The recently released Jurassic World: Dominion prologue once again throws the great Tyrannosaurus Rex under the bus. Despite being a staple of the franchise for nearly 30-years, the iconic super-predator has been sidelined in several recent films. If the Jurassic World: Dominion prologue is any indication, this trend is set to continue.
Jurassic World: Dominion marks the third installment of Jurassic Park III, in which the Spinosaurus dispatches the T-Rex easily in well under a minute.
's T-Rex moment in the prologue does the King the greatest disservice yet. Set in the late Cretaceous Period, it shows a roughly ten-second fight between a Giganotosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus. The Giga kills the T-Rex so swiftly that a viewer could almost miss it, an outcome that has realistic components, but which also represents a somewhat extreme insult to Jurassic Park's central figure that serves only to forward the film's plot.
As a franchise that centers around dinosaurs, it's natural for Jurassic Park/Jurassic World to show epic battles between different species. And as one of the most recognizable and lethal dinosaurs, the T-Rex is an ideal candidate to feature in these fights. The King's unbelievable bite strength and intimidating size seem to make it a shoo-in, so why does it lose so quickly to other dinos? Based on expert hypotheses, a Giganotosaurus or Spinosaurus could beat a T-Rex in specific scenarios, but it's not at all a given, and impossible to know for sure given that neither of these dinos actually overlapped with the T-Rex in of time period or geographical range. Thus, the fact that the prologue to Jurassic World: Dominion undermines the T-Rex's ability to hold its own in a fight must have less to do with realism than with creating a particular spectacle.
As indicated by the mosquito that sucks blood from the dead T-Rex moments after its humiliating defeat, this particular specimen is the one whose DNA Hammond uses to make his clone in the original Jurassic Park. Thus, the T-Rex's quick defeat at the jaws of the Giganotosaurus serves mainly to set up a crucial plot point, perfectly connecting Jurassic World: Dominion to Spielberg's original film. Still, however, it's a bit disrespectful to Jurassic Park/Jurassic World's biggest dino star to imply that it would put up that weak of a fight against another huge theropod, especially after the Spinosaurus fight in Jurassic World III upset some audiences. Hopefully, the rest of Jurassic World: Dominion that follows after the prologue will do the T-Rex justice, rather than rendering some even bigger disservice to the King of the Dinosaurs down the line.
