Jurassic World Director Reveals The Future Of The Franchise
Will the dinosaurs keep multiplying?
Jurassic World: Dominion has finally arrived, bringing the entire movie franchise to a close by going full-circle to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic film. With Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum returning to join Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard and end the highly successful dinosaur saga, fans are already talking about when we can expect the inevitable reboot. Colin Trevorrow, who directed two of the three films of the Jurassic World trilogy, has a tongue-in-cheek sentiment for whomever takes on a possible remake: “Best of Luck!”
It appears Trevorrow doesn’t envy whoever decides to revisit the Jurassic Park franchise, according to his comments in a new interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub. The new Jurassic trilogy has consumed his career for nearly the past decade, and he understands the high expectations fans have, especially after fans learned that Jurassic World: Dominion would bring back legacy characters to join Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. He seems to have a good-natured warning for anyone who wants to take on that responsibility in a future reboot. “One of the challenges of this franchise is that to reboot it, you have to remake Jurassic Park,” he said. “And I weep for whoever takes that on, because that is one of the greatest movies ever made. And so I think in a lot of ways, our only choice is to move forward and to expand. Because going back there and redoing Spielberg and Crichton, best of luck.”
To bid the Jurassic franchise “adieu,” Jurassic World: Dominion was written by Trevorrow, Emily Carmichael (Pacific Rim: Uprising) and Trevorrow’s frequent collaborator, Derek Connolly. In addition to the returning actors already mentioned, the film also stars DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Dichen Lachman, Scott Haze, Campbell Scott, BD Wong (who also starred in the original film), Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, and Omar Sy. In this interview with HeyUGuys‘ Stefan Pape, Trevorrow discusses the final film, and his experiences with carrying this new wing of the franchise.
One of the challenges with revisiting Jurassic Park is that it was an incredible cultural phenomenon, something that can rarely be replicated these days. In 1993, audiences worldwide were captivated by the film’s groundbreaking digital effects, which made dinosaurs seem real, especially when Spielberg cleverly mixed the effects in with practical, large scale animatronic dinosaurs. These days, CGI imagery has become so common, there is hardly any visual that hasn’t been created in a computer, and even small-budget films can use CGI effectively. That’s led to a sort of viewer fatigue: as entertaining as the Jurassic World films have been, the impressive visuals just don’t register the same shock and awe that viewers experienced with the original film. Of course, there’s also the added burden of the “Spielberg magic,” as his deft direction added more gravitas to those 1993 effects, which still hold up today.
Indeed, the challenges of making dinosaurs awe-inspiring again has plagued Trevorrow and the producers (which include Steven Spielberg) of the Jurassic World trilogy since the first film was released in 2015. Critics have not been kind to the new films. Dominion currently holds a dismal 36% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. The original Jurassic World managed a 71% rating, and 2018’s Fallen Kingdom holds a 47% rating. By comparison, the original Jurassic Park scored a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Collider’s own reviewer, Ross Bonaime, calls Dominion the worst in the series, stating that it’s time for the franchise to “finally go extinct.” The film hits theaters nationwide on June 10.
