Empire Spoiler Podcast: Ten Secrets Of Jurassic World 

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Empire Spoiler Podcast: Ten Secrets Of Jurassic World

Colin Trevorrow spills the beans on Zara, sequels and stegoceratops

Colin Trevorrow visited the Empire podcast booth this week for a spoiler-filled chat about his triumphant revival of the Jurassic Park franchise. Hand-picked by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall for the job, the director and co-writer has been integral in building the story, characters and dino-mayhem within Jurassic World. He is, in other words, perfectly placed to talk through the feature's secrets, curios and Easter eggs, as well as future plans for the franchise. Beware: there are, of course, third act spoilers contained within.

The old Amblin logo, the hallmark of Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy's production house, got a lick of paint in Jurassic World's opening credits.

"We did a new [logo] for this movie. Steven [Spielberg] had been thinking about it for a while and Frank [Marshall] really supported it, and was probably encouraged by the fact that they were working with a fan and someone who was a kid when their movies did what they did. So to me it was, 'Of course we should make a new Amblin logo!' Why do we have Marvel and Pixar and Lucasfilm and these brands that assure you you're going to get something very specific that you love, and we don't have Amblin? There's nothing in the marketplace that does what Amblin movies do."

Jeff Goldblum's chaos theorist and all-round Jurassic Park cult hero makes a sneaky appearance in literary Easter egg form.

"[Dr. Malcolm] is on a book cover very early in the film when they're on the monorail. The viewer is always focused on something else, which is my favourite way to bury things. Zara is reading it on the way in and Lowery has a copy on his desk: God Created Dinosaurs."

Arguably the film's biggest jolt comes when frazzled executive assistant Zara (Katie McGrath) gets munched by not one, but two dinos in the theme park's colossal water tank.

"It was the first time a woman was going to die in a Jurassic Park movie. We're an equal opportunities bunch of murderers! So we felt, 'Alright, let's make it the most spectacular death we can possibly imagine - let's involve multiple animals from sea and air...' I love this moment so much. We're playing on the audience's expectation and jadedness. You drop her in the water and immediately everyone goes, 'Oooh, I know what's going to happen.' But you don't. Then the 'birds' start coming in and you get distracted by that and suddenly [it] happens. I knew I'd be accused of killing the Brit! Well, Katie's Irish so she had no problem with it. But we definitely struggled over how much to allow her to earn her death, and ultimately it wasn't because she was British, it was because she was a bridezilla. She has one line about the bachelor party: 'Oh, all his friends are animals.' In the end, the earned death in these movies has become a bit standard and another thing I wanted to subvert. 'How can we surprise people? Let's have someone die who just doesn't deserve to die at all.'"

One dino-hybrid that didn't make it past the InGen drawing board was the stegoceratops: half stegosaurus, half triceratops, all get-the-heck-out-the-way. Trevorrow culled it from his script but not before Hasbro had enshrined it in toy form.

"In an earlier draft there was a scene where Chris [Pratt] and Bryce [Dallas Howard] come across another hybrid in the jungle. It informed them that Dr. Wu has been making other hybrids under her nose. Then my six-year-old son watched Return Of The Jedi, and said to me, 'Dad, if Leia is also a Jedi that means that Luke isn't unique.' It was like, 'Ha! Okay.' And for some reason I applied that to this other thing and felt like there could be only one [hybrid dinosaur]. The idea that there was more than one made it feel less like the one synthetic among all the other organics, and suddenly it seemed entirely wrong to have it in the movie. I suddenly hated the idea but the toy still exists as a kind of remnant because Hasbro toys are locked a year out."

5. Rocky And Apollo Creed Inspired The Final Battle

The climactic slug-fest pitches the Indominus Rex, velociraptors and time-weathered T-Rex (last seen roaring in the rubble of Jurassic Park's visitor centre) into a fight to extinction that Trevorrow likens to an old Western showdown or Stallone dust-up.

"I compared the T-Rex to Burt Lancaster in the way his face got tighter as he got older. He looked stronger. A little bit of Clint Eastwood there too. This is the T-Rex's Clint Eastwood moment. The movie-based reference [for the fight] was Rocky. That final fight was essentially Rocky versus Apollo Creed. We have this High Noon/ Western shot looking over the hip of the T-Rex down at the other gunslinger and when we take her down pretty fast and suddenly she's on the ropes and you're like, 'Get up, Rocky. Get up.' The raptor gets to come out and be Han Solo at the end of Star Wars in the Falcon. You get these moments that are kids are so engrained in us, and to be able to channel all that into a dinosaur battle is probably the nerdiest thing I've ever done."

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