurs throughout the United States, even mentioning the first dinosaurs born on U.S. soil.
We then open the film with a family at a campsite in the woods. The dad heads in the camper and we are introduced to the family. The father and mother along with their two young kids and a baby. While talking they realize it has gotten very quiet outside. They then see a mother and her small baby dinosaur… they are some type of Triceratops looking breed that average people won’t know but if they say “triceratops” someone is bound to be like “well actually…” So anyway the family watch as the two dinosaurs rummage through the campsite and find safety in the fact that they are at least herbivores so they are safe. Although in this world a carnivore is never far behind.
An Allosaurus tears through the woods and attack’s the dino mother and its baby. The father Tri eventually comes and saves the two as the human family stay huddled in their camper and hope the Allosaurus just goes away. At this time, as kids often do, the human baby decides to start crying and this draws the attention of the Allosaurus. It proceeded to tear the camper apart to get to the family before their middle child wards it off with a crossbow from their neighbor’s camper. The short ends with the camera backing out to show the devastation at the camp site as the family all embrace. Be sure to stay for the short credits though as they are inter-cut with viral videos of dinosaurs invading everything from fishing trips to weddings.
So I had no idea this was a thing but I absolutely love it. We have a long wait until the next film in the franchise and it looks like the future will be very different from what we have seen in the JP franchise before. Something like this does a great job of setting a tone and establishing expectations in a way. I’m sure no matter what people will push back and not like the new direction but things like this help guide people into this bold new direction. Frankly I would love to see more movies do things like this to build hype and world build. Trailers are cool and all but these type of things for me anyway really make me buy in. I’m reminded of the shorts leading up to Blade Runner 2099 and they had me ready to roll when that film came out.
On its own the short is very well done. Colin Trevorrow if nothing else has shown that he knows how to capture the moment to moment suspense of a JP scene. I’m reminded of the opening to Fallen Kingdom with the team at the abandoned park trying to get the Indominous Rex bone and how good and tense that scene was. It’s almost like we would be better off getting 2 and half hours of short stories at this point from around the world. I hope we get more of these shorts sprinkled around as we wait for JW3 a few years away because I instantly want to see more of these animals disrupting our everyday lives.
If you have 8 minutes to kill I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to check it out as the idea of a possible dinosaur apocalypse themed movie or “Walking Dead with dinosaurs” sounds incredibly interesting compared to a film where they try to build a dinosaur theme park for the fourth time.
