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Colin Trevorrow's 'bucket list' scenes he made sure to get into 'Jurassic World Dominion'
Director/writer Colin Trevorrow shares the scenes he wanted to see in Jurassic World Dominion — including that final dino battle!
The release of Jurassic World: Dominion caps writer/director Colin Trevorrow's nine-year journey as one of the primary creatives behind the Jurassic World trilogy which resurrected the dino DNA franchise for a whole new generation. Coming back to co-write and direct the final installment of this trilogy, Trevorrow got to realize his dream of bringing back the Jurassic Park actors — Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and BD Wong — in an adventure that connects them to this trilogy's heroes of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
And, knowing that this was the last hurrah for this iteration of the story and cast, Trevorrow made sure to squeeze in every imagined scenario that he hadn't been able to include in the previous two films.
SYFY WIRE spoke with Trevorrow to ask about the scenes in Jurassic World: Dominion that he had to get into the final installment, how challenging it was to crack the script that brings the classic and current characters together and if there was any Monsterverse influences on this movie's final Dino boss battle.
***Spoilers below for Jurassic World: Dominion***
You've said that you've been building towards this movie for eight years. What was the scene that you wanted most to bring to life?
There's so many of them. Probably the first one that comes to mind is is seeing Laura Dern and Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum standing alongside Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, these characters who I've been living with for eight years. And then these icons, who I've been seeing from afar as a fan. To be able to have the experience myself that hopefully people in the audience are going to have, of seeing them all together for the first time. That's a big memory for me.
How many script drafts did it take to craft the perfect scene for them to all come together on screen?
Emily Carmichael (Pacific Rim: Uprising) and I, over a good amount of time, really were able to very carefully construct those two narrative stories that collide into one. But in order to do it, we really had to create a scenario where there was a genuine threat to planet Earth, and something that was based in reality; a scientific, ecological reality that we all know. For all of those things to happen, it took some time and a lot of speaking to scientists and geneticists.
Do you have a set piece that you regret that you couldn't fit into any of the three Jurassic World movies, like the scene that got away?
Before this movie I did. But now this movie has all those scenes. Up until recently, I could have said a scene with someone on horseback riding through snow with a herd of Parasaurolophus. But now, I can't say that anymore.
Let's talk about that big dinosaur battle in the third act between Giganotosaurus and T. rex. Did you draw any inspiration from the epic kaiju battles the Monsterverse has been able to pull off?
Well, our movies are so different than those movies. I think what we ended up doing was really leaning into the human experience that our characters were having. We really stay with the people. So you see a lot of legs and tails, and you see this fight going on around the [characters]. But I wanted to keep it from the perspective that we would be able to have if we were there. It feels a little bit more, hopefully, just frantic. It's an escape to the helicopter surrounded by giants. And I love the way that it turned out.
Jurassic World: Dominion is out now exclusively in theaters.
