'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' Trailers Spoiled The Ending And The Filmmakers Aren't Happy About It
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has a few big surprises. But perhaps the biggest surprise was the revelation that trailers and TV spots spoiled the ending of the film. This was ultimately a marketing department decision, and it definitely did not sit well with the Fallen Kingdom filmmakers.Major spoilers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom follow.
Remember this trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom?
Remember that cool shot of the mosasaurus about to chow down on some surfers? Or Jeff Goldblum saying, "These creatures were here before us, and if we're not careful, they're gonna be here after us. Welcome to Jurassic World!" As it turns out, these moments are from the end of Fallen Kingdom. And I mean the very end, people. In fact, Goldblum saying "Welcome to Jurassic World!" is the final line of dialogue in the whole movie.
Trailers have given away spoilers before, but it's very rare that you'll see actual shots from the conclusion of a film featured in marketing. (One notable exception: the final shot of The Dark Knight, featuring Batman speeding up a ramp on his Bat-Pod, was featured in several Dark Knight trailers).
If you saw Fallen Kingdom over the weekend, and ended up being disappointed about having the film's ending secretly spoiled for you ahead of time, you're not alone. Fallen Kingdom co-writer Colin Trevorrow was none too pleased about this as well. "It was very frustrating for me," Trevorrow told i09. "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, [but] 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."
Trevorrow goes on to say that he thinks the marketing department included these spoiler-filled moments to "entice people to come back," because the Jurassic franchise is "constantly asked to prove the validity of its own existence with every movie that we make." The co-writer added:
"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."
While Trevorrow is clearly ticked-off over the whole idea, some filmmakers are fine with it. Like Robert Zemeckis, for instance. Several trailers for Zemeckis' films have given away pretty huge spoilers. Particularly Cast Away, which gave away the fact that stranded Tom Hanks eventually gets off his desert island and reunites with the love of his life. When asked about this, Zemeckis had a surprising reply:
"We know from studying the marketing of movies, people really want to know exactly every thing that they are going to see before they go see the movie. It's just one of those things...What I relate it to is McDonald's. The reason McDonald's is a tremendous success is that you don't have any surprises. You know exactly what it is going to taste like. Everybody knows the menu."
In the Fallen Kingdom marketing department's defense, there was no way for general audiences to know these trailer moments would end up being pretty big spoilers ahead of time. And removed from context, they don't give too much away. Still, I was genuinely surprised when I saw these familiar trailer moments at the tail-end of the film.