Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous made its debut on Netflix over the weekend, bringing an epic and surprisingly-perilous viewing experience to families everywhere. The animated series follows a ragtag ensemble of children attending an exclusive summer camp at Jurassic World — only for their stay to quickly go haywire. Warning: Spoilers for Season 1 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous lurk below! Only look if you want to know! The back half of the season’s events – which see the children having to outsmart and outrun dinosaurs at basically every turn, only to be abandoned at the park – are revealed to be happening concurrently with the storyline on 2015’s Jurassic World, albeit from different parts of the park. The decision to set the series concurrently with the events of the film was definitely an unexpected one — one that apparently led to some interesting creative decisions behind-the-scenes.
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“I mean, it was challenging, but really fun! We basically had maps all over the writers’ room, and we were watching Jurassic World on a daily basis for any clues of where our characters could be, that didn’t break the canon or the continuity of the film,” showrunner Scott Kreamer revealed during a recent roundtable interview for Camp Cretaceous. “And just little clues about ‘Okay, well, if the Indominus is here…’ If we see in the HQ shot and the big map, ‘Alright, the Indominus is here. Well, where can we be?’ And where can we intersect with either events just before or just after what we see in the film, but not be someplace where it would, like I said, mess up the continuity. It was challenging, but it was a blast to do. It really was. It was like this puzzle to figure out.”
“I agree. I got to spend a lot of time in the writers room, which I really enjoyed,” executive producer and Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow added. “And to me, it felt like a bit of an advantage and that we didn’t have to do the world-building that the movie needs to do, to introduce all of the rules of this park and the world in general. So we could focus on the characters, and we could just delve deeper into their experience because of that shared knowledge. It sort of took a lot of the burden off of a show like this, so we could really get to know these kids.”
Glen Powell, who voices camp counselor Dave in Camp Cretaceous, echoed this sentiment, arguing that it allows the ensemble of characters to truly shine and develop over the course of the season.
“One of my favorite types of movies are what I call rack focus movies,” Powell explained. “And I think this goes back to the question about people feeling represented on screen, right? It’s a movie that is following the same events – it’s the story that we’ve seen before, characters that we’ve seen before – and focusing on how different characters with different perspectives and different experiences and a different worldview react to the same set of circumstances.”
“I think it’s fresh and cool in a bunch of other ways, that doesn’t try to add more dinosaurs and more explosions and more screaming to it,” Powell continued. “It’s really a character-based thing. I mean, they always said it was The Breakfast Club with dinosaurs. And I think it’s a much more diverse cast of characters that have more interesting perspectives than any of those characters in The Breakfast Club, and are faced with more insurmountable things that their personal lives helped save themselves in each other. So I think, in terms of bringing that to that simultaneous timeline, I think the juxtaposition makes a much more glowing statement about this story and why this story’s important.”
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous also stars Paul-Mikel Williams as Darius, Jenna Ortega as Brooklyn, Ryan Potter as Kenji, Raini Rodriguez as Sammy, Kausar Mohammed as Yasmina, Sean Giambrone as Ben, and Jameela Jamil as Roxie.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is now available to stream on Netflix.
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Image Courtesy of Ludo Studio
