A few months ago, Joss Whedon took to his, then active, Twitter account and mocked the first Jurassic World clip for being sexist — now Jurassic World ‘s director, Colin Trevorrow has publicly agreed with the writer/director of Avengers: Age of Ultron .
Jurassic World started its promotional push by unveiling a clip with its stars, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, going up against each other over Pratt’s character, Owen, taking on the task of making sure the park would be safe from a new and frightening dinosaur cooked up in the lab.
The Jurassic World clip does paint these characters with an easy, over-used gender stereotype paintbrush. He’s a raw, strong manly man in touch with nature and its animals who drives and fixes his own motorcycle. She’s an uptight woman who uses her head over her heart and wears a white suit and heels in a South American jungle.
The tweet in question was actually a response to an original tweet from pop culture website, The Mary Sue where they said, “We’re too busy fanning ourselves to talk more about Chris Pratt in this # JurassicWorld clip.”
Whedon’s immediate reaction was to question the outmoded stereotypes made obvious in the scene.
“[A]nd I’m too busy wishing this clip wasn’t 70’s era sexist. She’s a stiff, he’s a life-force — really? Still?
The immediate and powerful backlash on Twitter was enough to make Whedon apologize for the comment .
“I shouldn’t have tweeted it. I don’t ever say things about other people’s work that are negative. That’s bad form. It’s not what a gentleman would do.”
But clearly it lingered with Trevorrow, though not in the way you might think, because when Jurassic World opened in Paris and Italian website BadTaste dug up the furor over Whedon’s comments at a press conference Trevorrow had a well-thought out response that set the commotion in a completely different light (as translated by Hit Fix ) .
“I was not angry about anything. I did not have any gripe at all for what he said about Jurassic World . To be honest, I [don’t] totally disagree with him and I wonder why marketing opted for a statement like that. Showing an isolated situation in a film [without context]. [ Jurassic World starts] with characters that are almost archetypes; stereotypes that are deconstructed as the story progresses.”
The making of a movie and the marketing of it are two very separate beasts. From everything we’ve seen promoting Jurassic World it would be easy to think that Chris Pratt is the star. And why wouldn’t he be, it would capitalize on his popularity which has been growing exponentially since his starring turn in last summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy .
But Trevorrow has said that the main character of Jurassic World is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, not Chris Pratt.
“The real protagonist of [ Jurassic World ] is Claire [Bryce Dallas Howard] and we embrace her femininity in the story’s progression. There’s no need for a female character that does things like a male character, that’s not what makes interesting female characters in my view. Bryce and I have talked a lot about these concepts and aspects of her character.”
Then Trevorrow went on to do a very gentlemanly thing and defended Whedon’s honor on the recent hate Joss received over Avengers: Age of Ultron .
“I was upset about people’s reaction to [ Avengers: Age of Ultron ]. Joss received an incredible amount of anger and vitriolic comments and he doesn’t deserve that, because if there is someone who has always paid due respect to the women of his movies, that guy is Joss. I think he should be the last person in Hollywood to be accused of sexism and if you’ve seen something like that in his last movie, it’s not his fault. We all know that Joss is too kind and polite to rise up and tell people to screw off, so I’ll do it on his behalf!”
Joss’s many fans, the world over, collectively applauded and vowed to go and see Jurassic World .
Jurassic World opens in theaters on June 12.
[Image courtesy Universal via Bustle ]