Calling All Jurassic Aficionados

The dinos are back: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, one of this summer’s most anticipated Hollywood blockbusters, hits screens across the country today. Poster © Universal Pictures

It may be hard to believe, but it’s been 25 years since the smash dinosaur adventure film Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg (Hon.’09), arrived in theaters. The film broke the record for the highest grossing opening weekend and went on to earn more than $357 million at the domestic box office and three Oscars for its stunning visual and sound effects. Two sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001) followed.

Then, three years ago, Universal Pictures gave the franchise a reboot with Jurassic World, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. The film raked in a whopping $652 million in the United States alone.

The newest Jurassic entry, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom opened abroad last week and has already earned more than $400 million in overseas box office receipts. And today, it opens across the United States.

Pratt and Howard return as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing. In the new film, they are ex-employees of the now-abandoned Jurassic World theme park on Isla Nublar. When a natural disaster threatens the island, Dearing enlists Grady’s help to rescue the dinosaurs, but alas, things don’t go as planned.

BU Today couldn’t let the film’s anticipated arrival go unnoticed, so we’ve created a trivia quiz designed to put your proficiency at all things Jurassic to the test. Answer all our questions correctly and you could cop two free tickets to a screening tonight at AMC Loews Boston Common 19.

To enter, answer the questions below and email them to today@bu.edu by 1 pm today, Friday, June 22. Be sure to include your phone number, email address, and BU affiliation. Each person answering all questions correctly will be entered in a drawing for two tickets to tonight’s showing of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at 7:45 pm at AMC Loews Boston Common 19, 175 Tremont St., Boston. We’ll contact the lucky winner and announce the name on BU Today by 2 pm, so be sure to check back this afternoon.

1. The Fallen Kingdom score was composed by Oscar winner Michael Giacchino, composer of the Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) scores. Which Oscar-winning composer created the iconic score for the original Jurassic Park?

2. Spielberg’s original film was adapted from a novel by this best-selling author.

3. Which actor did Spielberg persuade to come out of a 14-year retirement to costar in 1993’s first film?

4. To create the sound of a T. rex’s roar in the original film, sound designers reportedly had to combine sound clips from a tiger, an alligator, and what baby animal?

5. Owen Grady, played by Chris Pratt, worked at Jurassic Park as a Velociraptor trainer in Jurassic World (2015), but prior to that was employed in which US military branch?

6. Harvard geneticist George Church says it may one day be possible to re-create actual dinosaurs by examining the genomes of existing animals to replicate ancient DNA. He is already researching this process for what ancient animal? 

7. Paleontologists credited Jurassic Park with portraying dinosaurs accurately—the filmmakers consulted paleontologists during the production—but the latest films have been criticized for ignoring what recently discovered feature of dinosaurs?

8. Known for uttering the iconic line, “Life finds a way,” in the original film, this actor is returning to the Jurassic franchise for the first time since appearing in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. 

9. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom what natural disaster threatens the island and its dinosaurs?

10. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom had its world premiere on May 21 in what European city?

Check out a trailer of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom here.

Sarah Wells can be reached at swells21@bu.edu.