Gareth Edwards names his favourite sci-fi movies: “It’s like there’s a special sauce”
There’s no harm in any filmmaker sticking to what they love, and as that applies to the short career of Gareth Edwards, it goes without saying sci-fi is the genre he holds closer to his heart than any other.
In terms of the differences between the first and second films, the director made one hell of a jump when he followed Monsters with Godzilla. The former was shot for a thrifty $500,000 with Edwards writing, directing, serving as cinematographer, production designer, and visual effects artist, marking him out as a talent with a bright future.
He was only 34 when his debut feature premiered, but after it won strong notices and turned a tidy profit, he was snatched by the studio machine and tasked with breathing new life into a cinematic icon. Considering his 2014 reboot cleared half a billion dollars at the box office and launched the money-spinning MonsterVerse for Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures, the mission was comfortably accomplished.
Behind-the-scenes issues and extensive reshoots may have plagued the production, but Rogue One nonetheless sailed past the billion-dollar mark in ticket sales and is regarded by many as the best Star Wars movie of the Disney era by far. The Creator was a minor misstep that still showcased Edwards’ ingenuity by shooting on a commercially available camera with a budget significantly less than the typical big-budget Hollywood epic, not that anyone would have noticed given its visual merits.
Next up for Edwards is the latest instalment in the never-ending Jurassic Park saga, so he’s more than a decade into his feature-length career and has yet to show any interest in anything that isn’t sci-fi related, at the very least. There’s nothing wrong with remaining in a sandbox that’s been so kind to them, especially when they’re clearly seeking to emulate the all-time greats.
In an interview with A.Frame, the filmmaker unsurprisingly wore his Star Wars fandom on the sleeve, remarking on how “the planets aligned more for Star Wars than they have for any other movie” in terms of its creation, pioneering visual effects, iconic design, legendary score, and iconic cast all coming together at the same time to create cinematic magic.
“If there are parallel universes, I think we live in the universe where Star Wars is its best version,” he explained. George Lucas wasn’t just an inspiration; he was also a liberator who embraced and pursued the advancement of digital technology, which, in Edward’s eyes, “allowed my generation to go off and make films with digital cameras and edit them on our computers”.
Unsurprisingly, Steven Spielberg – or “the absolute master” as Edwards calls him – also makes the cut with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “It’s like there’s a special sauce to his films, and no one else has found the formula for it,” he mused. “I’m not sure he himself even knows what it is.” Still, it’s his 1977 sci-fi staple that endures for the director as “the one I’ve watched the most to try and learn from.”
Less of a film than an aesthetic, Edwards additionally named Blade Runner designer and concept artist Syd Mead – who worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Tron, and Aliens, among others – as another pivotal influence, albeit more directly on The Creator than any of his other pictures. Still, as sci-fi inspirations go, then Lucas, Spielberg, and Mead make for a formidable trio.
