New 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' Featurette Has Bryce Dallas Howard Riding A T-Rex

If you've ever wanted to see Ron Howard's daughter climb onto the back of a T-Rex, today is your lucky day. A new Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom featurette reveals some behind-the-scenes footage of the practical effects work in the film, and offers a glimpse of Bryce Dallas Howard trying to hold onto a T-Rex like it's a mechanical bull.

This might just be the Jurassic World featurette that finally sold me on the movie. And no, not because it features Bryce Dallas Howard trying to ride a T-Rex. What's impressive to me here is how dinosaurs in the film are being created via practical effects. Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park employed a deft blend of CGI and practical dinos, with stunning results. The effects work in that 25-year-old movie look better than most effects in big blockbusters being released today.

"[The dinosaurs] need to feel 100% real," director J.A. Bayona says here, and producer/writer Colin Trevorrow adds that scenes in Fallen Kingdom were specifically designed to use animatronic dinosaurs – something that didn't happen while making Jurassic World. Even Blue, Chris Pratt's best raptor buddy from Jurassic World, is created via a puppet for this film.

I'm not sure how many practical effects will end up in the final film, but this featurette goes a long way toward convincing me that Fallen Kingdom is going to be an improvement over Jurassic World.

In addition to the featurette above, here's a new Fallen Kingdom TV spot. The theme of this spot seems to be shock and awe, and that's a wise approach. As you'll no doubt recall, the first Jurassic World featured a running theme that the world had grown bored with dinosaurs. That's part of the reason why Jurassic World created the Indominus rex – as Bryce Dallas Howard's character says in that film, "We've been pre-booking tickets for months. The park needs a new attraction every few years in order to reinvigorate the public's interest. Kind of like the space program. Corporate felt genetic modification would up the wow factor."

A lot of fans of the franchise had a problem with this – why would anyone get bored with seeing living, breathing dinosaurs? It seems that Fallen Kingdom has abandoned this controversial mindset, and gone back to having characters reacting to dinosaurs with the appropriate level of awe. This makes me wonder if Fallen Kingdom is going to be filled with moments that will attempt to course correct all the stuff people hated about Jurassic World. We'll see when the film arrives on June 22, 2018.