Raptors have always been the scariest dinosaurs in the Jurassic movies – clever girls with a knack for opening doors, attacking unsuspecting victims from the side, and causing chaos in the long grass. But in the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion, get ready to fear a new kid (or, a 65-million-year-old new kid) on the block. Colin Trevorrow's trilogy-closer is set to introduce a new form of raptor – the Atrociraptor, seen in our exclusive new image posing a serious threat to Chris Pratt's Owen Grady.
Elaborating on the image in Empire's new issue, Trevorrow explains: “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.” Must go faster!
If the regular raptors' smarts were the thing that made them so terrifying, their cousins here have an additional boisterousness that makes them a formidable foe. “Where the Velociraptor is a little bit more of a stealth hunter, the Atrociraptors are a bit more brutish," Trevorrow explains. "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.”
That's not all – the film will also introduce Pyroraptors among a swathe of other new species. And, yes, the director does pick favourites. "I love the Pyroraptors. I love the Atrociraptors," he says. "There's a little one called the Moros intrepidus, who doesn't do a ton in the movie, but whenever it shows up, I always love it."
Read Empire’s full Jurassic World: Dominion story in The Batmanissue – on sale Thursday 23 December, and available to pre-order online here. Jurassic World: Dominion is due in UK cinemas on 10 June 2022.