How Jurassic Park's John Hammond Differs from the Originals

While Richard Attenborough's affable John Hammond was a misguided hero in the Jurassic Park film adaptation, his character in the novel Much darker.

The Jurassic Park film adaptation changed many details about John Hammond and fundamentally altered the character's motivations and ideals. In director Steven Spielberg's 1993 adaptation of Jurassic Park, John Hammond was portrayed as a kindly grandfather with big dreams, great ambitions and a cheeky grin. This depiction is a far cry from the original Michael Crichton novel of the same name, in which Hammond is arguably the villain of Jurassic Park as much as his genetically modified dinosaurs.

The changes Jurassic Park made to Hammond turned his lawyer, Donald Gennaro, from a voice of reason into a bawdy, cold profiteer, making the park's founder seem heartless by comparison Kind. Throughout the film version of Jurassic Park, the inherently good-natured Hammond is plagued by untrustworthy employees like Dennis Nidley and treacherous lackeys like Gennaro, but the character himself has a strong presence in theme park. Relatively blameless in catastrophic failure. It's essentially an inversion of Hammond's character in Clayton's original novel, Jurassic Park.

John Hammond Is A Much Darker Character In The Book

In Clayton's novel, Hammond is less fascinated by science and the wonders of dinosaurs, and more driven by profit. The scene where Hammond is seen in Jurassic Park Talk of the amazement on kids' faces when they see dinosaurs is replaced in the novel by exchanges where Hammond tells his employees that kids who can afford the privilege deserve it. The changes don't end there for Jurassic Park's John Hammond, however, as Dennis Nedry's character also has more accessible motivations for his vendetta against his employers in the novel.

In the Jurassic Park film adaptation, Nedry hopes to blackmail Hammond by selling his secret to InGen because he feels he is underappreciated. However, the novel "Jurassic Park" provides him with more background on why he suffers so badly. Nedry was hired by Hammond and remained in the dark about an ambitious project that expanded in scope and became more challenging over time. When Nedry told Hammond that he could not work under these conditions, Hammond threatened to sue him and wrote to his other clients claiming that Nedry could not be trusted. With no choice, Jurassic Park's Dennis Nedry was forced by Hammond to complete the project without further payment.

John Hammond Is Killed By Dinosaurs In The Book

If the novel version of Hammond sounds like a monster compared to his film incarnation of the saint, that may be the reason for the discrepancy Between the fate of two characters. In the Jurassic Park adaptation, Hammond sees his mistake, gives a speech about patching up God's plan, and then escapes the island in a private helicopter with his life and vast fortune still intact. In contrast, the fate of Hammond in the original novel "Jurassic Park" is more in line with his performance in the book.

There, Hammond is fooled by his grandchildren playing a recorded dinosaur roar, making him think he is being chased by a T. rex. He runs and stumbles, setting the stage for a gruesome death that doesn't do justice to a Jurassic Park (or Jurassic World) movie. The ordeal begins with Hammond breaking his ankle, and then sees him eaten alive by a herd of Procompsognathus, those chicken-sized dinosaurs seen in The Lost World. This gruesome fate is well deserved for a Jurassic Park villain who bears a strong resemblance to the film's virtuous counterpart.