In case you somehow missed the announcement, Jurassic Park’s 30th anniversary arrived earlier this summer. Between that occasion, and last year’s release of Jurassic World Dominion, there’s been plenty of time to chat about in regard to what made fans fall in love with director Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur opus. You may not think there’s much room for surprises in that field but, surprisingly, one of my favorite lines in one of the best sci-fi movies is going viral. It’s a favorite because it’s one of the earliest, snarkiest signs that a dino disaster was in the cards, and I’m shocked people seemed to have missed that in previous viewings.
The Early Clue To Jurassic Park’s Dino Disaster
Leave it to Reddit (via GamesRadar+) to start picking up on clues in the big-screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bestseller. Now, a whole discussion has opened up about one subject. That talking point? The fact that John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough), while being a kindly old man who wants to impress people and care for his family, isn’t exactly the best businessman. In fact, he’s kind of careless in how he runs the titular theme park's operations.
The first big clue mentioned by Redditors is when lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) and miner Juanito Rostagno (Miguel Sandoval) discuss setting up the visit that’s supposed to put the park back on schedule. One of my favorite moments comes when Juanito looks at Gennaro, upon the lawyer’s mention of inspections, and drops this classic line:
Hammond hates inspections, they slow everything down.
Ok, that’s fair. When you’ve sunk tons of money into “living biological attractions so astounding, they’ll capture the imagination of the entire planet,” you really want to open on time. That being said, when one of your employees has been eaten by one of those attractions -- and you're being faced with a $20 million lawsuit as a result -- it might be time to press pause on your dino island.
Instead, John Hammond invites a panel of experts to endorse his park, thinking that’s the move to ensure its survival and ward off the insurance pencil pushers. The entrepreneur would rather farm pull quotes from Chaoticians than do an exhaustive audit of their safety practices and protocols, it seems. Had John taken the more careful approach, he could have revealed another problem in the Jurassic Park machinery.
Another Problem With John Hammond's Management Of Jurassic Park
That’s not even the only example Redditors brought up in their discussion of just how horrible John Hammond is at business and safety. The infamous matter of Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) also comes up in the first act of the movie, as we see the turncoat programmer mentioning “Hammond’s mistake” was that he cheaped out on his wages.
Though, to be fair, Hammond does mention in a heated argument with the Judas of Jurassic Park that Nedry had some “financial problems,” and Dennis does seem like the type to run up some gambling debts. Our rogue programmer’s dispute with Hammond may be subjective, but the entrepreneur’s decision to hire cheap and morally corrupt help only compounds the fact that his resort didn’t stand a chance.
So much for sparing no expense, which is a frequent claim John made throughout the movie that's now being called out by commentators. If the businessman was really flashing the cash, you'd think he would've hired a better programmer who wouldn't let the tour program get up to 151 bugs so early in its run. But even setting aside the Dennis Nedry example, Hammond’s business ethics in the 1993 film are highly questionable, and they could've been a lot worse.
The version of the character that's present in Michael Crichton’s original text marks one of the biggest differences between Jurassic Park’s novel and movie. Whereas the John Hammond in the book was willing to sacrifice any life needed to feed his ego, the film shows viewers an overambitious man who feels the weight of his mistakes crashing down on him. It doesn't excuse him from cheaping out where it counted and not engaging in due diligence to maintain his destination theme park, though.
As a person, and a character, I still enjoy Mr. Hammond’s Jurassic journey. But when looking at him as a businessman, I can’t say I’ve ever been inspired. His hubris leads to the disaster on the park's first and only day of operation, and he’s lucky it didn’t turn out worse than it did in the end. Considering his blatant mistakes, fans of the movie may not forget Juanito's line anytime soon.
At the very least, John learns his lesson, and is shown to be a new man/philanthropist in 1997’s The Lost World. Also, we did get that sick T-Rex ending that almost never happened. So maybe he was onto something after all, as all the right inspections would've robbed Roberta the Tyrannosaurus Rex of her moment in the spotlight.
Meanwhile, if you thought John Hammond was the worst businessman to have control of this dinosaur theme park, you clearly haven’t met some of his successors throughout the rest of Jurassic Park universe. That’s something else to think about, should you choose to rewatch the saga in its entirety. You can start that journey through using your Hulu subscription as, at the time of this writing, the first three Jurassic films are available to stream on that very platform.
