Jurᴀssic World Rebirth‘s director, Gareth Edwards, explains why music placement is so important in filmmaking and why John Williams’ iconic original Jurᴀssic Park score remains so effective. As the seventh feature film in the Jurᴀssic franchise, Jurᴀssic World Rebirth marks another changing of the guard, yet the spirit of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece lives on.

Rebirth takes place five years after Jurᴀssic World Dominion, following Scarlett Johansson’s operations expert Zora Bennett, Jonathan Bailey’s paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, and Mahershala Ali’s team leader Duncan Kincaid as they attempt to retrieve DNA samples from three of the world’s most dangerous dinosaurs. Though Rebirth, as the тιтle suggests, kick-starts a new era for the franchise, one crucial piece of the Jurᴀssic movie series remains: John Williams’ original musical theme.

Speaking to ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley ahead of Jurᴀssic World Rebirth‘s theatrical release on July 2, Gareth Edwards discussed why choosing the right moment for the movie’s biggest “needle drop” was so crucial and how it can affect the audience’s immersion in the story. Sure, the credits need some sweeping music, but where else could that iconic theme enhance the movie’s experience?

Liam Crowley: The John Williams score, I alluded to it earlier, and manipulating is the wrong word, but when it comes to audience emotion, you have to pick those right moments to make them feel scared, make them feel happy, make them cheer and that John Williams score has to come in at the right exact moment, that first needle drop when we hear it. Talk to me about the decision of where you placed it in this movie. I don’t want to give full context, but the first time it came in, that sweeping motion, the hair on my arm stood up.

Gareth Edwards: Yeah, I mean, basically, you’re going to play that card probably at some point. That was one of the first conversations. You look at Alexandre Desplat, who wrote the score, and you go, and he was like, ‘We’re going to do the theme at some point.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, where?’ ‘Well, let’s just experiment.’ We played a game of, if it can only be one place, where’s it going to go? If you’re only going to play it once, where are you going to put it? And that’s a dilemma. I wanted it at the end credits, right? I was like, it’s got to come at the end credits. And then the problem was that you hadn’t really used it in the movie. And so there was somewhere else where it was like, ‘Okay, maybe we can get away with doing it there as well.’

And so we tried versions, we were asked to try versions without it anywhere. And I showed that version to some people just as an experiment, praying it didn’t work. As a fan, I’d be really disappointed, but certain people wanted to try it, so I did. And then as soon as they sit, they’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Put it back in.’ So it basically was very strategic, very minimal.

Edwards also divulged how important it was for him to be present when the orchestra recorded that part of the Rebirth score. It felt like a momentous occasion, not only for Edwards himself but for the entire orchestra and Rebirth’s composer, Alexandre Desplat.

Gareth Edwards: And then the beauty was that during that great moment I was having to do a publicity thing whilst we were scoring the movie, there was a hundred-piece orchestra and I had to go and do this one thing that the studio said, ‘You have to do it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but please don’t record the theme, the John Williams moment whilst I’m away.’ And so as I was away, I think they were just teasing me that they had recorded it, so I’d missed it. And I was like, ‘No! No!’ And I came back to Abbey Road really sad, and then they were like, ‘Oh, we were joking. We haven’t recorded it, and we were going to do it today.’ And so you get to sit there, and I got to sit on the steps where all the Beatles had recorded all their albums and everything. There was Alexandre Desplat and a hundred-piece orchestra. There was a guy called Conrad Pope who was also the orchestrator for the film, who orchestrated the original Jurᴀssic Park. And it just felt like we were in this holy kind of church, like sacred ground. And then the theme began, and it’s one of those things where you want to take a picture or video it. And I was like, ‘Put the phone away. Just suck it up. Just live in this moment.’ It’s never going to happen again. And I just looked at all the players that were doing it, and they’d all obviously chosen a career in playing on soundtracks. And you just knew, you could see in all their faces, this was a movie that made them want to do this. And when it ended, you could just feel everyone was like, okay, bucket list ticked. It just felt like a really special moment. It’ll never happen again.

Liam Crowley: Do you journal?

Gareth Edwards: No.

Liam Crowley: I recommend that if you can’t capture a moment with a pH๏τo or a video, sometimes you have those moments and you don’t want to forget the memory, and you write it down in your own handwriting and you revisit it a couple of years later. And it’s immortalized in handwriting. It’s no longer just a memory up in your brain. So it’s a nice way to tap back in.

Gareth Edwards: I do that with sort of story ideas. As soon as I get an idea, I’m late for meetings. Sometimes I get an idea on the way there and I start writing it down.

What This Means For Jurᴀssic World Rebirth

Rebirth Is Paying Homage To Spielberg’s 1993 Movie

As ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley points out, a movie’s score and soundtrack can make or break the story’s most crucial scenes. By using Williams’ iconic score sparingly throughout the film, the music becomes an essential element of the narrative experience, rather than an obvious ploy to evoke the audience’s nostalgia or force them to compare Rebirth‘s story to every other Jurᴀssic installment.

Rebirth‘s original cast, story, time jump, and partially new score all suggest the franchise is embarking on an exciting journey, but it’s clear it isn’t leaving its roots behind entirely.

Alongside the return of Williams’ iconic theme, writer David Koepp, who penned the scripts for Jurᴀssic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurᴀssic Park, has returned to write the script for Jurᴀssic World Rebirth. Additionally, the story will return to Isla Muerta, the site of the original Jurᴀssic Park testing facility.

Our Take On Jurᴀssic World Rebirth

This Is An Exciting Time For The Franchise

Though the Chris Pratt-led Jurᴀssic World movies were all financially lucrative, they never managed to recapture the magic of Spielberg’s first outing. This was made all the more apparent in the previous installment, Jurᴀssic World Dominion, as Laura Dern’s, Sam Neill’s, and Jeff Goldblum’s historic returns tragically proved to be little more than a cheap incentive to drive audiences to the cinema.

This time around, however, with a new trio leading the adventure and a seemingly more altruistic plot to reunite us with these prehistoric creatures (they’re hoping the dinosaur’s DNA can provide the final ingredient in a miraculous medical breakthrough), the franchise has a chance to break new ground and carve out an interesting and fresh idenтιтy for itself. Jurᴀssic World Rebirth could be a game-changer.

Jurᴀssic World Rebirth arrives in cinemas on July 2.