Director Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World has been a resounding, record-breaking success, and also managed to get some serious nostalgic juices flowing regarding its connections to the original Jurassic Park. Consequently, tinfoil hat theories are currently in vogue. However, one former cast member of the original film has humorously shot down one particularly sensational yarn about his character.
While the name, Whit Hertford may not exactly reside in the "household" category, one look at his uniquely wide eyes will immediately evoke recognition from his days as a child actor. Most notably, he was the annoying child in the beginning of 1993’s Jurassic Park who heckles Dr. Grant after his Velociraptor speech - calling it a "six foot turkey." Currently, there’s a theory implying that this character grows up to be Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady. Well, Hertford took to Twitter to give that rumor a viscera-spilling claw slash across the stomach.
Hetford’s denial about his character’s identity was hilariously emphatic and serves to definitively squelch that rumor before it gained serious steam. Yet, it seems to be the direct result of the current encompassing array of sequels, remakes and reboots to beloved franchises. In fact, it’s an almost similar canon-connecting theorization to one recently implying that Tom Hardy’s rendition of Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road, is not, continuity-wise, the same one played by Mel Gibson in the classic 1980’s films. Rather, it claims that he is the grown up version of the Feral Kid who followed around the original Max in the 1981’s The Road Warrior. Sure, the speculation is pure piffle, but from fan’s standpoint, it’s often fun to discern a more poignantly direct connection from the new films to the classics.
To that point, there undoubtedly would have something extremely poetic to the idea that the kid who got a memorably excessive humbling about the non-Butterball nature of Velociraptors grew up to be the able-bodied badass who actually (sort of) successfully trained Velociraptors. It certainly wouldn’t have been the only nostalgic nod to the previous films laden throughout the legacy-conscious Jurassic World. Watch the scene below and imagine the pure epicness of the idea that this kid grows up to be motor-oil-masking, raptor-corralling ass-kicker from the new film.
However, the glaringly obvious difference in looks might have pushed the boundaries of believability. In fact, looking at the way Hertford is looking these days, based on the pic below from his 2014 starring/screenwriting effort, Wildlife, "Chris Pratt" is probably the last thing that comes into mind.
Yet, it seems that for Hertford, he won’t be hearing about any form of redemption for his memorable Jurassic Park juvenile jokester. Well, at least he can take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t one of the kids who thought that a flashlight would scare away the T. rex.
