By all accounts, Jurassic World: Dominion is poised to hit that sweet spot between the new and nostalgic that so many blockbusters in recent years have aimed for. The opening installment in the resurgent second trilogy was packed full of recognizable iconography but largely told a self-contained story set in the established mythology, centered around the idea that the park had finally become operational, but life still found a way.
Sequel Fallen Kingdom saw more and more elements of past movies seep in, from Jeff Goldblum’s bookending cameos as Dr. Ian Malcolm to the sudden introduction of John Hammond’s longtime business partner that we’d never heard of before acting as the driving force behind the narrative, bringing human cloning into the mix in a plot development that wasn’t exactly universally beloved.
Returning director Colin Trevorrow is getting the whole band back together for Dominion after recruiting Goldblum, Sam Neill and Laura Dern to reprise their roles from the original trilogy, and from the sound of things, they’re not just dropping by for fan-baiting cameos. Chris Pratt has already compared next year’s blockbuster to Avengers: Endgame in terms of scale, and in a new interview, Trevorrow admitted that the legacy players were heavily involved in writing the dialogue for their characters.
“These people have so many attributes, so many things about themselves that are just like Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler and Claire Dearing. It didn’t end at the end of the shoot day. It didn’t end on the weekend. We would write dialogue together and find ways to make sure that all of these actors, who are so deeply associated with this specific set of characters that they’ve played, not just felt their characters were respected but dug into who they are now.”
Of course, it’s hard to imagine anyone trying to script the words that come out of Jeff Goldblum’s mouth given his signature cadence and the general air of unpredictable eccentricity that surrounds him, but allowing the original trio to have a say in where Malcolm, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler find themselves three decades after Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic should at least ensure that they’re not back solely for the sake of nostalgia, and each will have a pivotal role to play in Jurassic World: Dominion.