Jurassic World Rebirth doesn’t just feature genetically engineered dinosaurs, as there’s also the matter of hybrid mutant monsters, including the terrifying Distortus rex.
The latest Jurassic movie is in cinemas now, and we wrote in our four-star Jurassic World Rebirth review that it “leans heavily into what made the original work, and delivers both thrills and scares.”
The film features a rag-tag band of mercenaries and scientists hunting dinosaurs on behalf of a pharmaceutical company for reasons that might save countless lives.
But the adventure also brings them face-to-face with horrific cross-breed dinosaurs that have been created in a lab, including a monstrous new spin on the Tyrannosaurus rex. SPOILERS ahead as we break the new dino down.
Introducing the Distortus rex
The Distortus rex is introduced during a flashback sequence at the very start of Jurassic World Rebirth, where there’s a “containment failure” at the InGen research facility on Ile Saint-Hubert, thanks to a rogue candy rapper.
The scene ends with a glimpse at the freakish Distortus rex, which grabs hold of a man, turns him upside down, then disappears with what’s presumably his dino dinner.
That was 17 years ago, and the rest of the movie plays out in the present-day, during a mission to extract biomaterials from that same island, where the Distortus rex is still looking weird while looking for food.
How Alien inspired new Jurassic World Rebirth dinosaur
FunkoThe Distortus rex is InGen’s attempt to genetically engineer a Tyrannosaurus rex, but the experiment went horribly wrong, with DNA fragments from other animals introduced into the genome, and creating a malformed mutant.
The creature is nearly 26 feet tall and 47 feet long, while it weighs around 20,000 pounds. But it doesn’t look right, with a giant misshapen head that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Xenomorphs in Alien.
That’s something director Gareth Edwards acknowledged during an interview with movie magazine Empire where he said: “It’s kind of like if the T-Rex was designed by H.R. Giger, and then that whole thing had sex with a Rancor.”
Visual effects supervisor Dave Vickery has an alternate description, saying: “It’s as if another animal has been wrapped around the T-Rex. Gareth wanted us to feel sorry for it as well as terrified, because its deformities have caused it some pain, and there’s an encumbrance to it.”
MattelVickery says Edwards got down on all fours to show how he wanted the D-rex to move with its two additional arms, while he encouraged the visual effects team to go mad with the design.
“The whole process was marked by that kind of visceral engagement with Gareth, and we loved his willingness to experiment and his desire to find something new and original at every turn,” says Vickery.
“There’s no line too far for him. When we first met, he said, ‘If you come back to me with 10 different designs of a thing and at least six of them aren’t ridiculous, you haven’t gone far enough.’ He’s not interested in average. He wants you to be fearless, because it’s easier to find brilliance by dialing back from ridiculous than dialing up from mundane.”
And that Distortus rex is anything but mundane, particularly when the creature starts tearing people to shreds during the movie’s climax.
Jurassic World Rebirth is in cinemas now, while you can head here for more movies out this month, or here for our list of the best movies ever, which features the original Jurassic Park.
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