Jurassic World Dominion director Colin Trevorrow explains why the latest sequel didn’t turn BD Wong’s Dr. Henry Wu into a supervillain.
WARNING: Spoilers for Jurassic World Dominion
Jurassic World Dominion director Colin Trevorrow explains why the sequel trilogy never turned Dr. Henry Wu into a complete supervillain. Dr. Wu is played by BD Wong and was one of the lead scientists working for John Hammond when he was developing Jurassic Park. Wong had a significant role in the 1993 film but was absent from The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park 3. Over 20 years after he appeared in Steven Spielberg’s film Wong returned to the franchise in Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. Wu took a villainous turn in Jurassic World by working with Vic Hoskins to create hybrid dinosaurs and weaponize them. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom then strips Wu of his doctorate, which forces him to work with Eli Mills, who sells the dinosaurs from Isla Nublar in an illegal underground auction. While Wu is in no way a hero in Fallen Kingdom, he does protest Mills selling the prototype of the dangerous Indoraptor.
Wong again reprised his role in Jurassic World Dominion, but this time is given a redemption arc. At the beginning of the film, Wu is under the control of Biosyn head Lewis Dodgson. Instead of creating more hybrid dinosaurs, Wu is responsible for recreating giant locusts from the prehistoric era that risk destroying the world’s food supply. Wu seems much more remorseful in Jurassic World Dominion than in previous films and promises to fix his mistakes. After escaping the park with Alan, Malcolm, Ellie, and the other main characters, Wu fulfills his promise and uses Maisie Lockwood’s DNA to create a pathogen to eradicate locust swarms around the world.
Now, Trevorrow is explaining why he decided to give Wong’s character a happy ending in Jurassic World Dominion. In an interview with THR, the director explained that in the first two Jurassic World movies, the writers were trying to suggest Wu just wanted recognition for all he had achieved in the field of genetics. Trevorrow continues that they thought it would be powerful to have Wu’s arc end with the scientist giving credit to Charlotte Lockwood for helping create the locust pathogen.
Honestly, I didn’t find it as interesting as a scientist who’s reaching for something. We don’t really understand what he’s reaching for, and yet he makes these choices that suggest that there is an endgame to it and that there’s something that will satisfy him. In the first two movies, we suggest that it’s just recognition and that he’s someone who feels like he invented all of this, but nobody ever talks about him or gives him any credit for it. At the end of this film, he does something extraordinary, and he actually gives credit to somebody else, a woman who died long ago. He was able to finally get what he was after, and then based on his experience, he had the empathy and the humanity within him to acknowledge that it wasn’t him who achieved it. So I found that to be a very powerful ending for the character.
While there were many things to be excited for in Jurassic World Dominion, one of the film’s biggest draws was the inclusion of Jurassic Park legacy cast members Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. The film also brought back Lewis Dodgson, this time played by Campbell Scott, who acted as the main antagonist for the latest sequel. Making Wu a villain in the final film would have not only felt unnatural, given the lack of setup in the past two movies, but it also would have taken the spotlight away from Dodgson and the villainous Biosyn Corporation.
In the end, Trevorrow made the right decision to not make Wu a supervillain in the Jurassic World trilogy. Wu was by no means a role model in Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but the films didn’t really set him up as a supervillain. Bringing dinosaurs back from extinction in the ’90s and then creating dinosaur hybrids when Jurassic World was built was no small feat, so the director’s explanation certainly makes sense that Wu simply wanted credit for his work. Jurassic World Dominion may have had its fair share of problems, but Wong’s character arguably got the ending he deserved.
Source: THR
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