In ‘Jurassic Park’, was the T-Rex attack planned?
It was hardly a slavish adaptation of Michael Crichton’s source novel, but the creative flourishes applied in bringing Jurassic Park from page to screen were all major upgrades that saw the movie emerge as a record-breaking, era-defining, revolutionary classic.
Anyone who’s read the book will be forced to admit the live-action version wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good were it recreated beat-for-beat, with Steven Spielberg turning the tome into the highest-grossing release cinema had ever seen. The picture became a trailblazer that booted the doors down on the inevitable CGI revolution and one of the most rewatchable blockbusters of all time that holds up just as well today as it did over 30 years ago.
It also went on to spawn a massive franchise, and while Spielberg’s The Lost World, Joe Johnston’s Jurassic Park III, and the subsequent Jurassic World trilogy failed to come close to matching the dizzying heights of the original, the fact the latter three each earned over a billion dollars at the box office makes it patently clear that dinosaurs going apeshit remains big business among the ticket-buying public.
As any long-time Star Wars, Marvel, or Harry Potter supporter can no doubt attest, the biggest brands in Hollywood always tend to be the ones that spawn the most fan theories. In the case of Jurassic Park, there’s a doozy that posits the unforgettable T-Rex attack wasn’t an accidental result of the power being shut down, but entirely pre-meditated from the start.
Lewis Dodgson was a minor presence in Jurassic Park, but an important one nonetheless after he paid off Dennis Nedry to steal the dino embryos, which ignited the domino effect that saw all hell break loose. On paper, it’s a move to allow rival companies to replicate the technology, but one theory suggests it was a concerted attempt to destroy John Hammond’s InGen company altogether.
In Colin Trevorrow’s giant locust movie Jurassic World Dominion, Dodgson is reintroduced in the form of Campbell Scott, with original actor Cameron Thor, a convicted and imprisoned sex offender. That’s besides the point, but the introduction of the character’s Biosyn company is not.
The theory outlines how even though Nedry had plenty of time and many opportunities to pull off his heist when the park was deserted, he picked the first time Jurassic Park ever had visitors as the ideal time to strike, with the opportunity for chaos and casualties potentially signalling the end of InGen altogether once the press caught wind of the fact a jolly billionaire suffered a mishap so huge a lawyer got eaten on the toilet, his grandson got electrocuted, and his family were forced to hide in a kitchen from velociraptors.
With the security systems down and a hungry T-Rex on the loose, the chance of fatalities flew straight off the charts, rendering Hammond’s park a miserable failure with a ridiculously high body count for a family-friendly attraction operating at minimal capacity. Fast forward three decades, and InGen isn’t even a concern in the Jurassic universe anymore, with the nefarious corporation constantly running afoul of the laws of evolution and nature now established as the Dodgson-fronted Biosyn.
Biosyn was a decade behind InGen at the start of Jurassic Park, but ended up overtaking it completely. It would have grabbed a lot less headlines were Hammond’s attraction to malfunction and be subjected to corporate espionage when it was completely empty, so Dodgson bided his time before instructing Nedry to cut the power, knowing full well that delicious dino snacks were roaming free ready to be turned into an op-ed blasting his competitor’s hubris, all while sinking his entire company in the process.
Nedry explained that the security systems would only be down for around 20 minutes and be reactivated when he returned from his nefarious side quest, but Dodgson pulled a fast one by not informing his cohort of the real endgame, one that was always going to result in a T-Rex on the loose regardless of whether or not Nedry was sprayed in the face with dinosaur acid and mauled to death. Which, of course, he was.
