Jurassic Park introduced moviegoers to a world where dinosaurs walk the Earth again alongside humanity, but Jurassic World Rebirth is a film that takes us into a darker corner of that world. The island of Saint-Hubert is where InGen hid the lab where they took genetic splicing and hybridization techniques used to recreate dinosaur species and pushed them further than ethical science would ever allow. The end result is the “Distortus Rex (or D. Rex),” a misshapen nightmare of an animal, which now rivals franchise icons like the T. Rex or Indominus Rex.
However, Star Wars fans who are sitting down to watch Jurassic World Rebirth started to notice that the D. Rex looked strikingly familiar to another iconic beast from a galaxy far, far, away. And it turns out that it’s not frivolous associative thinking: the D. Rex’s design is now confirmed to be a major Star Wars Easter egg!
Jurassic World’s D. Rex Is Based On Star Wars’ Rancor
During his interview with Collider, Gareth Edwards revealed his inspirations for the D. Rex’s design, saying, “Basically, you took everything in a melting pot. It’s really hard to come up with a monster idea. We put in a little bit of the Rancor from Star Wars. Don’t tell people who work on Star Wars.”
Edwards has plenty of love for (and experience with) Star Wars: he directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (with help from Andor’s Tony Gilroy), and also made an appearance in the franchise as a Resistance soldier fighting in the Battle of Crait during The Last Jedi. With that level of fandom, it’s no surprise that Edwards snuck some Star Wars into Jurassic World – and once you see it, there’s no way to unsee it.
The franchise influences on D. Rex don’t stop at Star Wars: “We put in a little bit of H.R. Geiger’s alien for good measure,” Edwards explained. “There was a little bit of, obviously, the T-Rex.”
The director also dropped some insight about the “character” they gave D. Rex in the film: that of a tragic Frankenstein monster. “I ended up saying [to the animators], ‘Okay, maybe go rewatch David Lynch’s The Elephant Man.‘ It’s the idea of something that’s a little bit suffering, didn’t want to be in this situation, and I like that. It’s in there, certainly, hopefully, but there’s this little bit of empathy you have for it. You wanted to feel slightly sorry for it.”
MILD SPOILERS: Indeed, the poor D. Rex doesn’t quite turn out to be the malevolent monster that was teased in the marketing. When he finally steps out of the shadows, he’s still fearsome, no doubt, but there are hints of that freak of nature that’s just trying to maintain its peace, freedom, and solitude until the pesky humans come stumbling into its domain. D. Rex seems to be a less evil creation than I. Rex – and like the Rancor’s appearance in Return of the Jedi, its time onscreen is actually rather brief (if memorable).
Jurassic World Rebirth is now playing in theaters.
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