Nedry openly says he was asked to design a system to manage the park with the least possible amount of employees, and he did it. He automated pretty much everything he could with 90s tech and the system easily fell apart at the first stress test.
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There a lot of really good hints at how the park will fall apart in Jurassic Park.
- Thread starter Uzumaki Goku
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Nedry openly says he was asked to design a system to manage the park with the least possible amount of employees, and he did it. He automated pretty much everything he could with 90s tech and the system easily fell apart at the first stress test.
Yeah. I haven't been to many zoos besides Animal Kingdom at Disney in the past decade or so, but there one tiger enclosure has functionally no tall grass at all to force them out. The other one has it and you never see them. The cheetah enclosure has tall grass and they're never viewable. I think the lion area is specifically designed so there's literally nowhere for them to hide.
No, Nedry rigged it to fall apart at his command. He only meant to be away from his desk for literally about 10 minutes, though, and his intention was to slip back in and bring it all back to normal.
"He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess—but in just a few minutes Nedry would be back in the control room, setting things right. And no one would ever suspect what he had done."
The computer system would only count up to the number of expected dinosaurs. So if they thought there was 20 raptors in cages, they would say everything is fine if they counted 20 even if there were more. Once they raised the count limit, they discovered how many more were bred in the wild.
Nedry was the catalyst that led to the system collapsing, but the book was quite direct in implying that the system was doomed to fail regardless.
There's also a lingering sentiment that the whole endeavor might not have been doomed. Hammond's death scene is fairly effective in this regard. His legs are broken, he's desperately trying to stay alive, and in his death throes he's cursing everything that went wrong, but also mentally deciding how he'll do it again but this time do it better. Hire better people, make sure all the problems that plagued Jurassic Park are fixed, etc.
Ultimately his thoughts are the ramblings of a dying narcissistic billionaire who blames everyone but himself, but the sentiment is there. This could have worked. If the powers that be respected what they were creating, if they did their due diligence, if they showed proper humility and care, it didn't have to end this way. Of course, it was too late for that. People died, the dinosaurs escaped the island, and the mastermind Hammond was eaten by Compys.
Ultimately his thoughts are the ramblings of a dying narcissistic billionaire who blames everyone but himself, but the sentiment is there. This could have worked. If the powers that be respected what they were creating, if they did their due diligence, if they showed proper humility and care, it didn't have to end this way. Of course, it was too late for that. People died, the dinosaurs escaped the island, and the mastermind Hammond was eaten by Compys.
The movie also has a great nod toward all this near the beginning, when Nedry is finishing his meal while discussing the plan and the waiter brings the check: "Don't get cheap on me, Dodgson."
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I think I may have skimmed it during a Barnes and Noble visit 10ish years ago now that I think back….
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Yes but I think in the film, it's implied he was leaving everyone there to die.
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It's a vague memory… but I'm genuinely curious now. I'll probably see if my local B&N has it next time I'm there
No, in the movie he was also just trying to get to the docks to give the samples to the courier and then get back behind his desk.
If I recall correctly. In the books, Nedry is more of a Dev Team Director. He has a whole team of developers on the main land. He regularly uses a dial up connection to pass code back and forth to them. It's not all him, he's just the guy on site implementing the changes.
Second, I want to say Nedry had a huge gambling problem, or something that got him in over his head that turned him more greedy than normal. And him needing money and being something of a valuable resource gave him an opportunity to exploit Hammond. I want to say Hammon entertained it briefly, but the bills kept piling on and Nedry showed no sign of stopping.
In the movies, there is one throwaway line that I think Hammond or Arnold says to Nedry about Nedry's team, so it's implied he isn't doing everything on Jurassic park solo.
That said, yes, Hammond's "Spared no expense" is still bullshit. But Nedry is a bit more complex of a character, and I actually kind of like that backstory to him.
edit:The book had some similarly good hints.
Like relatively early on Malcolm is asking about how they keep track of the dinosaurs and Arnold is bragging about all the different kinds of ways the computer tracks and measures them, produces this graph:
am dumb
There's a part of me that still feels this way everytime I watch it and I've seen it dozens of times. I'm not sure what to contribute that to besides maybe my hopeless optimism.
Nah, he tells Hammond and Arnold that the systems will be screwy for about 20 minutes when he leaves to get a soda, which is the amount of time he tells the dude at the docks that it took him to do his dry runs for the plan.
It's very typical Hollywood to try and make the (evil) old white capitalist more sympathetic. "No, you see, he actually loves his grandkids dearly and he's a charming people person who wants the park available to everyone and see the flea circus of his youth come true, and he wants to believe the best in people and blablabla".
And of course the bald, scrawny lawyer and fat computer hacker are the bad ones.
And of course the bald, scrawny lawyer and fat computer hacker are the bad ones.
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The movies make Hammond out to be someone who just wants to bring amazing experiences and scientific discoveries to the public. In the books, he's specifically doing it all for money.
"And, you remember our original intent was to use the emerging technology of genetic engineering to make money. A lot of money."
"From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind."
That last quote is about curing cancer. The dude was evil.
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That's really cool, I haven't read the book since high school. Jurassic World should have leaned into that idea more, it would have been a smarter way of updating the premise.
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Everything probably would have been fine if that tropical storm didn't roll through too. He wasn't count on the weather being shit.
