The Jurassic Park Scene That Broke The T-Rex

There are few more terrifying moments in a non-horror film than when the Tyrannosaurus rex approaches the kids' vehicle in 1993's "Jurassic Park." As an adult, you can argue that this is a Steven Spielberg film, so of course the kids will be okay. However, if you saw this scene as a young person, watching the expression on Lex's (Ariana Richards) face as the water in the Jeep begins to shake probably made your heart drop before you even saw the attack.

Looking at the later titles in the series, particularly the "Jurassic World" films, you can see the T. rex, called "Rexy" on the set, becoming sort of a mascot — or at least an anti-hero. When we first saw her, though, she was still scary above all else. Richards spoke about shooting that scene in a 2018 interview with ABC News. If the scene, the kids are stuck in one of the tour vehicles when the power goes out, and the T. rex gets loose. While Rexy manages to snack on a lawyer, she doesn't get the kids, but she also doesn't make it out unscathed. In fact, the damage she took might even be visible to this day.

 During the shoot, it turns out the animatronic dinosaur got a little too close for comfort. As Richards said in the interview: 

"The T. rex got really close to us when we were filming the scene where he was crashing down on the vehicle, and at one point, the T. rex's tooth actually hit the glass and ended up breaking off."

This was confirmed by Joe Mazzello, who played Lex's younger brother Tim in an interview with IGN in 2020. He said:

"You can see it, if anyone is watching from home, you can pause it on the Blu-ray ... the T. rex lost a tooth, and it took like half an hour to get the tooth back in. So Spielberg was just like, 'The heck with it, we'll forget about it and do it without the tooth.' There is a moment in the movie where the T. rex opens up wide on us, and he's missing a tooth."

That leads one to wonder if Rexy's tooth might still be missing. YouTuber Klayton Fioriti did a 2020 video about the lost tooth and posits that it may have carried through all future films. I looked at some of the "Jurassic World" films, and there does seem to be a tooth missing if you look at the top left side of her mouth. Fioriti points out that a real dinosaur would regrow teeth where they were lost, but it's cool to see. Still, it's not definitive, so your mileage may vary. I've put in two shots from "Jurassic World" so you can judge for yourselves. 

Universal Pictures

"Jurassic World" franchise director Colin Trevorrow confirmed that this is, in fact, the same dinosaur character as the one from the first film in the production notes for "Fallen Kingdom." My heart wants to believe. Long live Rexy!