Anatomy of a Scene: Jurassic Park’s “clever” dinosaurs get tactical
One thing you always need in a crisis is a cool head. An expert, ideally, someone who won’t get carried away by a situation, even if it’s rapidly unravelling, and who generally knows exactly what to do while everyone around them is panicking. In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 mega-hit Jurassic Park, that man is undoubtedly Robert Muldoon.
Played by the late Bob Peck, Muldoon is the safe pair of hands around the theme park; the man who can handle every one of the beasts, even the frankly terrifying velociraptors. He’s the burly, whiskey-drinking, gun-toting Kenyan gamekeeper with a hunter’s instinct, distinct weapon proficiency and one of those hats with a dent in the side so you know he’s been about a bit.
He’s even trusted by the elderly park mogul John Hammond with the safety of his grandkids, but despite that, and despite being an employee of Jurassic Park, he still urges absolute caution. He knows how dangerous these creatures can be. He’s never really sure if any of this is a good idea. And those worries are made all too evident when, near the start of the film, one of his workers gets stuck in the raptor cage with quite predictable munchy results.
He believes the more deadly of the dinosaurs should be destroyed and recommends that Jurassic Park should have military grade weapons to deal with a disaster, but he’s overruled by Hammond, who wants the place to be more consumer-friendly (big mistake).
When all hell breaks loose (as do the dinosaurs), it’s Muldoon who knows exactly what’s needed, where to go and formulates a plan. While Jeff Goldblum lies around pretending to be injured with his chest on show, taking ages to say vaguely existential lines like “Life finds a way”, Muldoon is getting his hands dirty and protecting people. He even manages to survive being attacked by a pack of raptors, killing a few of them for good measure. When it comes to rampaging dinosaurs, it is beyond doubt that Muldoon is the calm amidst the storm. He is the expert you need.
The problem comes, of course, when that expert, the person who knows exactly what to do, gets gobbled up by bloodthirsty dinosaurs who have developed the ability to utilise tactical hunting in packs. Then all bets are off. It’s at that moment that the audience mouths a collective “Oh dear” (or a rather more swearier equivalent).
And that is exactly what happens around three-quarters of the way into Jurassic Park, when Muldoon, who has a shotgun carefully trained on a velociraptor, is flanked by another dinosaur he never saw, or heard coming, all at once. He’s much too late to do anything about it, and can only mutter his final words, “Clever girl”, before quite spectacularly becoming lunch for the oversized lizard.
The beauty of it is that we now know that these dinosaurs are much, much smarter than everyone initially thought. The attacking raptor even seems to almost take a moment to let Muldoon know that she’s won, that the hunter has become the hunted, and he acknowledges it with that classic line.
This iconic scene is a perfect example of the genius of Spielberg. He knows that Muldoon represents the anchor for the audience, the safe pair of hands. The character that surely can’t get eaten. Well, guess what, he just did. Now what?
The answer of course is that things quickly go from bad to worse, with the dinos completely taking over the park and only Hammond, the scientists and the kids getting off the island alive by the skin of their teeth.
Muldoon’s last act is a heroic one; he is covering Dr Sattler with his gun as she runs to restore power to the park in order to get the fences online while, of course, the raptors have other plans. Bob Peck sadly died in 1999, at just 54, but his performance in a film still watched by many on a daily basis, some 30 years on, will live long in collective memory.
