Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow isn't directing the unnamed sequel but he is still heavily involved. He recently got to talking about what we can expect including animatronic and weaponized dinosaurs and working with J.A. Bayona.
While he's passed on directing duties for the next installment to Bayona in favor of directing Star Wars: Episode IX, Tevorrow had a great deal to say about Jurassic World and its sequel when JurassicOutpost.com had him on as a podcast guest.
Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt will be returning for the sequel set to debut June 22, 2018 and Trevorrow wanted to make sure folks knew the next film had a good reason to exist other than box office and toy profits.
“This one has to make a case for itself in another way. We're all cynical about sequels and we probably grow more cynical every year so this also has prove that it has a reason to exist, beyond just making more money. And I believe it does. I think there”s a real story to be told here and more that”s all really sourced from [Michael] Crichton”s original ideas that can be expanded on…The thing I love the most about what he introduced is this idea that I think is so prevalent in our world today that a mistake made a long time ago just can”t be undone. When we look at even the wars that exist, the things we're dealing with, these are all things that began long ago with choices that were made and you can't put it back in the box. To be able to relate that to this world, the minute that they cloned a dinosaur, you can”t put that back in the box. And what could be the ultimate result of that?”
He even said they were able to fit in dialogue from the original book into the sequel being led by Bayona, director of The Orphanage and the upcoming A Monster Calls,. The podcast hosts wondered if his past work indicated a new direction. “It will be more suspenseful and scary,” admitted Trevorrow. “And that's just the way it's designed, it's the way the story plays out. I knew I wanted Bayona to direct it long before anyone heard that was a possibility so the whole thing was just built around his skillset.”
He also touched on their collaborative process:
“Film has become so cutthroat and competitive and it felt like an opportunity to create a situation where two directors could really collaborate. It”s rare these days, but it”s something that the directors that we admire used to do all the time. You know, one of them writes and produces and the other directs, and the end result is something that”s unique to both of them. So I've been here, I”m in the office right now, I”ve been here every day since July working closely with J.A., listening to his instincts, and honing the script with Derek [Connolly] to make sure it”s something that all of us believe in.”
But what about those dinosaurs? Trevorrow said he's “not that interested in militarized dinosaurs, at least not in practice,” preferring it to be an idea for villains rather than the intended heroes. He noted “budgetary requirements” for how little animatronics they used in Jurassic World but that the “rewards of success” meant different decisions could be made this time around. Successfully mixing practical effects with CG can lead to an outstanding product as we saw with Jurassic Park and Trevorrow said they're working towards that with the Jurassic World sequel.
“There will be animatronics for sure. We'll follow the same general rule as all of the films in the franchise which is the animatronic dinosaurs are best used when standing still or moving at the hips or the neck. They can't run or perform complex physical actions. And anything beyond that you go to animation and the same rules apply to animation. And the same rules applied in Jurassic Park. I think the lack of animatronics in Jurassic World had more to do with the physicality of the Indominus, the way the animal moved. That it was very fast and fluid, it ran a lot, and needed to move its arms and legs and its neck and its tail all at once. It wasn”t a lumbering creature. We”ve written some opportunities for animatronics into this movie because it has to start at the script level and I can definitely tell you that Bayona has the same priorities, he is all about going practical whenever possible.”
He also mentioned the team is working on how to motion capture a rhinoceros or elephant in order to use real animal movement for a more authentic look.
(via Nerdist)