Jurassic World has been talking about its casting and characters a lot this week. Specifically, about which familiar faces we can expect to return.
Colin Trevorrow has, understandably, been fielding a lot of questions about whether any characters from the three previous Jurassic Park movies will be returning, and his answer makes me feel pretty good about his understanding of the dynamics between the fannish desire for injokes and references, and the same fannish desire to actually have a good movie on your hands.
I know a lot of fans want to see the original characters back. They’re iconic. But I respect those actors too much to shoehorn them into this story for my own sentimental reasons. Jurassic Park isn’t about the bad luck of three people who keep getting thrown into the same situation. The only reason they’d go back to that island is if the screenwriters contrived a reason for them to go.
Also, that’s a pretty great dig at Jurassic Park III, in which a heavily contrived situation involving paragliding, William H. Macy, and a group of mercenary soldiers manages to get Dr. Grant to Isla Sorna.
Trevorrow did confirm at least one returning actor for World, but not one of our previously unlucky main characters. No, BD Wong‘s Dr. Henry Wu actually listened to Samuel L. Jackson and got the heck off the island before the storm hit. “He had a much larger role in the original novel, he was the engineer of this breakthrough in de-extinction,” says Trevorrow. “He spent two decades living in Hammond’s shadow, underappreciated. We think there’s more to his story.”
And as long as we’re talking about additions to the cast, Deadline reports this morning that french actor Omar Sy (The Intouchables, X-Men: Days of Future Past‘s Bishop) has joined the production, but as yet there are no details on what sort of role he will play.
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