Gareth Edwards has always seemed like the least likely fellow to find himself at the helm of multimulti-million-dollar blockbusters. Raised in Nuneaton, the town in the English midlands that gave us George Eliot, he has the modest, self-effacing manner you’d expect from the nicest man in your pub’s darts team.
Yet here he is. Following a critical hit with the modestly budgeted Monsters, in 2010, he graduated to a remake of Godzilla in 2014, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016 and, now, the latest film in the Jurassic Park sequence.
Is he more aggressive when behind whatever stands in for a megaphone these days?
“No, I think I’ve got the wrong personality for this job,” he says. “I feel like I’m very introverted. I’m quiet normally. And that’s not great if you’re a director on a big set. Weirdly, I think if people visited a set and they had to guess who everyone was, they would probably always guess that the assistant director was the director. They’re the ones that shout and get on the megaphone and tell everyone off. If you have a good assistant director, it means you don’t really have to do any of that stuff. Thank God.”
Jurassic World: Rebirth, in which Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and others fight their way across an island infested with you know what, is the leanest, least pompous entry to the dinosaur cycle since the opening trilogy. There is plenty of sharp, Howard Hawksian dialogue. The characters are cleanly drawn.
“You can go through heaven and hell making a movie,” he says. “If you get to the end and people don’t care about the characters or the storyline it’s all for nothing. I got in on day one with a blueprint – ie the script – and I was turning the pages, and I was caring about the characters. I followed the story really clearly.”
He must still have had some reservations. In the current troubled age for cinema, a great deal rests on just a few potentially lucrative summer blockbusters. Following the staggering, slightly baffling success of the three preceding Jurassic World films, Rebirth is unquestionably one of those titles.
“You never know what you’re getting into, obviously, and you have to trust your gut,” he says. The continuing presence of Steven Spielberg – director of the first two Jurassic Park movies, from the 1990s – as executive producer was apparently a factor.
“Steven’s a brilliant film-maker. He understands what is a great film and what isn’t. And that is the best thing you can hold on to. David Koepp was the writer on this, who wrote the original. It’s really important that you agree on what is a great movie and what isn’t. We started chatting and, in our first chats, we didn’t really talk about the movie at all. We just started talking about films we loved.”
Let’s recall how Edwards got here. Raised in Warwickshire, he studied film and video at Surrey Institute of Art & Design and, after graduation, moved into visual effects for television shows. It was not until 2008 that he knocked together an extraordinary feature debut in Monsters. Made for $500,000 – his Star Wars film cost at least 400 times that amount – the poetic creature feature managed with a production crew of just six people. That doesn’t feel like enough preparation for a behemoth such as Godzilla.
“I did have a little background in directing for television – and that was probably a better indication of what to expect on a big Hollywood movie,” he says. “But, no, I honestly felt like, I’ve got that first film in Hollywood and I just need to survive this – if I survive this I’m going to be okay. But I didn’t know if I was going to survive it.”
He did survive. That Godzilla was a strange affair. It was launched with a brilliant trailer that leaned into the misty weirdness Edwards mastered in Monsters, but the film itself, though decently reviewed, was criticised for not doing enough with its titular building stomper. It nonetheless managed to turn a decent profit on a huge investment.
“I was expecting to get pummelled by everyone, and then I got offered Star Wars,” he says. “I was pleasantly surprised, but I still feel like a wannabe film-maker. I still feel like someone who wants to make movies when they grow up. I feel like this is a hobby or a thing I’m doing to pay my bills until I become a proper film-maker. I still don’t quite feel like I’m there. You know?”
As I said, a commendably modest fellow.
Looking back, it could be reasonably argued that Rogue One has aged best of the five Star Wars features released since The Force Awakens in 2015. Like Jurassic World: Rebirth, it is focused on one clean narrative line: Felicity Jones heads a mission aimed at stealing plans for the Death Star. Andor, a sequel series on Disney+, became the best reviewed of the small-screen outings. The ravings of a few sexist nutters noted, Rogue One generated no backlash worth taking seriously. People now love it in a way they don’t love The Force Awakens.
“I’m largely relieved that I’m not walking down the street and people are shouting that I ruined their childhood,” Edwards says with a small smile.
The fans do do that.
“If you create art and you could be really successful in your day – right there and then, have a big hit in the moment – or be considered really good decades later, which would you pick? I personally would pick the decades-later version. To me it’s not about how these films are viewed when they come out. It’s about 10 or 20 years later.”
Yet some muttering still continues about the production of Rogue One. It was said that Tony Gilroy, who eventually developed Rogue One, was drafted in to oversee extensive reshoots. Edwards is characteristically generous about how that played out.
“We had rewrites come in towards the end, which obviously Tony did, and then we all worked together until the last second, making the film best as it could be,” he says. “That’s kind of how these big movies happen. If I went back in time, and I could text myself some advice, there’s nothing I could say. It was predestined to play out that way. It was just the pressure that was on that movie. These movies end up with a lot of different writers on them. The studio just keep pushing and pushing until the last second. The main thing is I’m proud of the film.”
Edwards is an interesting fellow to talk to about the predicament in which Hollywood currently finds itself. Fifteen years ago he proved you can make a monster movie on the refuse budget for a Star Wars flick. Two years ago he released an absurdly lavish, thrilling science-fiction epic called The Creator that cost about $80 million. That now counts as cheap for such a thing, but it is rare that films from outside a familiar franchise can attract even that sum. Is it the end for original event movies?
“I really hope not,” he says. “But I totally understand the problem. I think of something Paul Schrader said recently. Someone asked him, ‘Do you think films were better in the 1970s?’ And he said, ‘No, I think audiences were.’”
That grumpy American director and screenwriter still knows how to troll the filmgoing world.
“What he meant was that if you want original artistic films then you’ve got to go see them. If you want the same thing over and over a million times then go and see that. What everyone’s trying to do is to make something they’re proud of that was also successful.”
Edwards then cautiously dips his toe in this most dangerous of metaphorical pools.
“Tools like AI are a bit like the invention of the electric guitar,” he says. “Maybe kids in their bedroom can form bands and make amazing music that will change the world. So I’m all in favour of that. But we’ve got to be careful how we do it.”
Not everyone will enjoy hearing this, but few could deny that the current economics of cinema are insane.
[ Zoorassic Trail: Giant animatronic dinosaurs come to Dublin ZooOpens in new window ]
“It feels like we’ve gone off-piste a little bit and lost our way,” he says. “I think maybe these new tools are going to be a way to machete our way back on to the right path.”
Jurassic World: Rebirth is in cinemas from Wednesday, July 2nd
