Yesterday I posted an article about filmmaker Colin Trevorrow being just as unhappy as the rest of us about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s painfully spoiler-heavy trailers that gave away some the film’s biggest moments which act as setup for the upcoming Jurassic World 3. In that interview with i09, Trevorrow actually went on to do discuss some of the plans he and co-writer Derek Connolly have for the trilogy capper, but I wasn’t about to put potential revelations about an upcoming movie in an article complaining about trailers revealing too much about an upcoming movie. I’m not that guy.
Well, at least not yesterday. Today is a different day though, so turn back now if you haven’t seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom yet because we’re about to refer to some Brontosaurus-sized SPOILERS! If you have seen the movie, then scroll on down past this toothy poster.
One of Fallen Kingdom’s more surprising developments is the introduction of human cloning as we learn late in the story that Benjamin Lockwood’s granddaughter Maisie is unknowingly actually a clone of Lockwood’s deceased daughter. While it makes perfect sense that this would be where the technology of the franchise is heading, it was still a bit of a narrative curveball with some potentially major repercussions. This is especially true given what a controversial and often emotional topic human cloning is in reality, which is exactly what Trevorrow intended.
We wanted to talk about the larger impact of genetic power and the potential human impact and the emotional impact of it. And we knew that we didn’t want to continue to make movies about the dangers of messing with science. We want to tell a story about where we are now, which is that we have messed with science, we have fundamentally altered our world and now we’re dealing with the consequences.
Besides for the reveal of Maisie being a clone, Fallen Kingdom’s big third-act moment comes when the young girl saves the dinosaurs from being gassed to death by setting them free “into the wilds” of the modern world. As we see raptor Blue running towards an American suburb, a giant Mossosaur about to chow down on some surfers, a T-rex in a standoff with a lion in a zoo, and a post-credit scene revealing pterosaurs nesting on the Eifel Tower, we have Jeff Goldblum’s voiceover declaring that we have now finally entered a Jurassic World. With that, you would be forgiven for thinking Jurassic World 3 will be some sort of humans vs dinosaurs war for the planet. There is the small problem though of these just being a handful of dinosaurs – the last of their kind – and the fact that Trevorrow and co have no intention of showing dinosaurs roaming all over the place.
I think what’s very important and what could fall apart, if just dinosaurs [are] everywhere all the time. I think any kind of global acceptance that they are just around doesn’t feel real to me because, even now when you think of animals, when was the last time you saw a tiger walking down the street? We know there are tigers. We know they’re out there. But to me, it’s very important that we keep this grounded in the context of our relationship with wild animals today.
While ‘grounded’ is not exactly the term I would use for a movie franchise about giant reptiles from 65 million years ago being resurrected numerous times despite their tendencies to eat the people doing the resurrecting, Trevorrow went on to explain that there’s “tremendous amount of opportunity” in this idea of not making dinosaurs too commonplace.
My goal with this trilogy is to, when you reach the very end, to have the very first line that Claire ever says, ‘No one is impressed by a dinosaur anymore,’ to be proven completely false. That’s my goal.
Unfortunately, it will still be quite some time before we find out if Trevorrow can achieve that goal as Jurassic World 3 – which will see him returning behind the camera to direct after briefly tagging in JA Bayona for Fallen Kingdom – is scheduled to only be released in June 2021.
Last Updated: June 28, 2018
