The Jurassic World Kiss That Wasn't Supposed To Happen
Released in 2015, Jurassic World was a huge success. The fourth film in the Jurassic Park franchise raked in $1.67 billion at the box office (from a $150 million production budget) and was welcomed with mostly positive reviews from critics at the time of its release. While the film has been the subject of some debate and controversy in the years since its debut, there's no denying that Jurassic World managed to successfully rejuvenate a film franchise many had previously written off.
A considerable part of Jurassic World's charm and appeal was the charisma of its two leads, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt. While Jurassic World has its fair share of characters driving the plot forward, Howard's Claire Dearing and Pratt's Owen Grady are the film's true leads and a sizable amount of Jurassic World's runtime is dedicated solely to setting up the two characters as a romantic pair.
However, it turns out that Owen and Claire's relationship originally wasn't going to be as explicitly clear as it is in the finished film.
Owen and Claire's unscripted Jurassic World kiss
In Jurassic World, Chris Pratt's Owen and Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire share a sudden kiss during one of the film's many action sequences, but that wasn't part of the original plan. The kiss — which happens while the pair are surrounded by hundreds of park visitors — was actually an unscripted moment.
Speaking with Out Magazine, Howard revealed that Owen and Claire's kiss "was spontaneous" and "wasn't written." Howard said that she and Pratt originally shot the scene "the way that it was written—there was no kiss," but then shot a version of the scene with a kiss during the last day of filming. According to Howard, there was "mountainous applause" from the scene's "800 background artists" after the film's director, Colin Trevorrow, called cut on the take with the kiss.
Pratt and Trevorrow also revealed during a featurette included on the Jurassic World Blu-ray that Owen and Claire's kiss — while unscripted — wasn't exactly an in-the-moment decision, either. Trevorrow apparently discussed the kiss with Pratt prior to filming the scene but did not inform Howard of his plans. Trevorrow said that the thinking behind the idea was "we're just going to have Chris Pratt surprise [Bryce] in front of 200 people."
Trevorrow added that the take where Howard was surprised by the kiss is the one that actually ended up in the final cut of the film, so there's something new to keep in mind the next time you sit down to rewatch Jurassic World.