Suspense is a factor that's worked its way into every entry of the Jurassic Park franchise, from the very first film's slow burn dive into dino-fueled chaos to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's tense premise involving the future of dinosaur kind in the modern world. So, it's a pretty pleasing surprise that series co-writer and Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's director J.A. Bayona actually share a favorite moment of sheer terror in the series. It's even more exciting that this moment should come from a lesser liked film in the series, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, as Trevorrow revealed the following scene as their shared favorite:
When Julianne Moore is on the glass and it's slowly cracking, it's one of the best suspense sequences ever.
The scene from Steven Spielberg's 1997 follow-up to Jurassic Park happens when the trailers that house Jeff Goldblum, Vince Vaughn, and Julianne Moore's characters during the earlier part of their mission are pushed off of a cliff, leaving the leads dangling for dear life at the hands of two natural forces: gravity and an angry Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the middle of such peril, Moore's Sarah Harding falls from the upper half of the trailer, and lands on the rear window, leaving her in quite the precarious situation, as she has to move slowly enough to avoid cracking the glass faster, but fast enough to evade its eventual shattering. You can see this extremely tense scenario, courtesy of the video, below.
Knowing this particular moment is a favorite of both J.A Bayona and Colin Trevorrow speaks volumes towards what their approach to Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom looks like. Just looking at that scene again is a refresher course on one of the reasons the Jurassic Park and subsequently the Jurassic World run of films has given us: moments of true suspense where, no matter what advantages the human characters may have, the odds are still pretty stacked against them. While there's certainly plenty of dinosaur-induced wonder, panic, and adventure, it's these moments that really glue together the components that make a Jurassic movie something thrilling.
With Colin Trevorrow admitting to THR that he and J.A. Bayona share the same preferred moment of terror, it also bodes well as a sign for the Jurassic World trilogy itself. While the franchise could have been a bit out of sync with the introduction of Bayona as the director of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, only to lead to Trevorrow's return to the chair for the third (and presumed final) film in the trilogy, this sort of shared love shows that the collaborators couldn't be more simpatico if they tried. A fact that is crucial considering Fallen Kingdom has already started to take a mighty bow at the market, and the third film in a series is undoubtedly the most crucial film the series could stick the landing with. Fans will see just how strong this connection runs when they see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which is currently open in some international markets, with a domestic release scheduled for next Friday.
