What The Jurassic Park And World Movies Look Like Without Special Effects

The original "Jurassic Park" trilogy is widely known for pushing computer generated imagery into being the primary mode for visual effects in the film industry. There's no denying that the first time audiences saw the franchise's iconic T-Rex stomping full-bodied in all its CGI glory, they were blown away. The first film in the franchise proved to studio execs that visual effects made with software were indeed a viable technology to pursue, confirming that computers were now advanced enough to realistically render organic creatures.

Interestingly, very few actual CGI shots exist in the original "Jurassic Park" film by modern standards, with only 63 computer-generated effects in the whole movie. By comparison, blockbusters today tend to use at least 2000 VFX shots, including the "Jurassic World" films. This means that the original film still contained mostly practical work, such as puppets and large-scale animatronics.

What's great is that even the more recent sequels have kept the tradition of animatronics alive. Even when CGI is involved, there's still a lot that goes into the behind-the-scenes shooting of these big set pieces, whether it's death-defying stunt work, wearing goofy motion capture suits, or adding CGI to a partially-made animatronic. Do you want to see what the "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World" movies look like without all the special effects? Then you're in the right place.

What's the best way to film a dinosaur? Outside of actually cloning one (which, if the "Jurassic Park" movies have taught us anything, is not a good idea), you build one from scratch. In the early days of film, movies used stop motion to bring dinosaurs to the big screen, such as in 1925's "The Lost World" and 1933's "King Kong." Later on, animatronics were used for dinosaurs, like in 1985's "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend." This technique of using animatronics to make movie dinosaurs was perfected in 1993's "Jurassic Park," directed by Steven Spielberg.

Rexy (the affectionate nickname the "Jurassic Park" crew gave to the full-scale T-Rex animatronic used in the film) was nearly 40 feet long, 24 feet tall, and weighed a whopping 4.5 tons. The legs were attached to a track and moved separately from the main body, which was remote controlled. Additionally, a second, more detailed animatronic was built just from the waist up. This second T-Rex was used for close up shots and for moments in which the actors had to interact with the film's most iconic dinosaur. Of course, some shots of the T-Rex were full CGI, and these were done by Industrial Light & Magic.

In an interview with Business Insider, ILM's Steve Williams explained how they created Rexy digitally. "In order to get it into the computer we actually fire a laser at the three-dimensional rubber prosthetic model and extract the data so the computer had it essentially," Williams explained, adding that the first shot he managed to create was the T-Rex running. "It took me months to get this run right, but once done, we reused the run data for the rest of the jeep-chase shots and ultimately for the following two 'Jurassic Park' movies."

2001's "Jurassic Park III" was the first film in the franchise not directed by Steven Spielberg. Joe Johnston (who would go on to helm "Captain America: The First Avenger" but was best known for "Jumanji" at the time) took the reins for the threequel. Following in Spielberg's footsteps was no doubt daunting, but, as a former ILM employee, Johnson was ideal for the job. One of the standout moments from the film is the dinosaur scrap between the iconic T-Rex and the new big bad introduced in the third film, the Spinosaurus.

Life-size animatronics were used for the big brawl, with the Spinosaurus animatronic being built from scratch. It ended up being 44-feet long and weighing around 12 tons. Once filming commenced, the fighting between the two dinosaurs got so intense at one point that the Spinosaurus robot's animatronic arm actually destroyed the head of the T-Rex.

It was apparently a real spectacle on set, but the fight seen in the film looks even more realistic thanks to the CGI wizards at ILM. "Jurassic Park III" is actually something of an unsung hero in the history of CGI development, having ushered in some bold new techniques. This was the first film in which ambient occlusion was used at a per-frame rate on animated creatures, and it made the T-Rex versus Spinosaurus scene much more believable.

A lot has been written about how the science behind "Jurassic Park" is outdated, and that's especially true of the franchise's Velociraptors. In reality, these dinosaurs were really small and were also most likely feathered rather than scaly. However, that doesn't change the fact that the scenes with the raptors in "Jurassic Park" look real and visceral. How were they achieved? Like the T-Rex, a mixture of CGI and animatronics were used for the raptor, but the film also adopted a third approach, going for some good old-fashioned performers in rubber suits.

