This page contains unmarked spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the Jurassic Park film trilogy. You Have Been Warned!
"How did they get this far north?"
Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock is the first Short Film to be set in the Jurassic Park universe. Directed by Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, who wrote the screenplay along with Emily Carmichael, starring Andre Holland and Natalie Martinez. It was released in the USA on Disney-owned FX and online on September 16th, 2019. It takes place after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and serves as a teaser for Jurassic World Dominion, which was released in 2022.
A year after the events of Fallen Kingdom that saw a number of dinosaurs being released on American soil, people are still trying to get used to sporadic dinosaur sightings and incursions in the rural areas of the western states. While a family is enjoying the outdoors at a trailer park with some neighbors, dinner is interrupted when a mother and baby Nasutoceratops begin scouring the campground looking for food. The situation becomes both more complicated and far more dangerous when a similarly hungry Allosaurus appears from the dark woods looking at both the ceratopsians and humans as a potential meal.
The film was uploaded online on various platforms, with a Youtube link available here
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Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock contains examples of:
- Always a Bigger Fish: A great white shark that has caught a sea lion is caught by the Mosasaurus in the credits.
- Animals Not to Scale: While the Nasutoceratops are large, they aren't outlandishly so. The Allosaurus on the other hand, much in the same tradition as the Velociraptors, is not only much larger than the juvenile seen in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but easily twice as massive as the largest confirmed Allosaurus fragilis. In height, length, and bulk it's even larger than a Saurophaganax (Allosaurus's closest relative), being at least of equal height to the series' Tyrannosaurus. And of course the Mosasaurus that cameos in the credits is still as oversized as she was in the prior films.
- Annoying Arrows: Averted. Although it's unclear if the arrows will do a lot of lasting damage to the Allosaurus, they certainly are effective enough to scare it off.
- Ascended Extra: After being Out of Focus in the film which marks its debut, Allosaurus plays a starring role in this short as the main threat.
- Automatic Crossbows: Justified; the girl mentions at the beginning it's a double-crossbow, explaining how she was able to fire two shots so quickly.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The step-siblings do not get along and start a fight at the beginning of the short. Once the Allosaurus shows up and starts tearing apart the motorhome, they're holding each other and the son kicks out a window and shoves the daughter through first.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: Downplayed and justified. The people at the campsite run for it so quickly they leave the campfire going, and the dinosaurs wind up spreading embers around during the battle, leaving a good portion of the campground on fire by the end. The flames are small tinder fires except for the campfire though, averting the usual giant flames the trope uses and explaining why no one is asphyxiating from smoke.
- Behemoth Battle: We get one between the Allosaurus and Nasutoceratops.
- Big Bad: The Allosaurus, although still a Non-Malicious Monster that is just hungry, does try to eat the blended family's youngest child, who is still a baby near the end of the film.
- Big Damn Heroes: The male Nasutoceratops charges in and forces the Allosaurus to back off against the combined defense of the ceratopsid's family.
- Blended Family Drama: The film features a blended family with three children: one from each parent and a baby from both parents. The two older children don't get along, but when the family is attacked by dinosaurs, the children help each other.
- Bottle Episode: With the exception of the credits, The entire short takes place in the campground and around the family's RV.
- Carnivores Are Mean: As is Jurassic Park/World tradition. The Nasutoceratops are presented as a fairly peaceful, if potentially dangerous nuisance, while the Allosaurus is a fearsome predator that immediately escalates the situation just by being present, and tries to kill both the Nasutoceratops and human family with extreme aggression.
- Chekhov's Gun: Another camper is mentioned to have brought a crossbow in the beginning, and the father reminds him to not let his daughter near it. She ends up using in the climax to save them all.
- Chekhov's News: The news at the beginning mentions a sighting of a baby Nasutoceratops as the first dinosaur born on US soil. Presumably it's the baby that shows up at the camp.
- Child Eater: The Allosaurus happens to go after the baby Nasutoceratops and tries to eat the family’s infant. Justified because carnivores will often eat younger prey because they put up less of a fight than a mature individual.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: The mother tries to cover the daughter's eyes when the Nasutoceratops mother seems to be losing, but she pulls her hand down.
- Cuteness Proximity: The little girl coos when she sees the baby dinosaur.
- A Day in the Limelight: Allosaurus only had very brief appearance during the stampede scenes in Fallen Kingdom of little plot relevance but is the main antagonist in this short film.
- Darker and Edgier: The short actually has bleaker overall themes than the previous Jurassic World films, tying in with the ending of Fallen Kingdom, though in a series first, no human gets eaten. Now, anyone, at any time, seems like they can fall victim to a dinosaur attack with little to no warning, a much more haunting fear. The poster's tagline, "Is This The New Normal?" gives it particular emphasis. Content-wise, the near-deaths are pretty in-line with previous movie standards, although the short has one of the youngest near-victims in the movie series.
- Everybody Lives: All of the named human characters and the dinosaurs end up surviving (although a dove gets devoured by a Pteranodon and a great white shark is eaten by the Mosasaurus in the credits), though it also isn't clear if the person that drove off the road to avoid the Stegosaurus in the credits lived.
- Eye Scream: What finally drives the Allosaurus off is almost getting two arrows in the eye socket. They don’t hit the actual eye (one hits it in the cheek and the other just misses the eyeball), but it clearly hurts and convinces it to leave.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Well, family. The family is a blended one and the kids are clearly having some issues with their new siblings and parents. By the end of the short, they're all holding each other.
