The Location That Proved To Be A Big Challenge For Jurassic World Dominion

"Jurassic World Dominion" took a major bite out of the summer box office. Although it did not hit the $1 billion heights of the first two installments of the "Jurassic World" trilogy, the film still cleaned up pretty nicely, with over $990 million earned worldwide (via Box Office Mojo). Marked as the finale of the entire "Jurassic" saga that began in 1993, this earth-shattering entry sees the world struggle to coexist with dinosaurs running rampant across the planet, all while old and new characters alike team up to uncover a grand conspiracy about the tech company Biosyn.

Despite the film's box office success, it received some harsh reviews. "Dominion" currently ranks as the lowest-rated "Jurassic" installment on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 29% Tomatometer score from critics, who largely felt that the franchise had run its course by this point.

Regardless of critics' thoughts regarding "Dominion," the film, as with any "Jurassic" entry, required loads of work to get made. The original 1993 film was a game changer for visual effects alone (via The Hollywood Reporter), and each entry after has had to find a way to top it. The work put into creating the visuals and world of the blockbuster franchise is a challenge, including for "Dominion," where creating one of the film's key locations proved to be a major battle.

In an interview with Screen Rant to promote the home media release of "Jurassic World Dominion," visual effects supervisor David Vickery cited Biosyn Valley as the biggest challenge in creating the film's locations. The valley, also known as Biosyn Sanctuary, was used by the company as a research facility for the escaped dinosaurs from Isla Nublar.

"This was a massive puzzle that we pieced together from a number of different locations around the world, we were near Vancouver Island and in parts of Squamish, we referenced a lot of the forest line from that area for the basin and the bowl of Biosyn Valley itself," the Oscar nominee said, describing how the team scanned the Swiss Alps, the Grande Dixence Dam, and the Dolomites for reference. "Biosyn ended up being a fully digital creation that we could go to any piece of, whether it was the icelake or whether it was down in the actual valley itself, where some of the scenes take place."

With "Dominion" intended to be the final installment in the "Jurassic" saga, the location issues the team ran into feel cyclical. On what would have been the last day of shooting the original "Jurassic Park" on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, Hurricane Iniki passed through, so the cast and crew were instead confined to their hotel rooms (via The Washington Post).