The main raptor performer was John Rosengrant, so the rubber suits were created using a cast of his body. "I had always wanted to perform in suits," Rosengrant said in a Stan Winston School blog. "I think to do it well, you have to be a bit of an actor — although, the characters we play usually have a singular mission, which is to kill something. 'Must eat. Must destroy.' There isn't a lot of deep psychological acting going on there! But I do think it requires some very good physical acting to do this work, especially at the level Stan Winston demands."

There's a phenomenon where celebrities who've been cast in shows or movies alongside The Muppets will almost immediately forget they're puppets and address them as fellow co-stars. The suspension of disbelief gets totally obliterated on set, which is where you'd think it'd be the hardest to maintain, considering you can literally see the puppeteers. It's not just The Muppets — this exists for all kinds of puppets and animatronics on many other films, as well. Case in point, the T-Rex from the "Jurassic Park" films.

The animatronic built for the first film would actually spook crew members, especially since it would move on its own sometimes due to malfunctions caused by rain water. "The T-Rex went into the heebie-jeebies sometimes," producer Kathleen Kennedy told Entertainment Weekly on the 20th anniversary of the first film. "We'd be, like, eating lunch, and all of a sudden, a T- Rex would come alive. At first, we didn't know what was happening, and then we realised it was the rain. You'd hear people start screaming." This made things like applying fake meat to the teeth of a T-Rex (like in the above photo from the set of "Jurassic Park III") even more intimidating.

2015's "Jurassic World" reveals that a successful and functioning dinosaur-based theme park was eventually established in the universe of the franchise, this time called "Jurassic World" instead of "Jurassic Park." One of the major attractions are the glass-bubbled vehicles called "Gyrospheres," which are used as the new theme park's vehicle of choice for a safari that rides alongside packs of herbivores. In the film, two brothers (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson), who are the nephews of the park's operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), end up going on said safari. Things naturally go awry when they go off course and are attacked by the Indominus-Rex, the film's big bag dino.

The Indominus looks great in this scene, but that's not the only impressive piece of CGI here — the glass on the bubble cars wasn't actually there during filming, it was added later on computer. While obvious in hindsight, reflections would be a real pain to have to shoot around behind-the-scenes, so the production team seemingly decided it would be easier to film the cars practically and add the glass later in post-production, rather than having to use digital technology to remove reflections of film equipment and crew members later.

While digital visual effects have come a long way since the early '90s, the Velociraptor suits have seemingly devolved judging by these behind-the-scenes photos from 2015's "Jurassic World." Instead of raptor suits made of meticulously sculpted rubber skin with radio-controlled jaws and eyes, "Jurassic World" has actors in skin-tight spandex suits and rubber Halloween costume-esque raptor faces on the top of their heads. If someone were to see this being filmed without context, it would look like a middle school production of "Jurassic Park." But that's not entirely fair, as context in this case actually matters a lot — these are motion capture suits, and the heads are meant to be plain so they can be replaced with CGI.

Computer animators will pour over the movements made by the actors in these suits and will later use these performances as reference for the CGI Velociraptor models in post-production. The gray-colored suit also makes it easy to key out when rotoscoping (cutting elements out of the frame manually), as the blank solid color stands out around more busy backgrounds. They may not look as raptor-like as the ones from the original film, but it still helps the stars of the movie to have something to perform with, rather than simply blank space.

One of the most controversial moments in 2015's "Jurassic World" is the sequence where Zara Young (Katie McGrath) is brutally killed in a way that many fans felt was tasteless overkill. Zara is Claire's personal assistant and she gets saddled with looking after Claire's nephews during their visit to the park. Then, when all hell inevitably breaks loose (something that happens in every "Jurassic Park" film), Zara is grabbed and taken into the air by Pteranodons before being dropped into the giant maw of the crocodile-like Mosasaurus. It seemed a disproportionately violent fate for a character who really did nothing wrong. "Nobody else, including villains, get a death as terrible as hers," Redditor r/TrueFilm pointed out.

