Spoilers! 'Jurassic World Rebirth' originally killed off this character

USA Today

13 hours ago

Spoiler alert! We're discussing the ending of "Jurassic World Rebirth" (in theaters now). If you haven't seen the film yet and don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.
In "Jurassic World Rebirth," survival is a long shot, but Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) still manages to pull it off.
The latest "Jurassic" film culminates in what appears to be a heroic sacrifice by Ali's character. Duncan draws the horrifying mutant Distortus rex away from Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and the shipwrecked Delgado family so they can all escape on a boat. It seems like Duncan is about to be eaten off screen, only for the final moments to reveal he made it out. He sends up a flare to signal for the group to wait up for him, then joins Zora and Henry as they leave the island together.
But the movie didn't always have such a happy outcome, as director Gareth Edwards tells USA TODAY that Duncan was originally meant to die at the end.
"My first gut feeling was to kill him, and that's what I tried to do," Edwards says, noting that Ali felt the same way. According to screenwriter David Koepp, there were also versions of the script where Duncan died earlier.
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During production, though, Edwards says the studio talked him into sparing Duncan. "The director's cut had him dying, and I played it to the studio, and they said, 'Is there any version where we could just see him living?' " While initially reluctant, Edwards cut together a new version and ended up warming to it.
"Because it's written and filmed for him to die, all the little tropes and subconscious things you would do to (set that up) are happening in the movie," he says. "So then, weirdly, I think it's a surprise when he lives, because we've played all the cards you play when someone's about to have their last moment."
He says he was moved to watch the film with a crowd and hear the audience cheer when Duncan's flare goes up, revealing that he's alive.
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"It was one of those occasions where sometimes the studio knows what they're on about," Edwards says.
Koepp was also on board with the change, noting that as the movie evolved, "Duncan became a bigger part and a more interesting character, and we have a fantastic actor (playing him), so killing him 90 seconds before the end of the movie would not have made a lot of sense."
How does 'Jurassic World Rebirth' end?
After Duncan joins up with Zora and Henry, the film closes with a scene of the trio leaving the island. Now that they have the dinosaur DNA necessary to create a drug that could cure heart disease, Zora decides they will give the entire world access to the new medicine, rather than handing it over to a pharmaceutical company to profit from.
But there's a lingering threat still out there. While the three previous "Jurassic" movies introduced a new dinosaur villain that is then killed at the end, in "Rebirth," the Distortus rex remains alive and kicking when the credits roll.
Edwards says he second-guessed this while editing the film and started wondering if it would be better for the Tyrannosaurus rex to reappear and fight the D. rex. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, is this something we should be doing?' " he recalls. "It hadn't occurred to me before."
While he was contemplating creating a new ending where the T. rex returned, Edwards polled everyone working on the film to see what they thought. It was the movie's visual effects supervisor who talked him out of it by telling Edwards, "That's what happens in all the movies, Gareth! The T. rex turns up and saves the day, and everyone's expecting that. I was so pleased when you didn't do that."
Edwards notes that leaving the Distortus rex alive isn't meant to set up its return in a possible sequel. But "it's hard to kill that thing unless it was another animal that did it," which would lead to a similar ending as other "Jurassic" movies.
"There's that phrase 'ex machina,' where God comes and saves everyone," he says. "In 'Jurassic,' there's something I call 'rex machina,' where a T. rex comes and saves everyone. I felt like, maybe we don't do that. Maybe that's one of our differences."
What's the future of 'Jurassic World' after 'Rebirth'?
Given that Zora, Henry and Duncan all live to fight another day at the end of "Rebirth," should fans expect them to reunite in future "Jurassic" movies?
Nothing is set in stone, but "it's hard to imagine them not being in the next film," Edwards says.
While no discussions about a sequel have taken place, the director also teases that he has a specific concept in mind for where the franchise could go after "Rebirth," which he doesn't want to reveal in case he has an opportunity to make it happen.
"As a fan, there's a type of movie I've just been wishing for with each incarnation," he says. "I have a feeling what I would love to see next."