LEGO explains how it flipped the script for one of Jurassic Park’s scariest scenes

One of the designers behind this summer’s LEGO Jurassic Park 30th anniversary sets has explained how the team managed to squeeze the movie’s scariest scene into a product for kids.

It’s just over 30 years to the day since Steven Spielberg’s classic Jurassic Park stomped into cinemas, and the LEGO Group has gone all-out with five new sets to celebrate. It’s the first-ever wave dedicated entirely to the very first film, and includes all the characters and dinosaurs you remember from the ground-breaking blockbuster – including some making their LEGO debut.

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LEGO designer Atticus Tsai-McCarthy was partly responsible for bringing those sets to shelves, a job he describes as ‘a dream come true’.

“Jurassic Park is the best blockbuster ever made,” Tsai-McCarthy tells Brick Fanatics. “Getting to stretch my nerd muscles, listing characters and scenes we could depict as playsets was a blast. There wasn’t one iconic scene or character that wasn’t considered.”

That of course meant that the design team could finally broach the topic of Robert Muldoon, one of the few remaining Jurassic Park characters not yet depicted in LEGO form. But Isla Nublar’s game warden meets with a particularly vicious end at the jaws of a raptor – ‘clever girl’ – so translating his role into a set fit for kids meant getting a little creative.

Yet rather than try to massage that moment within the context of a 6+ or 8+ set, the designers actually went one step further – and recreated it in the LEGO Jurassic Park 30th anniversary line’s one and only 4+ set, 76957 Velociraptor Escape. The 137-piece model includes Muldoon, Ellie Sattler, a Velociraptor and a dino pen with tower.

“Muldoon is my favourite character from Jurassic Park, so it is so cool we could finally debut him in LEGO minifigure form,” Tsai-McCarthy says. “I think it’s also kind of great we could depict him in an animal caring scenario of the 4+ set. Us fans know what’s ‘supposed’ to happen, but the way Matilde designed the set gives a much more open form of play.”

There you have it: you’re free to have 76957’s Velociraptor devour Muldoon as happens on screen, but the kids asking for these sets purely for their cool dinosaurs will be blissfully none the wiser. It does mean that the long-awaited character is subsequently locked behind a set that doesn’t otherwise offer much for older builders, but hey, you can’t win ‘em all.

76957 Velociraptor Escape is available alongside the rest of the LEGO Jurassic Park 30th anniversary sets right now. Check out our review of Muldoon’s debut here.

Featured image: Universal Pictures

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