Colin Trevorrow writes the best first ten minutes in the franchise business and then reaches for a second plot. We have reviewed four of his films and scored none above 60; the premises are worth more than the pictures built on them.
Fi1m perspective
Colin Trevorrow's films begin well. Jurassic World (2015) opens on a park that has been running for years, with a monorail, a petting zoo where toddlers ride baby triceratops, and customers bored enough that the lab has to build something new to keep them coming; the joke is that a dinosaur is no longer news. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) opens on a world where the animals have got out and stayed out: a Mosasaurus upending a fishing boat, pterosaurs nesting on a skyscraper, a raptor loose in a suburb. It lasts about ten minutes and it is the film the ticket promised. Then the plot arrives, and it is about locusts.
That is the pattern. Trevorrow came to the park from one small time-travel comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), and Jurassic World, written with Derek Connolly, made him a studio director at his second attempt. The Book of Henry (2017) followed, a smaller drama that most critics found could not decide whether it was a family film or a thriller; we have not reviewed it. He then wrote Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) with Connolly, which J. A. Bayona directed, took a story credit on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) after being attached to direct and leaving in 2017, and came back to direct Dominion. We scored those four films 60, 58, 50 and 42, in that order.
The scores fall as the scripts get thinner. Bayona got the most out of a Trevorrow and Connolly screenplay, shooting the eruption and the old house with a horror director's patience, and still the film stopped dead whenever somebody spoke. The Rise of Skywalker, whose story he shares with Connolly, J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio, is a list of objects to fetch. Dominion, written with Emily Carmichael, staples a corporate spy plot to a kidnap thriller and leaves Neill, Dern and Goldblum to have the only fun in it. We watched that opening montage with real pleasure, and when the insects took over we felt the evening drain away, and it did not come back in 147 minutes.
He does have an idea. "I try to look at the dinosaurs as animals. And I think animals can be creatures that you love AND horrifying and scary," he has said, and you can see it in the petting zoo and the kidnapped baby raptor. It is a better idea than any of the plots it has been given. What he does not have is a hand with people. Jurassic World puts Bryce Dallas Howard in white and heels and then scolds her for two hours for running the place; we were on her side and cross with the film for not being.
He founded Metronome Film Co. in 2019 and wrote Deep Cover (2025), and we would like to see what he does with a script that does not have to carry a franchise. Give him a premise and a page and he will interest you. Give him three acts and check where the locusts are.
Biography
Colin Trevorrow is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He graduated from New York University and made his feature directorial debut with the science fiction comedy Safety Not Guaranteed (2012).
Trevorrow achieved mainstream recognition as director and co-writer of Jurassic World (2015). He co-wrote Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and directed, co-wrote the screenplay for and provided story for Jurassic World Dominion (2022). He received story credit on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
In 2019 he founded the production company Metronome Film Co.
