When Trevorrow refers to “real people in the real world, such as E.T.,” he seems to be talking more about the humans who took in the extra-terrestrial, with E.T. himself being the proverbial “one thing different” in an otherwise normal world. Likewise, with Indiana Jones, Trevorrow mentions how the character gets hurt, something we see in the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene above, where Harrison Ford’s character examines his bumps and bruises — and then takes another accidental hit to the head as Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) rotates the mirror.
Having Indy be physically vulnerable like this raises the stakes for his adventures and helps situate him within a quasi-realistic “reel world,” you might call it. So it goes with the characters of “Jurassic Park,” who display emotional vulnerabilities along with the physical ones that leave Ian Malcolm, for instance, laid up with an injury after the T. Rex escapes its paddock and attacks his jeep. /Film’s Jeremy Mathai recently argued that the best scene in “Jurassic Park” doesn’t involve dinosaurs at all: it’s the one where park owner John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) talks about the failure of his flea circus to Dern’s character, Dr. Ellie Satler, over ice cream.
Scenes like these keep the elements of the fantastic in Spielberg’s films anchored to relatable human moments. Whether Trevorrow successfully recaptures any of this Spielbergian magic in “Jurassic World: Dominion” is for the viewer to decide, but it’s good to know that Spielberg himself was there to help coach, and of course, his advice has applications beyond this one film to really any narrative that future storytellers seeking to follow in his footsteps might conceive.
