1. Opening Titles/Incident at Isla Nublar
2. The Encased Mosquito
3. Entrance of Mr. Hammond *
4. Journey to the Island
5. Stalling Around **
6. Hatching Baby Raptor
7. You Bred Raptors?
8. The History Lesson
9. Jurassic Park Gate **
10. Goat Bait *
11. The Saboteur *
12. Ailing Triceratops *
13. The Coming Storm
14. Dennis Steals the Embryo
15. Race to the Dock
16. The Falling Car and The T-Rex Chase *
17. A Tree for My Bed
18. Petticoat Lane **/My Friend the Brachiosaurus **
19. Life Finds a Way *
20. System Ready *
21. To the Maintenance Shed **/High-Wire Stunts */Hungry Raptor *
22. The Raptor Attack *
23. T-Rex Rescue and Finale *
24. Welcome to Jurassic Park (film version) **
25. Welcome to Jurassic Park (album version) *
Bonus tracks from the 2022 remaster:
4a. Journey to the Island (film version)
14a. Dennis Steals the Embryo (film version)
* contains unused music
** micro-edited in the film
More REMIXED & RESTORED:
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Introduction
In 1993, Steven Spielberg unleashed dinosaurs upon the world. Jurassic Park, one of those perfect popcorn blockbusters and a revolution in computer graphics, bringing dinosaurs back to life in a way no one had ever seen before, dominated the summer box office.
In Jurassic Park, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and his company InGen have found a way to recreate dinosaurs. Ever the entrepreneur, Hammond decides to build a theme park around his creation. After one of the animals kills a worker, Hammond’s investors call for an investigation into the park. He recruits paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to inspect the island. Also along for the ride are Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a charismatic but skeptical mathematician, Hammond’s lawyer Donald Gennarro (Martin Ferrero) and Hammond’s grandkids (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards).
But despite Hammond’s repeated claims that he has "spared no expense" on his dazzling theme park, there is still one disgruntled employee (Wayne Knight), who is willing to spy for a rival company, steal a bunch of dinosaur embryos and cause a whole lot of mayhem in the process. What looked like stunning achievement soon turns out to be an uncontrollable danger, calling into question the range of control man has over nature and putting everyone’s lives in the balance…
An expertly made film, Jurassic Park grew a large fanbase and spawned a franchise that - although long dormant at the start of the 21st century - is still going today. Jurassic Park also gave us - like 11 out of the 12 preceding theatrical releases directed by Spielberg - a brand new John Williams score. One that would - like many of Williams' most famous works - join the ranks of seminal adventure blockbuster scores. In several places, Jurassic Park is also a thriller score, amping up the tension created by the corporate espionage subplot running through the first half of the film that finally causes the park to unravel.
John Williams’ Jurassic Park is the composer in full-on blockbuster adventure mode. In fact, I’d argue Jurassic Park - particularly on album - feels like a John Williams compilation. It features both a slow, majestic theme that mirrors the awe of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a rousing, bombastic adventure theme that can sit snugly beside material from the Indiana Jones series. It has some ethereal music for the young and vulnerable dinosaurs that sounds like a precursor to Williams’ work on A.I. eight years later, pensive material slightly reminiscent of Home Alone and a tense conspiratorial cue that sounds like an adaptation of material from JFK.
Indeed, to many John Williams fans Jurassic Park is a seminal score and album. A gateway into the work of a man who has defined the Hollywood blockbuster sound for several generations.
The original soundtrack album presents the music not in chronological order, but rather clustered around the various ideas and sounds running throughout the score. Many tracks feature a pairing of cues that are spread out in the film but are thematically or texturally similar.
Now, with La La Land’s wonderful recent complete release in our players, we are able to enjoy the entire score in chronological order and get an exact idea of what music was dropped or replaced.
Because as with most films, the presentation of the score in the final film differs slightly from what was recorded. One interesting recurring decision you’ll find when lining up the score to the finished picture is that the carnivore motif that is first heard in the opening titles, features almost exclusively in passages that were dropped from the film. It is given several loud plays that were cut in favor of Gary Rydstrom’s stellar sound design or replaced with other music.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at each of the pieces written for the film, what music was dropped, how that would have played in the picture and discuss how these editing decisions change the shape of the final film. The idea for these videos is not to provide an isolated score track or to function as a fan mix that replace the original mix. Instead, I aim to bring the score into the foreground while keeping most of the dialogue and effects intact wherever possible. Jurassic Park has a very well-designed soundscape, where music and effects often go hand in hand and I wanted to honor that. It also works well when restoring unused music. When we get to stuff like Goat Bait, you'll get to hear how the music interacts with the dialogue, while still keeping the music in the foreground of the mix.
Once I'm done with Jurassic Park, expect to see something similar for The Lost World, which is a veritable treasure trove of unused material!
But first, let’s start right at the beginning.
1. Opening Titles/Incident at Isla Nublar
1mA Opening Titles
1m1 Incident at Isla Nublar
As the movie starts with the reveal of the Universal logo, there is no music. The quiet of the theatre is broken only by sounds of the jungle. A deep drumbeat disrupts the jungle sounds and opens the film and the score. Along with choir and the first iteration of the carnivore motif, it sets a tone of danger right off the bat.
After the credits, we open the film proper on moving tree branches and the faces of tense Jurassic Park workers. After a brief moment of sound design, it is revealed something mechanical is moving the trees. Williams’ score kicks in again right as we cut to ROBERT MULDOON, whose commanding presence will lead the following scene and who will return for a large role later in the film.
Williams starts the cue with a synthesizer baseline, strings and metallic sounds. Right away, the synthetic and the organic are intertwined with ominous results. This builds until the dinosaur crate is opened and all hell breaks loose. The frenetic style of action music that will be heard during more of the dinosaur attacks later in the film is heard for the first time, this time also accompanied by an ominous low choir. As the cue ends, we hear for the first time how well music and sound design are integrated in the final film. The cue fizzles out a bit on the complete score album, but in the film the echoing gunshots take over from Williams’ frantic action scoring and take us into the contrasting serenity of the Dominican Republic’s jungle.
Both these cues are played in the film in their entirety.
I don't know every bit of unused music, but I think my favourite unused piece is the low piano written for the first glimpse of the AT-AT's in The Empire Strikes Back.
I don't know every bit of unused music, but I think my favourite unused piece is the low piano written for the first glimpse of the AT-AT's in The Empire Strikes Back.
I don't know every bit of unused music, but I think my favourite unused piece is the low piano written for the first glimpse of the AT-AT's in The Empire Strikes Back.
I was in the balcony above them when they did that the first time. Judging by their faces, they weren't expecting the applause they got. I think that was my favourite part of the whole concert.
Narratively, it was the right decision, though. The T-Rex Ex Machina moment is supposed to be a relief, but the music as written signals MORE DANGER. Replacing it with the adventure theme allows the audience to relax at the optimal moment in the scene.
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