For months now, I’ve been beating the drum on the out-and-out insanity of opening up a new dinosaur-themed park, even if it’s just something in a movie, even if it’s been entire years since genetically resurrected dinosaurs threatened the world, even if the whole things takes place, what, in a new location? Sure, Jurassic World sounds like tons of literally planet-shaking fun, what with its giant new dinos and Chris Pratt apparently using a motorcycle to charm them, but we have to get real here: This is a bad idea.
Yet Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow might have found a way around all that (again, fictional and set in a fake movie universe) press: by setting his film on a different island. Oh, okay! Totally! It will definitely be different this time! Yeah, right.
Over at Yahoo! Movies, they’ve got a—very cool—set visit that features lots of tantalizing tidbits, including this one: “According to Trevorrow, the previous sequels aren’t being written out of continuity so much as placed to the side, as they both unfolded on a different island.” Geography, you guys, it’s important here.
Trevorrow’s Jurassic World and the original Jurassic Park both take place on Isla Nublar, an islet located off the Central American Pacific coast, close to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. (The new film’s website, which is sort of hilariously excellent and definitely deserves a long visit, even advises “guests” of the “theme park” to fly to Costa Rica and then ferry on over to Isla Nublar.)
If you remember, things got pretty damn real on Isla Nublar in the first film. Isla Nublar is not safe. Bad things happen there. Something ate Newman. Yet both The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III take place on Isla Sorna, yet another Costa Rica-adjacent island that served as the original experiment’s “Site B.” Despite evidence in the first film to the contrary—hello, raptor-hatching—The Lost World wanted us to believe that the original dinosaurs were created and nurtured on Isla Sorna before being taken to Isla Nublar, the actual theme park.
To reiterate: Isla Sorna = bad, Isla Nublar = good. Still, the totally fictional publicity and marketing team behind Jurassic World (the theme park) must have done a pretty sweet job of convincing the totally fictional public to come to their park to have some fun. And fun will definitely be had, because over at /Film, Trevorrow shares yet another bit about the film—namely, that it will essentially serve as the original T. rex’s (still alive!) version of Unforgiven.
I don’t know, maybe don’t go to a theme park with dinosaurs. Maybe just don’t!
Jurassic World opens on June 12. (I swear I am looking forward to it.)