- Foreshadowing: The father says to Greg to not let his eight-year-old shoot his crossbow. She later shoots the Allosaurus in the face with it.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Played with. The daughter clearly believes so, saying that they aren't in any danger from the Nasutoceratops since it isn't a carnivore, which is supported by the fact that they don't attack any of the humans. On the other hand, that doesn't mean much since they don't interact with the humans at all and don't even seem to know they're there, and the parents are rightfully worried about what a mother dinosaur could do even before the Allosaurus shows up. The Stegosaurus scene in the credits shows that such creatures don't have to be malicious to be a danger; they just have to get in your way.
- Hope Spot: With the second Nasutoceratops arriving, it seems like the battle is over and the dinosaurs are going to leave. Then the youngest child starts crying aloud and the Allosaurus turns its attention on the humans instead.
- Idiot Ball: As Jeremy Jahns pointed out in his review. The parents don’t cover the baby’s mouth when it starts crying in order to avoid attracting the attention of the Allosaurus, which results in the dinosaur attacking their RV and almost eating them.
- Improbable Infant Survival: All three children, and even the baby Nasutoceratops that is bitten by the Allosaurus, end up making it. The little girl from the credits is chased by three compies but doesn't suffer any on-screen injuries from them.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The first inkling the family have of the dinosaurs arrival is when the father calls out to Greg and there's no response.
- Little Miss Badass: The 8-year-old daughter successfully drives off an Allosaurus with a crossbow.
- Mama Bear: Two for one, the Nasutoceratops mother defending her baby and the human mother going up against an Allosaurus with nothing but a fire extinguisher to protect her children.
- Mythology Gag:
- The Allosaurus charges into and flips over the trailers just like the Tyrannosaurus pair from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, with a very similar interior shot. The wilderness setting also closely resembles the forests of Isla Sorna.
- The shot of the Allosaurus closing in on the trailer window recalls the Spinosaurus being visible out of the airplane windows in Jurassic Park III.
- The daughter manages to name off the dinosaur genera much like Gray from Jurassic World and Tim from Jurassic Park.
- Speaking of the daughter, her and her stepbrother's relationship is practically taken from Tim and Lex's snarky interactions in the first Jurassic Park novel.
- The closing music is the main theme from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
- The credits show some compies chasing a little girl, just like in the beginning of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
- Nature Is Not Nice: The father, when his kids are frightened by the Allosaurus attacking the baby Nasutoceratops, tries to assure them that predation is just a part of the natural world. While the Allosaurus is swinging the baby around like a ragdoll.
- Oh, Crap!: This happens twice first when they realize there are dinosaurs outside their camper and then a second time when the carnivorous Allosaurus hears the baby crying.
- Papa Wolf:
- As the female Nasutoceratops and her calf are cornered, the father appears and helps force the Allosaurus to back off.
- Later, the human father grabs a bit of metal and starts swinging at the Allosaurus as it smashes through the caravan, knowing full well it's a hopeless fight but looking to buy as much time as possible for his kids to escape. The mother joins in with a fire extinguisher.
- Prehistoric Monster: The Allosaurus is roaring frequently, is treated as a brutal predator attacking a baby and then mother Nasutoceratops and then goes after the family. However, it's not a Super-Persistent Predator, and knows when to give up.
- Remember the New Guy?: The focus dinosaur herbivore, Nasutoceratops, was never seen or even mentioned in any of the films prior (although it had appeared in a toy line and two mobile games). However, the Freeze-Frame Bonus image of the Stegoceratops hybrid in Jurassic World appears to be part Nasutoceratops.
Word of God is that not all of the species saved by the Arcadia were shown during the events of Fallen Kingdom. - Rescue Equipment Attack: When the Allosaurus attacks the trailer, the mother tries to fend it off by spraying it with a fire extinguisher. Unfortunately, it only serves to piss it off.
- Shout-Out:
- The Nasutoceratops calls and wariness right before the big predator shows up are very similar to the Monoclonius in Prehistoric Beast by Jurassic Park special effects artist, Phil Tippett.
- The question “how did they get this far north” was also asked in Dinosaur, with vaguely similar circumstances explaining the dinosaurs’ in question arrival (the “fireball” applying to both the meteor impact in Dinosaur and the eruption of Mount Sibo in Fallen Kingdom).
- Shown Their Work: The Allosaurus is correctly depicted with non-pronated hands, in contrast to the other carnivorous dinosaurs in the franchise. Furthermore, it is based on specimens from the new species A. jimmadseni and manages to be fairly accurate representation of the species.
- The Straight and Arrow Path: The neighboring camper has a crossbow, although it's unclear if he brought it for hunting, defense, or just recreation.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Averted for once with the Allosaurus. It goes for the baby Nasutoceratops before its mother, then wisely backs off when the father shows up, going for the easier humans. Then after getting shot in the face twice, it decides the humans are too much trouble and heads into the forest.
- Trapped-with-Monster Plot: Thanks to the camper.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The family could have stayed hidden in the motorhome, but then the youngest child starts crying.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Allosaurus. It horrifically mauls the baby Nasutoceratops and goes out of its way to try and eat the human family's infant baby.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- The family is camping with a large group of people, all of whom disappear shortly before the dinosaur shows up. Though when the family looks out the window to see that everyone has fled to their vehicles/for their lives, one can clearly hear a woman say "get inside." And just before the credits you can see Greg cautiously stepping out of his caravan.
- We hear dogs barking as the campers clear out and the first Nasutoceratops arrives. We know from JP2 that dogs aren't so good at keeping quiet when there's a giant carnosaur around, yet don't hear a peep out of them once the Allosaurus rears its terrifying head.
