Jurassic World director addresses leaked plot details

Jurassic World director addresses rumors and leaked plot details

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Earlier this month, reports of a leaked script from the upcoming Jurassic World had fans of the Jurassic Park franchise buzzing for a variety of reasons — and not just because of potential spoilers. The discussion surrounding the rumored plot details was enough to make the studio take notice, and director Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) recently decided to address some of those rumors in an interview with Slash Film.

Of course, it’s worth noting early on that Trevorrow’s comments address some of the rumored plot details very specifically — even confirming a few — so anyone hoping to avoid spoilers may not want to continue reading after this point.

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On the subject of “good” dinosaurs that assist the humans in fighting off a genetically modified super-dinosaur, Trevorrow clarified the context for this particular plot element by explaining why “there’s no such thing as good or bad dinosaurs”

“There are predators and prey,” he explained. “The T-Rex in Jurassic Park took human lives, and saved them. No one interpreted her as good or bad. This film is about our relationship with animals, how we react to the threat they pose to our dominance on Earth as a species. We hunt them, we cage them in zoos, we admire them from afar and we try to assert control over them. Chris Pratt’s character is doing behavioral research on the raptors. They aren’t trained, they can’t do tricks. He’s just trying to figure out the limits of the relationship between these highly intelligent creatures and human beings. If people don’t think there’s potential in those ideas, maybe they won’t like this movie. But I ask them to give it a chance.”

As for the rumors regarding the aforementioned super-dinosaur, Trevorrow reluctantly confirmed some basic elements of the plot that had been leaked, but insisted that this part of the story is simply a natural extension of the ideas introduced in Michael Crichton’s original novels and the source material for the films.

“We were hoping audiences could discover [this plot element] on their own, but yes, there will be one new dinosaur created by the park’s geneticists,” said Trevorrow. “The gaps in her sequence were filled with DNA from other species, much like the genome in the first film was completed with frog DNA. This creation exists to fulfill a corporate mandate—they want something bigger, louder, with more teeth. And that’s what they get.”

“I know the idea of a modified dinosaur put a lot of fans on red alert, and I understand it. But we aren’t doing anything here that Crichton didn’t suggest in his novels,” he added.” This animal is not a mutant freak. It doesn’t have a snake’s head or octopus tentacles. It’s a dinosaur, created in the same way the others were, but now the genetics have gone to the next level. For me, it’s a natural evolution of the technology introduced in the first film. Maybe it sounds crazy, but most of my favorite movies sound crazy when you describe them in a single sentence.”

According to Trevorrow, the film is set 22 years after the events of the original Jurassic Park, with the fully functional park on Isla Nublar hosting more than 20,000 visitors each day. As for the theme of the film, the filmmaker described an image that served as the driving element for the events that transpire.

“What if, despite previous disasters, they built a new biological preserve where you could see dinosaurs walk the earth…and what if people were already kind of over it?” he said. “We imagined a teenager texting his girlfriend with his back to a T-Rex behind protective glass. For us, that image captured the way much of the audience feels about the movies themselves. ‘We’ve seen CG dinosaurs. What else you got?’ Next year, you’ll see our answer.”

Trevorrow also had some harsh words for the individuals responsible for the leaked script.

“That’s the thing about leaks, sometimes they aren’t misinterpreted or false. They’re real story elements that the filmmakers were hoping to introduce to the audience in a darkened movie theater. But unfortunately, in 2014, you read about it on a computer,” he said.

“Last week was discouraging for everyone on our crew–not because we want to hide things from the fans, but because we’re working so hard to create something full of surprises. When I was a kid, you got to discover everything at once, it washed over you and blew your mind. Now it only takes one person to spoil it for everyone else. I hope whoever leaked it is actively trying to undermine what we’re doing. Because if they’re trying to help, they’re doing it wrong.”

Jurassic World hits theaters June 12, 2015.

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