Colin Trevorrow's script for Star Wars 9 sparkled a lot of interest in what Star Wars: The Force Awakens' J.J. Abrams would return to conclude the trilogy.
The exact reasons that led Lucasfilm to part ways with Colin Trevorrow will likely remain a mystery, but creative differences and the studio being unhappy with the direction the story was heading reportedly had an influence on the decision. The extremely divisive reactions drawn by The Last Jedi shifted the focus away from the behind-the-scenes drama involving the departure of both Trevorrow and Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars 9 script for what would have been called Star Wars: Duel of the Fates powered up those discussions even more.
On paper, Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates sounded very exciting – perhaps even more than Rise of Skywalker. There would be no poorly explained Palpatine return, Kylo Ren would be the main villain but would still find redemption, Finn would have a much bigger role as the leader of a stormtrooper revolution, and Rey would have become something closer to a grey Jedi. Luke Skywalker, as a Force ghost, and Leia were also planned to have bigger roles. However, now that audiences have seen Jurassic World Dominion fail on the same matters in which Star Wars 9 had to succeed, Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates may not have been as good as the script makes it seem like it would. Similar to The Rise of Skywalker, Jurassic World Dominion had the mission to conclude both a trilogy and an overall much larger saga, but the Colin Trevorrow film currently stands at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Despite the solid box office results, Jurassic World Dominion has had the worst reception of all three Jurassic World movies. Such bad reviews didn't seem to be possible considering that the movie would reunite franchise legends Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum in one grand finale, but the over-reliance on nostalgia, one-dimensional characters, and poor writing all became the focus of Jurassic World Dominion's reactions and review. Given how Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars 9 story also seemed to rely a lot on legacy characters and nostalgia – as summarized by the title of the film is a reference to the iconic Duel of the Fates track – his version of the movie could have displayed the same mistakes that are now seen in Jurassic World Dominion. Not only that, but the bad reception of The Book of Henry right before Colin Trevorrow was fired from Star Wars 9 suggests that pulling off Duel of the Fates would not have been so easy.
What Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars 9 would have been like and how good it would have been compared to The Rise of Skywalker is something audiences can only imagine. Still, Jurassic World Dominion suggests that it might have been difficult for Trevorrow to balance the nostalgia and the need to wrap up a decade-old franchise in one film. That said, the mixed reception of J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker shows that this was never an easy mission.
