Evidence has been excavated that a potential plot for JURASSIC PARK IV would have involved dinosaurs given human (and dog) DNA and trained as soldiers. Just, ya know, because.
The script, by John Sayles (PIRANHA, 1978; THE HOWLING, 1981) and William Monahan (KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, 2005; THE DEPARTED,2006) would have begun with a pterosaur attack on a baseball game, according to Ain’t it Cool News.
Enter Nick Harris, one of those “soldier of fortune” type lead characters, sent on a mission to Isla Nublar, the original Park site, searching for the shaving cream can full of DNA samples swiped by Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) for a rival company in the first film.
(A plot device shared with Telltale Games JURASSIC PARK: THE GAME, incidentally.)
The guy gets captured by Grendel Corporation, the outfit who took over Jurassic Park. Rather than torture him for the shaving can, Grendel offer him a job training a team of Dino-hybrid super-soldiers, whom he names Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Orestes, and Spartacus, each of them a specially created deinonychus, which is sort of like a miniature T-rex.
According to AICN, they’d all have “super-sensitive smell and hearing, incredible strength and speed and pack-hunting instincts, and they have modified forelegs, lengthened and topped with more dextrous fingers, as well as dog DNA for increased obedience and human DNA so they can solve problems well. All of this is topped off with a drug-regulating implant that can dose them with adrenaline or serotonin as the situation demands.”
On paper, this sounds like a great concept for any medium, and with Spielberg on board it has potential to be EPIC. But, would it be in the spirit of JURASSIC PARK?
Here’s some more of the concept art by artist Carlos Huante and sculptor Andrew Cawrse, giving us some idea of how these hybrids might have turned out.