As I recall, they irradiated all the dinosaurs' reproductive organs to make sure they were sterile, but they didn't know exactly where the organs were (presumably because it was too expensive to dissect and fully study the life cycle of every single species they had) or what the radiation dosage needed to be so it failed.
The whole operation is them flying by the seat of their pants. Moving forward without fully understanding what they're doing.
Kinda, both he and David Koepp wrote the screenplay. A shitton of shit was changed from the book.
It's clear in the movie that Nedry was not abandoning people.
Imagine being the family or friend of someone who died because of Nedry and actually thinking he's sympathetic because he wanted more money or didn't intend for the disaster. We also don't even know if it's true! We briefly hear his perspective, literally while he's talking to his partner in a criminal conspiracy. He is not reliable at all.
At least in the movie.
At least in the movie.
To be fair, there weren't wide scale escapes in the movie. Just the Rex, which had been lured to the fence with a goat and then investigated the tour cars and the raptors who were said to be constantly testing the fences.
The curve there is a normal distribution. (In statistics, that's not just a description, it's the literal name of the curve).
It's called that because if you examine a population based on many common attributes, you'll end up with a curve like that. In the example in the book, it's a height chart for compys, so their average height is around 33cm and the further you move away from that in either direction the few individuals you get. Most compys are average height or close to it, some are a bit smaller or taller, and a very few are on the fringes. You'd get the same kind of curve for humans.
Why this is a hint is that Jurassic Park isn't normal - its dinosaur populations are meant to be strictly controlled and only boosted artificially through the creation of batches of cloned animals. The graph should be staggered. Later in the book Malcolm gives his impression of what the graph should have looked like:
My original post left things a bit more subtle than the book. One of Crichton's more difficult attributes as a writer is his need to explain things to the reader, so instead of just dropping the clue and allowing it to be paid off fully later, he goes most of the way towards connecting the dots himself. So he spends the best part of a page after the graph eluding to the fact that the dinosaurs are breeding, but not outright stating it.
This one blew me away when I first got it. It'd been staring me in the face for two decades.
Also:
I'm pretty sure all of this goes back to Westworld, which was basically Crichton's proto-Jurassic Park, but I think there was also an early problem that takes place on the plane to the park in the 70s movie?
its literally all plot bollocks to have big dinos run around. I woudln't mind but Malcolm is such a jerk about being right.
No way they'd change sex that quickly, I doubt they'd break the fences that quickly, life *doesn't* find a way and a park full of dinosaurs is barely any more dangerous than a zoo.
…and breath...
(I do love the movie)
No way they'd change sex that quickly, I doubt they'd break the fences that quickly, life *doesn't* find a way and a park full of dinosaurs is barely any more dangerous than a zoo.
…and breath...
(I do love the movie)
The curve there is a normal distribution. (In statistics, that's not just a description, it's the literal name of the curve).
It's called that because if you examine a population based on many common attributes, you'll end up with a curve like that. In the example in the book, it's a height chart for compys, so their average height is around 33cm and the further you move away from that in either direction the few individuals you get. Most compys are average height or close to it, some are a bit smaller or taller, and a very few are on the fringes. You'd get the same kind of curve for humans.
Why this is a hint is that Jurassic Park isn't normal - its dinosaur populations are meant to be strictly controlled and only boosted artificially through the creation of batches of cloned animals. The graph should be staggered. Later in the book Malcolm gives his impression of what the graph should have looked like:
My original post left things a bit more subtle than the book. One of Crichton's more difficult attributes as a writer is his need to explain things to the reader, so instead of just dropping the clue and allowing it to be paid off fully later, he goes most of the way towards connecting the dots himself. So he spends the best part of a page after the graph eluding to the fact that the dinosaurs are breeding, but not outright stating it.
Thanks. I found the excerpt in question which helpfully contextualises the Gaussian distribution as being representative of a "healthy biological population":
because its all predicated on the trendy science of the time that was chaos theory. It makes for a nice rompy book but still mostly nonsense.
Corporate Central America to be more precise. Isla Nublar is a Costa Rican island.
I read the book before I saw the movie but I was like 11 years old lol
I barely remember the book
I barely remember the book
To be fair to the movie, the park was not open yet and also a majority of the staff left because of a tropical storm. So they just had the most needed team left.
I would unironically love a movie like this. A movie set in a dinosaur park where the park itself was fine and something else was the driver of the plot - a couple having relationship problems, a drug deal going down, wacky stoner hijinks...
I liked the book, but Malcolm was seriously getting on my nerves as he rans through all those rants in his morphine delusions.
I just saw this on Twitter and it made me think of this post:
Film Muldoon and Gennaro die in cartoony ways that are memed to this day.
In the book they go on a fucking road trip with a tranq rocket launcher to take down the T-Rex and nearly get into a scuffle with it before bringing it down. They took down a fucking T-REX with a rocket launcher in a moving Jeep.
Then Doom their way through a foggy night battle with raptors in a construction zone.
And both survive the book.
(only to die cartoonishly in the backstory of the second book)
Then Doom their way through a foggy night battle with raptors in a construction zone.
And both survive the book.
(only to die cartoonishly in the backstory of the second book)
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Yea the book is great in a lot of ways, better than the movie in some respects. The introduction and ending of the book are much better imo. But the movie has one major benefit and that is you actually get to see the dinos visualized and it is glorious.
I don't think I'd call it Corporate Central America. It's a Costa Rican island but it's all North American whiteys doing the hubris, if I'm not mistaken.