“A Love Letter to Steven Spielberg”: Behind the Scenes of Jurassic World Renaissance
Released in early July, the adventure relaunching the dinosaur franchise attracted over two million viewers. We met with its director, Gareth Edwards, who was endorsed by the ET maestro.
Director of Rogue One , considered by many fans to be the best Star Wars film since George Lucas's trilogy, Gareth Edwards is no stranger to monsters and franchises that have been reimagined. His filmography includes Godzilla , starring Juliette Binoche , the Star Wars prequel Rogue One , and The Creator , a space opera where artificial intelligence plays the bad guy . This resume made him the ideal candidate to breathe new life into the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park . Released in early July, Jurassic World: Renaissance is intended as a reboot of the saga, which has spawned six uneven films, pitting increasingly less terrifying dinosaurs against increasingly stereotypical humans. Starring Scarlett Johansson , Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali , Renaissance honors the fundamentals laid down by Steven Spielberg: majestic creatures, a touch of horror, and heroes who keep their cool. The public is there with more than two million admissions in France and more than 600 million dollars in revenue worldwide.
"With Renaissance, David Koepp, who also wrote Jurassic Park , writes a love letter to Steven Spielberg. Each encounter with a dinosaur is its own film. Like so many short films with different atmospheres and issues," explains Gareth Edwards, intimidated by having been dubbed by the maestro of Schindler's List and ET . "At my first meeting with David Koepp, Steven Spielberg and his producer Frank Marshall, I understood that we were going to work in harmony when I noticed that David had framed a poster of the 1933 film King Kong on his wall. We spent our time discussing monster movies. Everything is easier when you agree on what makes a good and a bad film," recalls the British filmmaker, who was in Paris at the end of June.
Skip the adKoepp's plot, which borrows from some unused passages from Michael Crichton's book, such as the episode of the lifeboat and its occupants being chased by a T-Rex, is full of homages to Spielberg's filmography. The deep-sea hunt for the mosasaurus, complicated by the appearance of its spinosaur allies, evokes Jaws . The ruins of the temple, where the giant bird quetzalcoatlus has built its nest, seem to have come straight out of Indiana Jones .
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" These nods reassured me ," confides Gareth Edwards. " Being at the helm of Renaissance, instead of Steven Spielberg, almost sounds like sacrilege. These references remind us who the genius behind it all is ." The fifty-year-old received the maestro's blessing, via Facetime, to shoot with a handheld camera: " I wanted to put myself at the viewer's level and only see my actors in the frame. It also gives the illusion of making a small independent film. It takes a little pressure off ."
In this return to the roots, Gareth Edwards believes it is essential to reconnect with the horror of the beginnings: "Jurassic Park was a horror film disguised as a family adventure. There are scenes that are really scary. They are immediately counterbalanced by humor, a joke ." " One of the reasons why kids love the Jurassic feature films is that they know that dinosaurs don't exist. They leave the cinema without trauma, more enamored than ever, asking for toys and pajamas with their image on them, when they should be afraid of these animals. It's a strange reaction ," notes the director, who imagined Renaissance as a vintage proposition, taken from the archives, a little cousin of the films of the 80s and 90s.
For the formula to work, it is still necessary to create a credible ecosystem. " When you look at special effects, you can either prioritize beauty or realism. For me, everything starts with realism. It was therefore essential that we film in natural settings and not in front of green screens, which are nightmares to rework in post-production ," notes Gareth Edward. The British filmmaker thus filmed in Malta (for the sequences taking place offshore), England, and Thailand (encounter with the titanosaurs, the canoe sequence). The Asian kingdom holds a special place in the filmmaker's heart: " My parents took me there when I was 12. The landscapes, the jungle, the exotic beaches opened my eyes to a reality other than the United Kingdom. I wanted to recreate this change of scenery for the spectators ."
Gareth Edwards paid particular attention to the mutant species, the objects of the Saint-Hubert laboratory's experiments in Renaissance. " When you imagine a monster, you always have a triangle, three points of inspiration. For the Distortus Rex, a creature with a disproportionate skull, two legs and four arms, we started with the Tyrannosaurus, my favorite dinosaur, the Alien from Ridley Scott's films, and David Lynch's Elephant Man." However, inspiration proved elusive when it came to the design of the Mutadon, born from the hybridization of Pteranodons (from the pterosaur family, ancestors of birds) and Velociraptors. The nine months of procrastination thwarted Mattel's schedule. The toymaker was unable to model the animal in time for the release of Renaissance !
Skip the adWary of films that openly preach a message, Gareth Edwards nevertheless observes that Renaissance is in keeping with the times and our ecological questions. " The earth can very well live without us. As the saga's motto reminds us: 'nature will always find a way.' The question is rather: will we survive all these changes? When you look through the window of an airplane, it's hard not to see the scars we leave behind: roads, fields... "
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