Scarlett Johansson & Co-Stars Reveal The Recipe For A Great 'Jurassic' Movie

That is so crazy that you would say that. Scarlett, I love how vocal you've been, that you've been a fan of the franchise for so long. I'm curious, what do you think are the most important elements of, like, a good Jurassic film? Great actors. Period. No, the script has to be solid. That's the first and most important thing. And then you need a great cast, great cinematographer, fantastic composer, good editor. visionary director need the thrills you need the corny jokes you need the like goony sense of adventure yeah yeah sense of adventure and a bunch of people getting gonna have to get eaten yeah there's a lot that goes into the blender i'm obsessed with the fact that before even getting the call to do this movie you just happen to write a four-page analysis yeah yeah on why jurassic park is good so i'm curious in your opinion what are like the top three essential things needed like a good jurassic and please don't say that um wow you know what's tricky about that and this is the whole point really is that it's hard to say it in words um when i wrote that document what i'm doing is i'm sort of trying to take the essence of the story and tell it like it was like a thousand years ago so it's more like a campfire story so it's it's like you're you're just trying to make it like timeless so that's a little exercise to do with films i love and and i did it the day before um I got the call about um the job I had no idea I I just did it because I love Jurassic Park and what happened is my girlfriend because she knew I'd spent like five hours doing this in this room she saw this news article the next day about um Universal looking for a director for Jurassic and she just I was on the phone to a friend and my phone went you know and I kind of looked and it was just this link to the article and I copied and pasted it and I sent it to my agent and just wrote, "Is this stupid?" question marks, hit send, carried on the phone call and then put the phone down 45 minutes later and looked and there was four missed calls and i was like oh no the Jurassic article oh god my j and i called my agent going hello like what have i done and and he was like you will never believe this but he goes but Universal called and Frank Marshall and they were asking if you'd be interested and i told them you want to do your own thing and he says and as I'm saying that your text came through and I burst out laughing and so anyway they're sending you the script you know read it over the weekend see what you think and I kind of didn't want to like it I kind of um I thought the easiest version of life is if it's just bad and I don't do it you know and I got to the end and like oh damn it it's like it was really fun playground that I felt like oh I just this is what I've always wanted to do this kind of thing so uh yes I had to do it had to dive in Would you ever consider directing a Jurassic film? I know that is so crazy that you would say that! 2028, baby! The ink isn't even dry on that track You heard it here first No, actually Mahershala is actually a volunteer to Jurassic He's gonna do a one-man show at Jurassic Park. We were just talking about it for seven months on Broadway I know, it's gonna be great for your family. I'm doing the musical, actually. Yeah. We're gonna play the tennis balls. Jonathan, I want to talk about the Altoids. Such a funny moment. And I love that it's wintergreen Altoids and not the original flavor. What does that say? Everything about the Altoids is just slightly off center. Yeah, I was going to say, what does that say about his character? I think it tells you so much about his psyche in a way. It does, yeah. I think he's got a ferociously fast brain. I think it can go against him at points. And yeah, his need for physical... What's the word? I actually have the same problem. I could do with a mint right now. Cognitive yeah, yeah, yeah, but no the winter choice You heard it here first how many containers does he have No, I think possibly has one the bottomless pit though the two I think he has to That's true Why didn't Dolores get any that's true Yeah, they only do that. Oh, that's true, yeah. You didn't know they make them? Was Dolores practical on set? It was. It was a full robotic animatronic. And it was so real. It would blink. It would move. It would make noise. So I think that was one of the best things because you were able to actually look at it. And then when it was in my backpack, I had an eyeline for it. And most of the scenes, she was actually there. Some of it, it was raining, and she couldn't hear the rain so they had just like a blue tennis ball but that was amazing is she just as cute like the puppet version oh yeah oh yeah no they're like the same amount of cute but you know she's so cute you know the big screen is always better i'm taking her home with me that may or may not be a terrible idea what kind of pet do we think she's gonna be like like what's happening to her in an ideal world well you said she doesn't get any bigger right um she doesn't get any bigger. Yeah, so that's her full size. It is still baby Dolores though, and hopefully she could stay with me the whole entire life. How involved were you with the actual dinosaur design and did you know immediately like I want a xenomorph? No, it's really hard to do. The xenomorph from Alien is probably I think there'd be a very good argument that it's the best monster ever designed and so you compete against that the whole time and so then basically threw that in the pot with like the Rancor monster and the Elephant Man and a more obscure reference is the Chris Cunningham video Rubber Johnny went in and and a t-rex obviously and then just stirred the pot and you just play with elements and and and there's one particular angle that one of the artists drew and it was like that's it stop we've got it that's it that's that's a that's the creature and and and it was like really super fast like sometimes you just it just clicks and you get there quickly and there was another creature in the movie took another nine months and about another thousand designs before we nailed it and it's like crazy what are you called the mutodon it was the one I think you guys really are the heart of the movie did you see the New York premiere screening were you naughty it's every everybody was reacting to you guys just like so in love with all your scenes it was so fun to watch especially so like the comedic timing is so great I'm curious was any of that improv god yeah good amount of it was improv and I felt comfortable because gareth was like hey man try it if it doesn't work we'll cut it and we won't use it and if you're doing too much i'll reel it back in so i felt so comfortable and um yeah i love improv i love being an idiot in front of people and making people laugh so that's what i did very good at it thank you was there anything that you tried that you were like oh i wish that would have like gotten in honestly i think they they kept in a majority of the stuff which i was so i had like one line where i was like it wasn't even funny we were like when we remember we were like rafting through in Thailand and I tried a lot more I was like you think they have air conditioning when we get there and it didn't really land very well so it's probably for the best I love that I also loved the raft scene what was it like filming that sequence I think there's a lot of memories from the raft scene because that was a very important scene that we wanted to get down pat and um sharing it with all of these guys was um super cool and you know when luna you were having to swim to go get you know the raft it was broken up into a lot of different days a lot of different locations yeah a lot of months spread across um that scene for my personal experience i got to really just work it out with Gareth work it out with David Kepp John Mathieson it's a very iconic scene it's also for my part of it it's the one scene in the movie that doesn't have a score which is really really cool um which makes it just a lot more real it makes everything a lot more just like in your face and you can hear everything you can hear breathing you can hear the water you can hear the steps you can hear the wind move the grass like there's so much more to that so being able to like really like sit down with them and talk about it just made it feel a lot more like iconic in a way because it's just like something that people are going remember for a really long time so taking that like intricate mo like taking those intricate moments and beats to really just like figure out how we're gonna make this exactly what the audience is gonna want to see it just was like it was so special so cool to be able to like have that experience Mahershala will obviously hold this for spoilers but what do you think happened between Duncan and D-Rex we don't see that moment on camera just give him a little boop on the nose Is that how he got him to go away? What's the I think he I think he went I think he distracted if the flare went out And I think he went underwater Originally I thought he died, but I'm joking, but I think he I think he goes underwater actually, maybe it's not the real Kincaid It's a doppelganger. Yeah, there you go already in the jungle An evil, it's a Twin Peaks level evil version. And it's called Conkin Kincaid I don't know what this says about my algorithm, but Jonathan, I keep seeing posts from questionable sources that Ariana Grande's dog, Toulouse, is playing Toto. Oh, wow. And Wicked for Good. Can you confirm or deny? I wouldn't be able to say anything about that film other than get ready because it's going to be extraordinary. Can you say anything about Toulouse? I hear that Toulouse is a very good actor. Really? I don't know how I'd know that.