Well, not exactly, according to Gareth Edwards, making his return to franchise blockbusters after his 2023 sci-fi original The Creator. The screenplay by David Koepp – returning to the franchise after penning the 1993 original and its first sequel, The Lost World – was seen as such a love letter to Spielberg that he was scared to follow in his footsteps.
He explained to Zavvi: “It was a completely daunting experience; I would have been embarrassed to make this if it wasn’t for the fact it was Spielberg himself asking me to go and make it! If the movie is a pizza, then every slice was its own love letter to a different Spielberg movie, or a genre that he’s previously perfected – it's an exciting opportunity as a filmmaker, but as it’s so obviously influenced by him, it’d be embarrassing to do it without his permission.
“Because he was the one who asked me to go do this, I couldn’t say no. He’s my absolute hero, and the reason I got into filmmaking in the first place.”
Having previously made movies in the worlds of Star Wars and Godzilla, it’s not like Edwards is a stranger to wearing his influences on his sleeve. However, having set pieces paying direct homage to those in Spielberg’s back catalogue in the script itself made this a far different process than he’s used to when tackling big franchises.
He explained: “We all have our influences and cinematic heroes, and the way my brain works most of the time I make something is that I never really understand my specific influences on a project until I’m halfway through it; I’m subconsciously channelling other movies and experiences. Whenever I make something where I can see the influence outright, then it feels too much like another filmmaker and I can’t do it.
“Here, it’s not just the encounters with each dinosaur, but the imagery of being on a boat hunting an animal with a fin, which of course makes you think of a particular film – The Meg, obviously. But in all seriousness, you go into that scene knowing it’ll feel like Jaws, and the whole game is stopping it from feeling too much like it.
“And then you realise Jaws is a masterpiece and we’re paying homage to one of the greatest moments in cinema, so why try to backpedal away from this amazing thing? It’s a difficult relationship I ended up having in my brain, where I’m trying not to copy, but also realising I’m being asked to make this, which is brilliant – you can get traumatised overthinking it, so you just have to make you way through and hope you have it in the right place.
“I wanted to step away for a bit from this kind of blockbuster filmmaking, and Jurassic was the only thing that could have pulled me back in – Spielberg is too good to turn down!”
As the title suggests, Rebirth is very much a back-to-basics affair, stranding a group of scientific researchers (led by Scarlett Johannson and Jonathan Bailey) and a family on an island very deliberately cut off from the wider world, as the only place dinosaurs are left. However, after research suggests dinosaur DNA could hold the cure for heart disease – a plot point closer to fact than you’d imagine, according to Koepp – a team is sent to risk their lives in the hope of curing a disease that up to 20% of the global population will be diagnosed with in their lifetimes.
After endless sequels that made many audiences wonder why people would keep going into harm’s way when they knew the consequences of bringing dinosaurs back to life, here’s a story where the mission itself is worth the big risk. Edwards is both a fan of the recent Jurassic World trilogy and friends with its director Colin Trevorrow, and insists that the more self-contained story isn’t an attempt to course-correct a franchise, but to not compete with him.
“The New Year’s Eve before I was offered this, I was spending time at Universal Studios with my girlfriend – really rock and roll, we didn’t go to a big party and went to go on some rides instead. But we went on the Jurassic World ride just as the clock was turning midnight, and I sent a picture to Colin, as I thought it was funny that I was spending my New Year’s Eve as a 48-year-old man like this, on a rollercoaster inspired by his movie.
“Later that year I met up with him after being offered the job, and it was a weird moment; the success he had with those movies was insane, and I couldn’t compete with that. The screenplay for Rebirth was harkening back to the original Jurassic Park, and so my goal was to make kids today seeing this movie to feel how I felt when I first saw that.
“I see this as a nostalgic movie in the sense that I wanted it to feel like Universal found an old reel of film in their vaults, wiped the dust off and saw they’d made a movie called Jurassic World: Rebirth that they didn’t remember making. I wanted this to feel like an early 90s film, that’s what I got really excited about.”
Koepp’s screenplay had been doing the rounds in Hollywood long before Edwards jumped on board the project, but the director made one significant contribution to take the story to the next level, helping to design the new mutant dinos that terrorise our heroes.
I asked whether it was a challenge to create scary creatures like the D-Rex whilst ensuring kids wouldn’t get too scared, and well, Edwards didn’t waste time saying this wasn’t an issue.
“I’m hoping this will terrify kids! They’re more tolerant of scary things than we think; when I was a kid, I would only see what my parents would have on Betamax that they let me see, whereas kids today have far more access to things online, so it’s difficult to scare them these days.
“Here, we were working with a concept artist, Antoine Legros, who is one of the best dinosaur designers in the world and thinks the original T-Rex design in Jurassic Park is the greatest of all time. We set him the task of trying to better it, and at first he looked at us like we’d said something sacrilegious.
“The D-Rex is an experiment that went wrong, so it’s like you’re going backwards in the design; we were looking at Ray Harryhausen and H.R Giger as references to dial in. I was always telling people to watch The Elephant Man for reference, as I see the D-Rex in that light - it hasn’t worked out genetically, but I want the audience to care about them.
“I want people to look past the monster to find something in there that they can’t hate. It may have the intent of a monster, but a monster is more fun when you have a little bit of empathy for it!”
Rebirth might be the year’s safest bet, box office wise, and a sequel is expected to follow. As for whether Edwards will play a part in it, he hasn’t made a decision – he still has those personal projects he wants to explore.
“I’d be very happy to take a holiday and make another one, or to do a smaller project where I’m still dreaming big. I always want to make big films in terms of their ambitions, and I’m very excited about the future as there’s a lot on the horizon that seems exciting.
“If all I get to do is tiny movies for the rest of my life, I’ve had a good run. Hopefully, my best films are still ahead of me...”
Jurassic World: Rebirth is in UK cinemas from Wednesday, 2nd July.
