Going Back to the Park: A Conversation with Colin Trevorrow for the Home Entertainment Release of JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
It’s been four years since theme park and luxury resort Jurassic World was destroyed by dinosaurs out of containment. Isla Nublar now sits abandoned by humans while the surviving dinosaurs fend for themselves in the jungles.
When the island’s dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event. Owen is driven to find Blue, his lead raptor who’s still missing in the wild, and Claire has grown a respect for these creatures she now makes her mission. Arriving on the unstable island as lava begins raining down, their expedition uncovers a conspiracy that could return our entire planet to a perilous order not seen since prehistoric times.
With all of the wonder, adventure and thrills synonymous with one of the most popular and successful series in cinema history, this all-new motion-picture event sees the return of favourite characters and dinosaurs—along with new breeds more awe-inspiring and terrifying than ever before. Welcome to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Colin Trevorrow is an American film director and screenwriter. He directed the indie film Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) and the blockbuster film Jurassic World (2015). He also co-wrote the script to that film and its sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where he also serves as an executive producer. He is set to direct the third and final entry in the Jurassic World trilogy.
Did you write this script with director JA Bayona very much in mind – the first section was a disaster movie, while the last portion was like a horror film?
The last third of the movie turned into a horror movie when I understood that I could make something that could lean into JA. It didn't have to be in a haunted mansion. It was really the nature of the location. I am sure you could see an earlier version where dinosaurs were taken off the island on an ark and are taken to some sort of dinosaur facility that doesn't have to have that Gothic tone to it. But the minute that we started to understand Lockwood's relationship to Hammond and felt comfortable that we could insert a piece of backstory into Jurassic Park that wasn't in the first novel and yet felt organic to it, then the introduction of Maisie became an idea. Once all that stuff came together it defined the location which made it that much more Bayona-esque.
When you were working on the first Jurassic World, did you conceive it as a trilogy?
I was hoping, though I wasn't so presumptuous to think that we would ever get to make the other films. I did want to lay some breadcrumbs in the first film so that if we were fortunate enough to make a sequel then we would have the ingredients and that it wouldn't feel arbitrary. It would feel designed. So in Jurassic World, for example, Vincent D'Onofrio’s character, Hoskins, has a scene at the very end where he points to the indominus rex on the computer and says, ‘Imagine that a fraction of the size and able to evade military technology.’ That describes the indoraptor that Dr. Wu is making and that appears in this film. I think and hope that when people go back and watch these films together they will see how many thematic elements are layered into Jurassic World that may not have been identified before.
And when you were writing this film, were you writing it as the middle part of a trilogy, or the first of two halves?
Yes. But not in a way that would feel like two halves because the movie itself was of two halves. Also, especially as I was bringing in such a great director, I wanted to offer him a film that was a complete story in its own right - that had its own beginning, middle and an ending. The idea that it is two halves, I think, is down to the location changes. The nature of having a massive set piece in the middle and then having the film travel and move and grow richer and deeper and then more claustrophobic and more personal and tighter, is actually a structure that Steven Spielberg has used before in Jurassic Park. The T Rex is in the middle and you end with the raptors in the kitchen. In Minority Report he did something similar, having the bigger sequence in the centre. Another one that I am a big fan of, which you wouldn't think would connect to this film but which is a structure that I love, is Bridge of Spies where you have two stories that don't seem connected at all, but which are drawing closer together, and then you realise that they have been telling the same story all along
I really like it when jeopardy and danger unfold in confined spaces and you really have that in Fallen Kingdom, on the island and in the mansion. Was that a conscious decision?
To get the characters in a place where they can't escape is a crucial ingredient. And this is the first time actually where we had a sequence where the characters could choose to go wherever they want but there was so much danger that they had to put themselves into a confined space and get into the gyrosphere. And yet again they find themselves in danger. It is one of the things that we were very conscious of as we looked at where to go in the future – that there is a world where there are dinosaurs everywhere around every corner and people can go where they want. You would be sacrificing one of the pillars of these movies and I think it is possible to really change the kinds of experiences people are having in the films without breaking any of the pillars that these movies are built on.
Why didn't you direct this film?
I will never really know. I just had an instinct that this was the right choice for the franchise, as a result of how confident we were that Jurassic World was going to create a new generation of fans of the franchise. I knew before the movie came out and even before I had made plans for what I was going to do next, that I was going to be given a lot of responsibility about where it was going to go in the future. The minute I got that, my immediate instinct was to phone a friend! So I thought it would be great if we could be a little bit more old school in the way we build this franchise and have a director collaborating with another director - me being the executive producer and the writer, and the other person being the director in the way that our idols and mentors worked. So in the vein of the spirit of Indiana Jones, Bayona and I collaborated!
Will JA be involved in the third movie?
I am directing it but believe me I will be calling JA regularly to consult because he is part of our family now. When Steven Spielberg agreed that I wasn't going to do the second one, he asked me if I would do the third and I promised that I would. I asked him to trust me that this choice was going to pay off and he did. He was a fan of Bayona as well. And I feel very good right now because I think that the choice did pay off. JA has directed a fantastic film. But it hasn't changed my mind that we need to bring a strong new voice into each one of these films and for the third one I am bringing in a different writer, Emily Carmichael, who is working with me. I think doing that is something that keeps things fresh.
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JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is now available on digital download and released on Blu-ray and DVD on November 5 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
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