Lot’s of people have died in the Jurassic Park movies. But those are just characters. Apparently at one point in the filming of Jurassic World Chris Pratt was legitimately afraid he may have killed an actual person.
Appearing on Conan last night to promote this weekend’s biggest movie, in what we assume is the last stop on his successful "Hey I didn't insult anybody" media tour, Pratt told the story of filming a scene with a pteranodon. In order to make the scene where he wrestles with the dinosaur feel real, they had him actually wrestling with a stuntman named Marty. Marty is a little person (though a "stout" one according to Pratt), wearing green spandex in order to be completely obscured by the CGI in post production. At the culmination of the scene, Pratt’s character throws the pteranodon into a wall, at which point he apparently threw poor Marty on his head.
Luckily for Marty (and Pratt, and the production schedule, and the insurance company) while he was bleeding due to the injury, he was able to carry on and immediately went for another take after being cleaned up. One assumes the dinosaur’s aggression did not need to be generated by a computer after that.
Based on Chris Pratt’s description of the scene containing a large number of extras, which prevented them from cutting the scene immediately, it likely comes from a part of the trailers we’re familiar with where the pteranodon’s fly down and attack the crowded park.
Although we're fairly familiar with the attack at this point, we have yet to see a scene where Pratt actually wrestles one with his bare hands. Are you reading this while standing in line for the movie? You probably should be.
It’s a testament to the strength of stuntmen that Marty was able to lay there "dead" while bleeding from his head, and then continue on with filming. It also says a lot about the potential dangers of filming that a scene that included no dangling from heights, or explosions, still led to a fairly serious injury.
Now, your challenge, when you go see Jurassic World this weekend is to not break out into hysterical laughter as you imagine Chris Pratt wrestling with a little person in green spandex when you get to that scene in the movie. Good luck.
