Michael Giacchino talks Jurassic World (2015)

I’m probably stretching things just a bit because this is from a red carpet interview, but he does speak about how he got the job of scoring Jurassic World, which is exciting.

Jurassic World was the long awaited sequel to Jurassic Park (it ignores the events of The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, essentially erasing them from continuity), set over twenty years after the original story. Isla Nublar is now home to a massively successful dinosaur theme park, based on the original dream envisioned by John Hammond, who has sadly passed on and left the park in the charge of Simon Masrani.

Business couldn’t be better, but the corporations that ultimately control the park want to see even bigger profits. To that end, they commission a new dinosaur to be created using various strains of dino DNA. All of this is overseen by Claire Dearing, operations manager for the park. As the new dinosaur, dubbed “Indominus Rex” becomes prepped for its debut to the public, concerns are raised by Owen Grady, an ex-Navy SEAL and expert on Velociraptors (his job is to train the raptors to obey human commands).

As Owen sees it, breeding regular dinosaurs is dangerous enough, but creating a NEW one from scratch is opening up a whole new world of problems. To complicate matters, Dr. Wu refuses to disclose which strands of DNA were used to create Indominus Rex, meaning Owen initially has no idea what sort of abilities the dinosaur will have. During an inspection of the enclosure, Indominus Rex manages to escape, and Claire is suddenly faced with a rampaging dinosaur loose on an island full of thousands of unsuspecting guests…

According to Michael Giacchino, he was offered the job of scoring Jurassic World after he created some music for The Lost World video game and Steven Spielberg contacted him (after hearing the music) and said “This is great, when can you score this?” Spielberg was in fact so impressed with what Giacchino created that when the time came to pick a composer, he was the first person considered.

That being said, since John Williams score for the original film is so iconic, there are a number of references to the main theme of Jurassic Park throughout the film (this serves to tie the two films together musically). I think it’s really cool that Giacchino got the opportunity to score the film because he worked on the music for a video game first.

This little interview is pretty short, if I find a longer one I’ll be sure to add it, but for now, enjoy!