While early teasers for movies often don't give away too much, a lot of the later marketing leading right up to the day of release will sometimes reveal major details about a movie's upcoming plot. Some people like spoilers, but many people aren't enamored with trailers giving away a lot about upcoming movies, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom producer Colin Trevorrow is among them. In a recent interview, Colin Trevorrow talked marketing for movies, noting that the Jurassic Park franchise in general really has to "prove the validity of its existence" more so than some of the other big film franchises out there, leading marketing to give away more about the plot than he would like. Of the big Fallen Kingdom reveals that popped up in the trailers he said:
It was very frustrating for me. That's a relationship that we have with marketing [and] there are a lot of different needs. I try to be very lucid and rational about it, [and] to speak frankly, there is a very, very small percentage of people who watch all the trailers. The rest of the world might only see one.
So, on the bright side, not everyone saw every trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. However, those who did see more than one likely saw more from the movie than its producer, and likely other people involved with the film, wanted to give away.
Spoilers to the movie will follow from here on out.
Early trailers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom revealed the crux of the first part of the film, that a volcano was about to consume Isla Nublar and life on the island, and that Owen Grady and Claire Dearing would do their damndest to get Blue and some other dinosaurs to safety beforehand. However, we didn't get into really big spoilers until later trailers started dropping, revealing a child would still be involved with the plot this time around, and that a portion of the movie would take place in a large mansion. Later, we even got a shot of a T-Rex roaring at a lion -- a scene that actually appears at the very end of the movie, when dinosaurs have escaped into mainland USA. The spoilers got more specific as time went on, although some of them -- like the lion scene, only really made sense after viewing the movie rather than before.
Colin Trevorrow also explained in his interview with io9 that the fact the franchise can't just sit back and expect people to show up is a good thing, also noting:
It stops us from resting on our laurels or just assuming the audience is going to show up. The downside is it feels like marketing is constantly feeling the need to make the case. I would definitely have preferred those images not be seen, but, if you haven't watched the trailers, just go see the film.
If you saw the film already, you now know how the movie shifts from being about a giant volcano to being a predator versus prey film in a huge mansion. Seeing some of the volcano sequences in the trailers didn't overly ruin the experience of the film for me personally, although, wouldn't it have been amazing if we had been able to go in without the knowledge that a gigantic volcano was going to change life as we know it for both dinosaurs and humans? It also would have been a total shock if the movie had been able to keep Jeff Goldblum a secret, but again, it was a boon to have Goldblum on the press circuit leading up to the movie, so it's easy to see why decisions were made to spoil his role before the film's release.
All in all, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has made a boatload of money even with all of its big reveals, and the argument that Universal's marketing team would probably make is that it has done so well precisely because of them. We'll have to wait and see whether all of that marketing pays off when Jurassic World 3 hits theaters in 2021. In the meantime, you can see the second movie in the trilogy in theaters, now.
