Why This Awesome T-Rex Scene Was Cut From Jurassic Park

Shooting Jurassic Park with a production budget of $63 million that's pretty measly for the scale and scope of the movie presented many technical challenges for Spielberg and his VFX crew, which they overcame in a number of ways. The T-Rex Jeep attack, for example, was achieved by expertly combining animatronics with CGI and obscuring much of the action in the darkness and rain. Koepp told ReelBlend that for Spielberg, shooting a daytime, water-based action sequence featuring the T-Rex was a bridge too far — thanks to his famously frustrating experience filming his classic breakthrough feature, Jaws.

"[Spielberg] was showing me a bunch of [storyboards] he'd done, some of which were more or less exactly as you see them in the movie," Koepp remembered. "There was a sequence with the river and the Rex and the kids. But he thumbs past it and said, 'Oh, we're not gonna do this.' It was cut very early on. There was so much that was going to be challenging and difficult, and had yet to be figured out technologically in that movie. The idea of adding water to that made Mr. Jaws [balk] ... It was gonna be hard enough."

That's certainly understandable. Jaws was the film that launched Spielberg's career, but if it hadn't been a smash hit, it could just as easily have ended it prematurely. Malfunctioning animatronics and the difficulties involved in shooting in the actual ocean nearly sunk (pun intended) the movie's now-legendarily difficult shoot, and it's easy to see how the mere notion of dealing with yet another animatronic beast stalking hapless humans in the water might have given Spielberg nightmares.

At the end of the day, the scene wasn't a make-or-break for Jurassic Park, which became an immortal classic and spawned a franchise that continues to this day. Much of the original movie's cast — including Neill and co-stars Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum — will be returning for the sixth overall installment, Jurassic World: Dominion, currently set for release on June 11, 2021.