Following the early release of the first official Jurassic World trailer, director Colin Trevorrow has offered Empire commentary for the teaser while also revealing new details about the highly-anticipated Jurassic Park III sequel. One of the earlist aspects of the movie revealed in the teaser is the now fully-operational dino theme park. "It opened in 2005," said Trevorrow. "Masrani Global, owned by Irrfan Khan's character, bought InGen after John Hammond's passing with a very earnest mission to realise his dream. We have a website that details all that backstory. It will get more interesting as we get closer to June." About the origin of the futuristic-looking spherical vehicle, called a gyroscope, as seen in the trailer, he says, "Steven [Spielberg] loves theme park rides. He wanted to create a way for people to get up close and personal with the animals, to make it a self-driving, free-roaming experience. It loads on a track, but once you're out there, you actually get to navigate around the valley." It's shown later in the trailer that these gyrospheres aren't exactly dino-proof. "I see no way any of that could go wrong," he laughed.
About the big scene in which a shark is being fed to a mosasaur, Colin Trevorrow says it was not intended to be a nod or reference to Steven Spielberg's classic Jaws movies, even if it may seem obvious. "The idea came out in one of our first meetings - I didn't know if Steven and Frank [Marshall, producer on all the Jurassic Park movies] had considered an underwater reptile, so I pitched the mosasaurus and went off on the idea," he said. "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. 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'."
On the concept of having humans creating dinosaurs in Jurassic World, as opposed to utilizing the many species that really did exist many the earth, Colin Trevorrow agrees that, "There is no shortage of awesome dinosaurs." He continued, "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." Speaking of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which has featured prominently in the Jurassic Park trilogy, Trevorrow was asked if we'll see one in Jurassic World. "You can bet your ass we will," he replied. But regarding when we'll get a sneak peek at the new genetically-engineered dinosaur, rumored to be called a D-Rex, the director says, "Obviously I'd love to hold back as much as possible." He added, "But Universal has to introduce this movie to people all around the world, and in an era where we're contending with superheroes and space epics, marketing has its own set of needs. We're introducing a relatively new idea. No one under 25 has a memory of seeing the original Jurassic Park in a theatre. The last instalment was 14 years ago. We may see little pieces of her as we get closer - in fact, we already have - but I'm confident that we can keep much of that animal under wraps. She's not the only danger. Far from it."
Finally, Colin Trevorrow discussed one of the final scenes in the Jurassic World trailer in which Chris Pratt's character Owen is seen riding a motorcyle with velociraptors casually running alongside him. "I like that people aren't sure what the hell they're looking at," he said. "I was concerned about putting this image in an early trailer, but I love that people are as excited about it as they are. It just reinforces that we all want to see something fresh. Those familiar homage shots in our trailer kind of mask how different this movie is from the others, and I'm relieved that people are embracing the new ideas." The director was then asked how exactly can Owen be riding with raptors. "To not dodge the question entirely," Trevorrow started, "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." For the full rundown, make the jump over to Empire.
On Version 4.4 chapter.
