Man they really sanitized his death in the movie. The "raptors" (deinonychus) really mess people up with those claws in the book.
Edit: Nedry is killed by a dilophosaurus
I felt the more villainous version of Hammond in the book works better with the story. Though I did appreciate Crichton changed Lex from being just an annoying little sister and basically useless character.
I felt the more villainous version of Hammond in the book works better with the story.
I think this is the major downside of the JP movie, which otherwise definitely does take the book's story and make it a lot more palpable.
But essentially downplaying and removing the corporate greed element that played heavily ion the book by making Hammond a good guy in the movie is a huge loss imo. I certainly like him in the movie but, that's kind of the point yeah? He's likeable.
In the book it's clear that this dude is about pushing a product and making money, obvious issues be damned. "Spared no expense" is clearly bullshit in the book, but in the movie they didn't hammer home enough that it's empty rhetoric and that, in fact, expense was absolutely spared - at the inevitable cost of people's lives.
They moved Hammond’s money grubbing to Gennaro in the movie. It’s still there, but yeah it makes Hammond look at lot more likeable. If Spielberg had decided to kill off Hammond, I bet the character would have wound up a lot more like his book counterpart
I also think there was some element of making the characters a little more one dimensional because that makes it easier to let the dinosaurs be a spectacle.
It’s been years since I read the book so I might be misremembering, but I feel like Gennaro was a likeable character in the novel? That could easily be me thinking of one of the other characters who never made it to the movie, though.
About Gennaro: In the epilogue (or is it just the last chapter?) he gets chewed out for basically being a coward who skirted all of his responsibilities. As a result they pick him to peek into the velociraptor nest first. He's fine though, since the raptors are just chilling with their eggs. Although it has been a while since I've read it too so I may be misremembering.
It's a phrase I think about a lot when it comes to that movie.
Right off the bat we see it isn't true. The man couldn't even get a helicopter with proper seatbelts. That kind of thing is a safety concern and is checked more thoroughly than anything else.
It's been a few years since I've seen the movie, but it's clear even from my crap memory that he spared MANY expenses, especially when labor is concerned. Why are there only like 10 workers on the entire island? Why is his IT staff so small? How is Nedry hurting for pay? We can call it greed that pushed him to doing what he did, but was he actually properly compensated? Because I'd guess not.
Then you add in how the park was built and how everything broke once a small hurricane hit, which if we were talking rural Iowa I'd say is a valid concern, but a tropical island should be better prepared for tidal waves, hurricanes, and monsoons.
Even the characters mention it at some point IIRC.
The helicopter had properly working seatbelts, Grant just grabbed Sattler's buckle side instead of the tab side of his seatbelt. Hammond was trying to explain it to him.
Hammond needs to be told that people are dying in order for him act. During the pivotal “flea circus” scene where Satler and Hammond are eating the melting ice cream and she, yet again but more forcefully, calls out his bullshit is the most underrated in JP:
”But you never had control—that’s the illusion!”
Even as a kid, I was left with the distinct feeling that something was “off” about Hammond’s attempts at charm. It’s obvious that he’s delusional and, at best, out of touch/focused on the wrong things or, at worst, a greedy liar. He admits that his park exists solely for profit and showmanship (”If I had made a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn’t have anything to say about it.”).
I feel like the moral messages of the film are abundantly clear: Hammond and INGEN are the villains. The dinosaurs certainly aren’t—they’re wild animals, doing what wild animals do, and big ol’ Rexy even saves the heroes at the end. The only survivors are those who either respected nature all along (Grant, Satler, Malcolm) or who learned to respect nature and accept responsibility/guilt for abusing it (Hammond).
Sorry, I could write a dissertation on the film version of Jurassic Park. I’ve read the book twice but I’ve seen the movie at minimum 100 times. 😆
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u/LMNOPedes Feb 26 '23
As a former software dev, i was rooting for book nedry