Jurassic Park T-Rex Has a Name and It's Not Rexy

Friday, December 14, 2018

Jurassic Park T-Rex Roberta

It turns out the T. rex from Jurassic Park has a name. Over the years, many have taken to calling the original Tyrannosaurus rex by the nickname Rexy, but that was never made even remotely official by anything in the canon of the franchise. It's really just something fans cooked up that has taken off. But, as it just so happens, someone who has a lot of authority over the franchise did give the old girl a name, as revealed in some of the early storyboards for the movie.

Phil Tippett, the man famously credited as the "dinosaur supervisor" on Jurassic Park and the more recent Jurassic World movies, leading to the great "you had one job, Phil" meme, auctioned off some of his early storyboards and other items from the production back in 2016. One of the early storyboards showcasing the T-rex reveals that Tippett was calling her Roberta during development. There was no real need for this name to ever make it into the movie, but Tippett is a very important figure who helped to craft these creatures for Steven Spielberg. This is as official as it gets.

That's not to say that in the production binders or in the script notes they refer to the T-rex as Roberta. Or that the people of InGen picked a name for her, which happened to be Roberta, but this is as close to an official name for arguably the most beloved character in the franchise as we're going to get. Sure, people are always going to adore Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm, but no element of the franchise is more iconic than this particular dinosaur, who we can now pretty safely refer to as Roberta from here on out.

Jurassic Park: Roberta

There isn't really much of a history at all in the franchise when it comes to giving dinosaurs names on screen. That only really started with Jurassic World when Owen (Chris Pratt) named all of the raptors he was training, with Blue being the most famous example. It's also worth mentioning that this is the name for the original T. rex. There are several different genetically engineered versions of this animal throughout the series, such as the couple we were introduced to in The Lost World on Site B, Isla Sorna. There is also the rex that died at the hands of the Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III, which is theorized to be the baby from the second movie grown up. Though, that has never been confirmed.

But Rexy, or Roberta, is easily the most infamous of these dinosaurs and appeared once again in this summer's Fallen Kingdom. It's highly likely that we'll see her show up at least once more in Jurassic World 3, which is currently in development and is slated to hit theaters in June 2021. Colin Trevorrow is returning to the director's chair, in addition to co-writing the script alongside franchise newcomer Emily Carmichael. Be sure to check out the storyboard in question below. This originally surfaced over on Reddit

Source: https://movieweb.com