Colin Trevorrow made his feature directorial debut with the science fiction comedy Safety Not Guaranteed (2012). It starred Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass and was an indie gem that impressed many. Trevorrow achieved mainstream recognition for his work on the new entries of the Jurassic Park franchise. This began when he co-wrote and directed Jurassic World in 2015. The idea was an entirely new theme park was built on the site of the old one and that a hybrid dinosaur Indominus Rex was created. The film starred Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt. After it grossed over $1 billion word-wide, Trevorrow co-wrote the 2018 sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and then co-wrote and directed the upcoming third instalment Jurassic World Dominion (2022). The third film has a blending of new and legacy characters from the franchises as Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill return. Trevorrow was also the co-writer and director of Star Wars: Duel of the Fates until his departure in 2017, although he retained story credit when the project was re-envisioned as The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
Darran had the chance to speak with Colin a few weeks ago bout the upcoming third film in the Jurassic World trilogy. You can click here to see the trailer to JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION. The Accessreel review is coming very soon!
You can read the transcript to the interview below or hit the play button above to watch it. JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION opens in cinemas June 9.
AR: What’s it the plan all along to have a film with the pace as fast as this one?
CT: Actually, no it’s it started a little slower. To be honest, we started with that prologue that we dropped online for everyone to see the Cretaceous era and the drive in and that really was the 1st 5 minutes of the movie and once we once we had the whole film and realized, you know, we wanted to get the story moving at a certain pace I really appreciate that Universal was willing to just let the audience have that six to nine months in advance and I think now that you’ve seen the film, you see how it does you know it is the beginning of the story with that has a real echo and the way we ended.
AR: Oh, definitely so when you were developing the first film, so let’s go back a bit. Was there always somewhat of a story arc for three? Or was it literally? 1 by 1.
CT: There was a bit of an arc in a you know very basic skeletal structure for it that Derek and I, Derek Connolly and I came up with while we were driving. I had to drive my car back to Burlington, Vermont where I lived after Jurassic World came out and so he just went with me and we drove across country and talked about what the next two movies could be and he and I wrote Fallen Kingdom together and then Emily Carmichael came in, it really gave us a new perspective and really an opportunity for me to be able to just have someone else look at the story we were telling and let it evolve in a direction that that felt right for them and that’s why I’m so proud of this story because it’s the combination of all of their instincts plus all of our actors we all work so closely on it through.
AR: So was it always a plan to have the original trio dropping at some stage, or was it always the third film you’re going to try and get them into?
CT: We’d always felt like it was the third film because we wanted to make sure that by the time they shared the screen with our Jurassic World characters with Owen and Claire that there was a generation who cared about those characters and was invested in their story. So it was earning them a place in the frame, you know alongside Laura Dern and Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum, which is which is a lot.
AR: What was it like wrangling them all, though? ’cause at one stage you’ve got like what seven or eight primary character actors just on the screen in one scene scene, yeah?
CT: Sometimes one shot.
AR: So how hard is it to wrangle all that?
CT: There was a time that Laura would always laugh. I was like, alright everybody you can all give like you know orange slices and Oreos. If you could just walk from here to there was like a children soccer team in moments, but we all had fun with it and we all managed to create a balance that I’m most proud of because. The actors were so generous with each other, nobody was trying to step in front of the other and get their moments. They all respected each other so much that you know when you do see them all in the frame there’s equal power, equal strength amongst everyone in the frame, which I think is honestly like due to them.
AR: Do you let your actors like do they have to stay on script or do you let them play a little bit because it felt like? Jeff Goldblum dialogue was very Jeff Goldblum in some bits!
CT: Yes, it was yes it was. You know, not necessarily. It’s not whether I let anyone do it, it’s just that we all because we were making a movie under the circumstances we were in, we had to be really prepared when we came to set so we could move and so we actually would rehearse together on Sundays ’cause we were all living together and throughout the whole day. If you if a character and actor had something they felt they wanted to say they would throw it on the table and there’s a I would say pretty much everyone in this movie has lines that they wrote themselves that they felt they would say especially Jeff Goldblum.
AR: When you’re setting up for a sequence, because obviously you’ve got some big sequences in this o let’s look at the Raptor, one with the motorbike chase with Pratt, do you pre-vis the hell out of it? Do you storyboard it ’cause? It seems like a really long sequence and I’m watching it going. This would have been painful to put together and get right.
CT: Yeah, we boarded it geographically and the way that I wanted it to feel was as if there was a camera person on a vehicle alongside or in the back who was just struggling to capture what was happening, so I didn’t want it to the camera to glide as if it was some kind of digital sequence. So we really shot it understanding exactly what all of the elements were going to be but allowing it to be chunky and kind of broken and loose which is I love all of those flaws in and it kind of broke the language of what these movies have been, ’cause they’re often, you know, Steven camera glides and so we kind of, you know. Shook it up a little bit.
AR: And just quickly what’s next for you?
CT: You know I’m I have a few things I’m sure you’ve heard I’m really fascinated with the civilization that existed here before we did, that fell into the sea, Atlantis that that had technology and flights and electricity And then we lost it all.