I just read the book. He was the head programmer and had a team back in the states. He had a falling out with hammond about a budget overrun which he had to absorb the cost, which is why he wanted to get back at him and make some money by stealing the embryos.
The book really outlines the shortsightedness of capital and it’s all still relevant. They really get into the park’s construction and design decisions. Honestly I wished the movie was done by Kubrick instead of Spielberg where it features all of the cost cutting and incompetence which convinced you that the park was doomed to fail, and then it fails.
I think my favorite part of the book was when the rival company wanted to steal InGen’s work but needed board approval so they do this song and dance to get board approval to do it in a way that doesn’t open them up to liability. It’s like what happened with the PG&E fires a few years ago, where nobody on the board or executive team got in any trouble because they did neglect in this special way that allows them to get a get-out-of-jail-free card.
One specific description from the book stands out in my mind: all of the windows on the main building have iron bars welded on, a sign that they weren’t designed with protection in mind but had to have it hastily tacked on after an incident.
Now that I’m older I realize a lot about these books that I loved when I was a kid and how they got kind of bastardized. Hollywood doesn’t understand/care that the whole story is about arrogance and greed leading to obvious shortsightedness that turns into a nightmare. They just saw scary dinosaur adventure and turned that into a franchise.
I loved the books, the whole chaos theory and paleontologists showing up and basically calling the idea idiotically dangerous was the story.
In defense of the movie tho-
I actually really like that they made Hammond this kindly ol’ Grandpa rather than the mustache twirling capitalist villain of the book. To me, it sorta emphasizes that it’s the system everything’s operating under (capitalist extraction for-profit) that’s doomed the park from the get-go, and even the best intentions of it’s creators can’t prevent that.
I’ve seen critical interpretations of the flea circus dinner monologue as Spielberg speaking through the character, trying to reckon with his impact on the real world through his films and an attempt to reconcile his need to make art with the industry’s commercial nature. Famously he was doing post-production of Schindler’s List at the same time as filming JP, and apparently really going through it.
I do agree with you that we probably could have done without the rest of the franchise, although in some perverse way they kinda reinforce this anti-capitalist theme almost every movie intentionally or not.
How they find out the dinosaurs are breeding in the book is just the perfect
encapsulation of “corporate solutions” colliding face first into reality.
It’s been a while but wasn’t Sam Jackson also an IT guy?
Yes he was and iirc in the book it was kind of implied that all that bluster from Hammond was horse shit and he was clearly cutting corners at every turn and portrayed much more as a greedy billionaire with a god complex and heaps of hubris so it kinda tracks.
Also Spielberg did our boy Muldoon dirty. He survived in the book. That scene where dies is iconic though so I’m torn.
fixed meme:
hammond: spares no expense
also hammond: hired a couple people
Arnold was the chief engineer. At least in the book, I’m not sure if the movie bothers to make it very clear.
Please! God damn, I hate this hacker shit!
“i DON’T care dennis, access main program grid anyway”
It always bugged me as a kid why they didn’t just shoot the damned raptors with the spas shotguns they had stocked in the armory? Shit, in JP Trespasser you get a whole ass arsenal to deal with the dinos. T-Rex? Meet lethal toxin dart gun!
they heard “birds are dinosaurs” and only bought bird shot
watashi no cut shell!
it’s a bit like the film “billy madison” and how the protagonist billy pointed out something after his teacher read to him and the kids “the puppy that lost its way”
“you got a pet, you got a responsibility - if your dog is lost, you don’t look for an hour, then call it quits, you get your ass out there and you find that f*cking dog!”
GOOD POST
Dodgson here!
no wonder dennis got eaten
