The first trailer for Jurassic World was released earlier this week (you can read our in-depth analysis by clicking here), and apart from a handful of complaints from long-time fans, the reaction was very positive.
“Trailers are tough,” director Colin Trevorrow told Empire Magazine when asked about his approach to offering moviegoers a first look at the movie. “You have to satisfy people who are looking for a reason to watch a new Jurassic Park movie, and younger people who didn’t grow up on it. This movie has a lot of elements working together; it’s not just sci-fi terror. It’s not purely action-adventure. It’s not just funny or sad or romantic. It’s all of those things at once. Communicating that in two-and-a-half-minutes isn’t easy.”
The trailer – which if you haven’t watched yet, you really should – doesn’t reveal a lot about the plot, but Trevorrow was more to happy to weigh in with a few more details about Jurassic World. “It opened in 2005. Masrani Global, owned by Irrfan Khan’s character, bought InGen after John Hammond’s passing with a very earnest mission to realise his dream,” he reveals. “We set it in present day, but we’ve taken some scientific concepts that are in the theoretical stage now and made them real. Kind of like the first movie – we couldn’t clone dinosaurs in 1993, and we still can’t. It’s just a more fantastic version of now.”
That explains some of the futuristic looking tech we saw then (including the gyroscope, a Steven Spielberg idea), but something fans care even more about that all that is whether or not the franchise’s iconic T-Rex will make a return. So, will we see them in the movie at some point? “You bet your ass you will.”
Another interesting reveal in the Jurassic World trailer was the underwater dinosaur, which Trevorrow confirms is called the mosasaurus. “I thought it would be cool if we had this massive animal and the park used one of our most fearsome modern predators as food,” he says. “There could be a whole other facility where they used shark DNA to mass-produce them to feed the bigger beast. Steven gave me this look like, ‘You know I get it, right?’ And I sunk a little lower in my chair. And then he said, ‘Let’s do it’.”
“There is no shortage of awesome dinosaurs,” Trevorrow adds. “We could have populated this entire story with new species that haven’t been in any of these movies. But this new creation is what gave me a reason to tell another Jurassic Park story. We have the most awe-inspiring creatures to ever walk the earth right in front of us, but for some reason that’s not enough. We’re not entertained. We’re always hungry for the next thing, and those who profit from it are always looking to feed that hunger. The focus groups want something bigger than a T-Rex. And that’s what they get.” BIGGER than a T-Rex? The D-Rex really will be a beast!
Trevorrow went on to say that he hopes to keep this dinosaur under wraps for the time being, but teases plans for more of her to be shown off in the coming weeks and months. She also won’t be the only threat.
Now, one particular scene which has everyone talking is the final shot of Chris Pratt’s Owen driving with what appeared to be an army of raptors who are about to aid him in battle. Or were they just running in the same direction? “To not dodge the question entirely. Owen’s relationship with the raptors is complicated. They aren’t friends. These animals are nasty and dangerous and they’ll bite your head off if you make the wrong move. But there are men and women out there today who have forged tenuous connections with dangerous predators. That’s interesting territory to me.” Yeah, he has an army of raptors, right?
