In 2001, Universal Pictures (historically the leading studio for monster pictures) returned to mine its lucrative Jurassic Park franchise yet another time. A "B-Team" of writer Peter Buchman, director John Johnston, and composer Don Davis unexpectedly made a film that was better than many feared it would be, certainly better than the Lost World, an inflated film that lost focus and whose soundtrack added very little originality to the magnificent score of the first. Buchman wisely omitted the scientific debate that ran through the first two films, dropping the Jeff Goldblum character who existed to be the spokesman for "chaos theory" (a fancy label for good old Murphy's Law). Sam Neill is the only major holdover in the cast, which falls onto the island and, as usual, deals with the Big Hungries in a situation of incredible negligence. After most of the lesser-known actors get eaten, Neill and the others discover—in the only real innovation in the story—that these dinos are getting really, really smart and spend the rest of the picture trying to prove they are enough smarter than the lizards to avoid becoming shish kebab. Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji) earned his dues with the Spielberg organization by making a couple of superior entries in the Young Indiana Jones TV series. He elected to go back to his Universal Pictures roots and make a straight-ahead action-horror-thriller. Everyone's personality and position is laid out in almost minimalist fashion and then the chase is on. With Spielberg absent from the director's chair, John Williams elected not to participate, either. Don Davis (born in Anaheim, CA, in 1957) is a veteran composer and orchestrator with dozens of TV credits. Increasingly in the 1990s, he has worked in theatrical films, most notably The Matrix (1999). He very neatly telescopes the grandeur of Williams' original musical ideas into a very different sound, adds musical ideas of his own, and produces a highly listenable score. An initial orchestral growl on low instruments starts the musical fun; the opening sequences quote the Williams themes, but in a fragmentary manner worked into the texture of new ideas. Davis tends to use powerful, driving drum figures more often than Williams does and the brisk "haunted island" approach allows Davis to make some remarkably inventive "shock" chords. One of the most striking sequences in the soundtrack recording arrangement is called "Bone Man Ben," a fairly long cut that cleverly turns the action version of Williams' main theme into several kinds of a march. A subsequent cut, "Frenzy Fuselage" inventively takes the first four notes of the original theme and turns it into a pounding action ostinato. Although there are moments when Davis quotes the original settings of Williams' themes, he mostly treats them as raw material, slicing and dicing them into highly effective and original musical meat, a process that, in itself, somehow subliminally catches the essential nature of the film. The result: a very superior, pure horror score and invigorating listening.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.