The consensus is that Zara's death wasn't handled well in the script, but how was it achieved? While the sequence features a lot of CGI, that was a real stunt woman getting scooped up and dropped. The shot in which she's grabbed by her shoulders and taken into the air was done with a device not too dissimilar to a slingshot ride at an amusement park. The stunt performer was strapped into a harness and shot into the air with bungee cords, with an attached camera catching her reactions as she plummeted back down to the sea of green fabric below. Her face was then replaced with that of Katie McGrath to complete the illusion.

In 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," helmed by J.A. Bayona, we return to the island where all hell broke loose in the previous film. A volcanic eruption is going to take place, so there's a big debate about whether or not Isla Nublar's dinosaurs should be saved. The government decides against it, but John Hammond's former partner puts together a team to secretly relocate the dinosaurs to another island.

In the film, there's an action set piece where Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire and Justice Smith's nerdy hacker Franklin find themselves inside a busted-up Gyrosphere. It eventually tumbles through the jungle amidst a chase sequence and falls into some water. In order to get realistic reactions from the actors, they literally put a Gyrosphere rig onto a working roller coaster track.

Usually scenes like this are filmed pretty sterilely in front of a green screen, typically with giant fans to mimic wind shear, and maybe a mechanism to move the vehicle up-and-down and side-to-side. That wasn't going to cut it here — they wanted to see genuine fear on the faces of the actors. "To take Bryce and Justice and then have them be dropped down is the only way that you're going to get that performance on their faces," producer Pat Crowley said in a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Chris Pratt's Owen Grady isn't the only raptor wrangler in "Jurassic World." He shares his duties with Omar Sy's Barry Sembène, who also has a way with the animals. In one memorable close-up scene, Barry can be seen comforting a raptor by talking to it and stroking its head and throat. Sy's affection for the dinosaur seems legitimate, which is surprising when you see what he was actually working with on set: A white raptor head with pupil-less eyes. It looks like something from a museum rather than a movie set, but the actor makes us believe that this is a living, breathing creature — and when the CGI team were done, that's exactly what it looked like.

Sy shows up again in 2022's "Jurassic World Dominion," taking part in one of the film's standout scenes — the illegal black market dinosaur bazaar in Malta. Barry is leading a French Intelligence mission in the island country. Owen and Claire are there because they have to find Maisie, the young human clone they adopted, who was kidnapped. At one point during the raid, they find caged Atrociraptors, who eventually escape and wreak havoc on the city. It's undoubtedly one of the best things that happens in "Jurassic World Dominion."

2022's "Jurassic World Dominion" keeps up the tradition of using giant, life-size animatronic robots behind-the-scenes, especially for sequences showcasing its new big bad, the Giganotosaurus. In fact, all of the current six "Jurassic" films have had some form of large-scale animatronics in one way or another. Yes, the recent trilogy uses far more CGI, with 2000+ VFX shots per film, but it is heartening to see that filmmakers haven't fully abandoned using large-scale rubber-skinned robotic animatronics. Not only are they part of the franchise's history, but, when used correctly, animatronics blended with CGI achieves the best results.

With all the advances in technology that have happened since the original "Jurassic Park" came out, the animatronic Giganotosaurus in "Jurassic World Dominion" has much more bells-and-whistles than Rexy. John Nolan, head of John Nolan Studio (which worked on "Jurassic World Dominion"), revealed just how giant the Giganotosaurus was in an interview with Animation World Network. "Visual effects, creature effects, and special effects pulled together and using the same files, made this crazy dinosaur that is 22 feet high, with a head the size of a transit van, a tongue the size of a surfboard, and eyes a record 12 inches wide," he said. "It was massive!"

Judging from the trailer for the upcoming "Jurassic World Rebirth," we can expect more of the same in the next installment. Of course, "Jurassic Park" is far from the only big Hollywood franchise that relies heavily on CGI to bring its world to the big screen. If you want to see more pre-CGI shots, here's what Marvel movies look like before special effects are added, and you'll no doubt be shocked to see what Disney's live-action remakes look like without special effects.