You're gonna hear them roar… loudly in IMAX. The dinosaurs are back, and they’re chasing us into theaters this weekend to see Jurassic World Dominion. We got to chat with one of the film’s screenwriters, Emily Carmichael (she/her), about it, too. (But not without our sci-fi buff Chloe fangirling and crying about it, first.)

Here, the born and raised New Yorker reminisces about the first time she saw Jurassic Park, how her team chooses which dino gets their big break, and why she thinks we’re living in the Laura Dern renaissance. (She’s not wrong.)

Jurassic Park is a part of so many people’s childhood memories. How did you feel the first time you saw it?
I watched it at home with my family and so many moments stuck with me. The one that I have a lot of screenwriter envy for is when the T-Rex comes and attacks the Velociraptors—it’s such a surprise and a great “Rah Rah!” audience moment. And the experience of being massively grateful to the T-Rex, but also knowing that the T-Rex wasn’t gonna do us anymore favors [laughing]. I actually feel like that’s something cool about the Jurassic franchise. It allows you to hold those two contradictory ideas at once: We’re grateful to this animal because it helped us, but at the same time we know that this animal is a beast of nature and not bound by human morality, and we can appreciate those differing facts at the same time.

How do you choose which dinos get to be featured?
The one I added was the Lystrosaurus. When we created Kayla Watts [played by DeWanda Wise], I thought it would be cool if she had an ugly but cute little dinosaur. We also choose dinosaurs on the basis of which ones have the most mythic and epic names. So the Atrociraptor, for example, was an appropriate raptor to be the militarized attack raptors, partly because it has the physical assets necessary, but also because of the cool name.

Since the franchise has a lot of movies, how do you balance keeping the story true to the original, but fresh enough that it feels new?
I think by introducing new characters and giving them a lot of love and commitment. We’re all very excited about the new characters played by DeWanda and Mamoudou Athie. Also, putting the dinosaurs in new locations. We knew that we wanted to see dinosaurs in the snow and we knew that we wanted to see dinosaurs in a European city.

As we’ve seen in the trailers, the OG cast is back. Did you ask anyone for advice when working with their characters?
We just talked to the actors, because they had a lot of input going into this process. They weighed in on where they thought their characters were in life, and what they’ve been up to since we last saw them. It was also really exciting to make a movie during the “Dernaissance,” which is this great age of Laura Dern that we’re in, and to have her in a role that encapsulates that was really fun.

Serious Q: Would you ever go to a Jurassic Park IRL?
I would go. 100%.

As long as they don’t break out and kill everyone, right?
I mean… Do you ever really know for sure? [laughing]