Back in 2011 writer-artist Frank Cho was developing a new comic book series called Guns & Dinos, predicated on the image of an archaeological dig showing the discovery of a machine gun inside a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil. That story involved some time travel, but in the coming Australian indie film adaptation of a novel from 2017, Primitive War pits the creatures of Jurassic Park against American soldiers in the Vietnam War. You’re going to need to ignore that all these dinosaurs were never really in the same place anywhere, and… well, lots of other reality-based things. But it stars Jeremy Piven as what must be an old commander for any Vietnam era unit, plus Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer, along with Ryan Kwanten and Nick Wechsler.
Even if you haven’t heard of Guns & Dinos you’ve heard this story before. It’s the plot to the original Predator movie, swapping dinosaurs for those self-cloaking Predators, who spill green blood, and sometimes sport dreadlocks, and sometimes don’t. It has all the makings of a video game-based flick, just without the video game source material. But look how far we’ve come. In only 35 years it took the most money compiled to create a movie interspersing humans and dinosaurs, and today pretty much any filmmaker can do it for much less. From director Luke Sparke, check out this over-the-top trailer for Primitive War.
It will be fun enough to see Piven play this kind of role. Look for Primitive War in theaters August 21, 2025.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
