Jurassic World Dominion Director Colin Trevorrow Explains Why Jurassic Park Director Steven Spielberg Did Not Visit the Set

Jurassic World Dominion is now playing in theatres and it marks the second movie of the franchise to be directed by Colin Trevorrow. The only other director to helm two Jurassic movies is, of course, Steven Spielberg, who directed Jurassic Park in 1993 and The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997. Spielberg serves as an executive producer on Dominion, but Trevorrow recently revealed the iconic director didn’t visit the movie’s set despite the reunion between Jurassic Park‘s Laura Dern (Ellie Sattler), Sam Neill (Alan Grant), and Jeff Goldblum (Ian Malcolm).

“I would say yes,” Trevorrow told The Hollywood Reporter when asked if COVID protocols prevented Spielberg from visiting the set. “He’s actually been very respectful of the distance that he keeps from a filmmaker that he’s producing. He’s always very involved in the script stage, and then in post, he’ll watch the cut. But aside from a couple of moments on the first one where he just had cool ideas that he wanted to see, he keeps a bit of a distance when I’m actually shooting. This time, yeah, we were in a situation where even I couldn’t see my own family for four months.

During the interview, Trevorrow also revealed some advice he’s gotten from Spielberg over the years.

“Well, his advice often seems almost obvious, but then as you go through the film and remember what he said, you realize that he’s actually given you the key. And in this film, specifically, it was, ‘Remember the characters. Don’t forget that these are humans. These are real people, scientists, parents going through something spectacular, something fantastic.’ So that’s what he’s so good at. Real people in the real world, such as E.T. Indiana Jones is a professor who makes mistakes and sometimes fails and gets hurt. He established a hero that was different from what had been done up to that point when he started introducing us to these real people in the real world. So [Dominion] isn’t a superhero film, and however much I enjoy them, this is a movie about our world with one thing different.”

Speilberg recently talked to The New York Times and explained why The Lost World: Jurassic Park wasn’t a big hit.  

“My sequels aren’t as good as my originals because I go onto every sequel I’ve made and I’m too confident. This movie made a ka-zillion dollars, which justifies the sequel, so I come in like it’s going to be a slam dunk and I wind up making an inferior movie to the one before. I’m talking about The Lost World and Jurassic Park,” Spielberg admitted.

Jurassic World: Dominion is now playing in theatres.