Colin Trevorrow Addresses Joss Whedon's Comments Calling a JURASSIC WORLD Clip Sexist

This admittedly skews toward the gossipy end of the spectrum that we normally like to stay away from here at GeekTyrant, but I thought it was worth pointing out for two reasons: A) it's rare that high-profile people in the film business will call each other out in public, especially about a movie that hasn't been released yet, and B) because it's even more rare that when that person makes a negative observation about a film, and then the director of that film publicly agrees with him.

A little background info: before Joss Whedon left Twitter, he had this to say about a Jurassic World clip that hit the internet:

…and I'm too busy wishing this clip wasn't 70's era sexist. She's a stiff, he's a life-force – really? Still?

He later apologized, saying that he shouldn't have said that on Twitter and basically sheepishly saying it wasn't polite to trash talk. Italian site BadTaste spoke with director Colin Trevorrow at the Jurassic World premiere and asked him about Whedon's comments, and the writer/director's response surprised me (translation via ComingSoon):

“I wasn’t bothered by what he said about the movie and, to be honest, I don’t totally disagree with him. I wonder why [Universal] chose a clip like that, that shows an isolated situation within a movie that has an internal logic. That starts with characters that are almost archetypes, stereotypes that are deconstructed as the story progresses. The real protagonist of the movie is Claire 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 his character.”

That's an incredibly reasoned response from a guy whose movie was attacked by one of the biggest directors in the world. And more importantly, it seems like he's at least aware that the clip could be seen that way and believes that the full movie doesn't lean on that depiction. The first screenings of the film begin very soon, so it won't be long before we hear how Bryce Dallas Howard's character is portrayed over the course of the entire film; I'm hoping she and Trevorrow were able to come up with something great.

Trevorrow also came to Whedon's defense about the controversy surrounding Avengers: Age of Ultron:

"But I was upset about people’s reaction to his film. Joss recieved 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!”

Jurassic World arrives on June 12th.