One can follow Scott Beck’s meaning. As effective as the “Jurassic” films can be at showing just how horrifying it would be if dinosaurs got loose in the present-day world, the fact their human characters are playing on their home court (assuming I’m using that sports analogy correctly?) makes it a little less unsettling. That and, more often than not, the human villains in those movies pose as great a threat to the dinosaurs as vice versa, right up until they get their just desserts at the mouth of a meat-eating dino.
With “65,” however, Beck felt like the prehistoric setting allowed him and Bryan Woods to “lean into the horror aspect of what dinosaurs could feel like.” He likened it to being on a safari when “all of a sudden you’re thrown into the wilderness, you have to find a way to survive, and there’s nothing that’s really there to protect you.” At the same time, Woods added the pair have no delusions about being able to top the “amazing achievement” that is Steven Spielberg’s original “Jurassic Park”:
“If we’re doing anything, we’re just saying, ‘Let’s not stop at ‘Jurassic Park.” Scott and I kept joking, ‘Why are there not as many dinosaur movies as there are comic book movies? We’ll watch 10 a year if we’re allowed to.’ So for us, it was just fun to do a dinosaur movie, not be stifled too much by ‘Jurassic Park,’ and have fun with it.”
That extends to the dinosaur designs in “65,” which Woods said exist at the nexus between what we now know dinosaurs looked like (à la “Prehistoric Planet”) and “scary.” We shall see if they managed to successfully split the difference when “65” attacks theaters on March 10, 2023.