Before he directed Jurassic World Dominion, Colin Trevorrow was set to do a Star Wars movie. He would be moved off the nascent Episode 9, but he maintains a positive outlook on the experience, calling the science fiction movie a dry run for what he achieved here.
“What I appreciate about having worked on Star Wars is that I really got a practice run at making a new version of something we loved when we were kids and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion,” he tells Total Film, via GamesRadar. “So I felt like I got a master’s degree in that, during that time.”
Trevorrow’s Star Wars film was tentatively called Duel of the Fates, and it would’ve been very different to The Rise of Skywalker. Kylo Ren was haunted by a force ghost of Luke Skywalker, it was Leia who made the call for people to join the Resistance, and in the ending, Finn and Rey start a new school for Force-sensitive children. This is all based on early drafts, but it paints a distinctly different picture to what we got.
Remnants of that production permeate Dominion, as Trevorrow kept much of the same team. “I took so much of what I learned, and also so many of the people who I worked with – Kevin Jenkins was our production designer on this,” he says. “So many people who I met on that project came over and worked on Dominion, so I can’t feel anything but good about it, because it allowed us to make the film we made now.”
Losing out on Star Wars would hurt anyone, but going from that to a Jurassic Park sequel is a pretty decent way to land on your feet. Trevorrow effectively relaunched the franchise with 2015’s Jurassic World, before stepping away for JA Bayona to take over on Fallen Kingdom. Now, he’s back to finish the trilogy.
Chris Pratt and Bryce-Dallas Howard return to star, along with the classic Jurassic Park cast of Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, and Sam Neill. For this instalment, dinosaurs are running wild through human civilisation, leading to unforeseen consequences.
Jurassic World Dominion will be in theatres on June 10.