Despite some of the criticism leading up to JURASSIC WORLD, it made all of the money and then some, so the announcement of a sequel was no great surprise. Unlike the sequel to JURASSIC PARK, JURASSIC WORLD looks to bring back its leading man and lady, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. You may be wondering how on dinosaur-filled Earth those two would be dragged back into the fold, but that's something director Colin Trevorrow has had in mind when making a template for this "JURASSIC WORLD trilogy."
On the Jurassic Cast Podcast, Trevorrow opened up on some of the themes he plans to explore in JURASSIC WORLD 2, as well as how the characters will evolve over the course of a planned trilogy.
Colin Trevorrow on JURASSIC WORLD 2:
We looked at it as a trilogy from the very beginning. We designed the whole thing that way. And, honestly, the whole trilogy is articulated in Jurassic Park. Jurassic World is all based on Ian Malcom’s quote: ‘you stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you knew what you had, you’d packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you want to sell it.’ That, to me, is Jurassic World. That’s why I had all the product placement, that’s what it was. So with Jurassic World 2 it’s: 'dinosaurs and man separated by 65 million years of evolution have been thrown back into the mix together – how can we know what to expect?'. That’s not the exact quote, but you get the idea. And that’s why its exciting the movie did well. I had a beginning, a middle and an end and it was designed this way. So now we get to play that out.
It’ll be a different kind of film and the audience has given us kind of permission to take this to the next level. And I don’t mean in scale. I feel very strongly that this is not ‘more dinosaurs’ or ‘bigger dinosaurs’, it’s about using this as a starting point to discover our relationship with these animals and with animals in general, and the dynamic that was created by bringing them back to life.
We made [Jurassic World] with the fans very much in mind and I’m not going to forget that, but we’ve seen a lot of ‘dinosaurs chasing people around on an island’ movies. And I think you guys and the general audience are going to be down to explore where else we can go. Owen is going to be in it, Claire is in it and neither are going to be in the same place we left them in the first movie. And even though Claire is the one who evolves the most over the trilogy, it’s her story that mirrors this changing world. Owen has shit to deal with. They’ve both opened Pandora’s Box in Jurassic World and both of them are responsible for different elements of it. And I think the way these characters are connected to these circumstances of what’s happening, it’s different than previous films. It’s not ‘let’s manufacture a way to get them somewhere’, they’re embedded into it now in a way that us storytellers are able to keep them involved without it feeling contrived.
Despite not being on-board to direct the sequel, it's obvious that Trevorrow is still going to be a huge part of developing JURASSIC WORLD 2. I think the man's ideas are pretty sound, but I do hope that whoever they hire to direct the sequel will give the film it's own unique spin. Trevorrow is correct in assuming that we've explored this island enough, so I'm curious to see where the rest of this trilogy might lead us. Hopefully to a better JURASSIC PARK movie.
JURASSIC WORLD hits Digital HD on October 1, 2015, and 3-D Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand on October 20, 2015. Click here if you're looking to to pre-order.