Why Colin Trevorrow is a Great Choice for Star Wars: Episode IX

While Hollywood continues the cycle of remakes and sequels ad nauseum, they’ve been much more [...]

While Hollywood continues the cycle of remakes and sequels ad nauseum, they've been much more adventurous when it comes to writers and directors. Directing a music video or writing an indie film that becomes a Netflix darling is enough to get you in front of the biggest names in the business, and behind the cameras for the biggest franchises in the business.

Colin Trevorrow is the latest case in point. After just one independent feature, the director was hired to spearhead the return of the Jurassic Park franchise after a long hiatus. With his co-writer (and college friend) Derek Connolly, he wrote Jurassic World and went on to direct it. His reward was a dinosaur-sized box office; Jurassic World sits at fourth all-time worldwide with over 1.6 billion dollars, having passed The Avengers. Yes, that means Trevorrow will get a lot of offers and can probably take his pick, so it shouldn't be too big a surprise that he was offered, and accepted, the director's chair for Star Wars: Episode IX. He'll follow Rian Johnson on Episode VIII, and J.J. Abrams on this December's The Force Awakens.

The choice makes a lot of sense, and not just because he's a huge financial success, though that shouldn't be downplayed. The Jurassic Park franchise floundered with its second and third iterations, and took almost a decade and a half off form the theaters. Largely ignoring those two films for the newest one was a creative choice, but likely helped in the financial side of things as well. By evoking just the first, by far most successful film, Trevorrow and company were able to play off the nostalgia, and recreate some of the awe. While the first movie's signature tension didn't play out as much (in favor of more bombastic action moments), the approach turned a $150 million budget into, again, $1.62 billion in worldwide gross.

While working with friend-of-Lucasfilm Steven Spielberg (Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy was an Amblin Entertainment producer for a few decades, after all) certainly helped Trevorrow's chances of gaining a Star Wars chance, his earlier work on Safety Not Guaranteed may carry over just as much. Yes, he'll have to juggle a large cast and be working from a huge budget on a major franchise – all things that carry over from Jurassic World. But the thing that makes a Star Wars movie sing is the small, close, intimate relationships. It's the humor mixed into the drama, and the honesty in emotion in the face of the ridiculous and fantastic. Trevorrow's indie outing had all of those things in a demonstration of his natural ability that should translate well.

Of course, the question remains as to whether he can bring both of these – the big budget action and the indie emotional sensibility – together into one film, while also building directly on films coming out just two and four years prior to his own. It's a big job for any director, let alone one with only two feature releases under their belt. If he can bring the best bits from both of those (plus whatever he learns on The Book of Henry, his next directorial feature, and the script for the Jurassic World feature), Trevorrow should be a great addition to the Star Wars galaxy.

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