*Contains spoilers, obviously*
Jurassic World had the largest opening weekend of any film in history, becoming the first to surpass $500m gross earnings by Sunday evening. The fourth JP instalment misses a few steps, for sure, but it's one hell of an adventure and a thoroughly enjoyable watch. Well, except for the uncomfortably gruesome, drawn out death of one of its characters. And of course she's Irish.
It's arguably the most gruesome demise in the entire Jurassic Park franchise, at least since Richard Schiff was split in half by a pair of T-Rexes in 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
It's not every day a woman from Ashford, Co. Wicklow is scooped up by a Pteranodon - one of the flying reptiles that attacks the visitors hub in Jurassic World - juggled 100 feet in the air, dropped in the Mosasaur tank, bludgeoned by more diving pterosaurs and ultimately swallowed whole by the big, bad Mosasaur itself.
Yet that's the fate met by Katie McGrath's character in Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World, providing one of the film's most uncomfortable moments; her perceptively undeserved death being dragged out over the bones of a minute.
Speaking on Empire Magazine's spoiler podcast, the film's director Trevorrow explained why he feared condemnation for killing off the film's only 'British' character, but gave it the go-ahead safe in the knowledge that McGrath is Irish.
I knew I'd be accused of killing the Brit!
Well, Katie is Irish, so she had no problem with it.
Martyrs, us.
But we definitely struggled over how much to allow her to earn her death, and ultimately it wasn't because she was British, it was because she was a bridezilla.
Oh, well that's grand then.
It was the first time a woman was going to die in a Jurassic Park movie. We're an equal opportunities bunch of murderers! So we felt, 'Alright, let's make it the most spectacular death we can possibly imagine - let's involve multiple animals from sea and air...'
I love this moment so much. We're playing on the audience's expectation and jadedness. You drop her in the water and immediately everyone goes, 'Oooh, I know what's going to happen.' But you don't. Then the 'birds' start coming in and you get distracted by that and suddenly [it] happens.
It's certainly a chilling moment, and maybe the most exciting thing to happen the Garden County since its other female star dished out the beatdowns back at London 2012.
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