Colin Trevorrow Hypes Up JURASSIC WORLD 2
Jurassic World was a little disappointing to me for a few reasons. It definitely succeeded in revitalising the franchise (to the tune of $1.6B), but it had a serious character issue and overall didn’t live up to the original movie. Director Colin Trevorrow won’t be back (as he’s off in Star Wars land), however he will be writing it again, meaning he’s now a big part of two major franchises from our childhood. Oh, yay.
I actually liked his direction; he made it incredibly fun and nostalgic, and the acting was generally OK. It’s the writing that was spotty, so it grates me a little that that’ll be his big job next time around, but I’ll try and remain optimistic. Judging from this latest interview, at least he understands some important components for a good Jurassic sequel.
Chatting with Jurassic Cast, Trevorrow revealed the quote that inspired World, and the one which will form the basis of its sequel…
(quotes via Coming Soon)
“Jurassic World is all based on Ian Malcolm’s quote, ‘You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you wanna sell it.’ That to me is Jurassic World, that’s why I had all the product placement, that’s what it was. The second one, Jurassic World 2, and as we were driving we tried to find, what is the foundation? ‘Dinosaurs and man, separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together. How can we know what to expect?’ That’s why it’s exciting that the movie did well, that leaves us a lot of room to run, and it was part of this design, it had a beginning, middle, and end when we wrote the first movie. Now that the movie did well, we get to play that out.”
This is fairly expected, to be honest, as it’s natural ground to build a sequel on. Neither The Lost World nor Jurassic Park III really capitalised on this, so it should be interesting to see how Trevorrow and writing partner Derek Connolly handle it. Fortunately, they won’t just be heading back to Isla Nublar again.
“Jurassic World was very much made with the fans in mind, and I’m not going to forget it, but now we’ve seen a lot of ‘dinosaurs chasing people around on an island’ movies. I think you guys and also the general audience is going to be down to explore where else we can go. We know Owen is going to be in it and Claire will be in it and neither will be in the same place that we left them in this movie.
Even though Claire is the one who evolves the most over the trilogy, it’s her story that mirrors this changing world, Owen has s**t to deal with. The two of them opened Pandora’s Box in Jurassic World and each of them are responsible for different elements of it in different ways, and I think the way that these characters are connected to the circumstances of what’s happening it’s different than the previous films. It’s not ‘Let’s manufacture a way to get them somewhere,’ they’re embedded into it now in a way that as story tellers makes it much easier for us to keep them involved and doesn’t feel as contrived.”
Interesting how he doesn’t bring up those two annoying kids.
So what have we learned about Jurassic World 2 from this? Well, it’s going to explore the idea of humans and dinosaurs co-existing, and will continue to follow Owen and Claire (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard), as will the eventual third movie. It also won’t simply be, as he puts it, full of “dinosaurs chasing people around on an island.” Could we see them make their way to land somehow, in an amplification of The Lost World‘s ending? Perhaps. When it comes to potential plot points for these movies, I’ve got nothing.
Jurassic World 2 hits screens on June 22nd, 2018.
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