I am debuting a new segment here on Truth On Cinema called “What’s Been Bugging Me” and it will essentially be little rants about whatever has been bugging me about films. It may be something totally obvious to everyone else, and it may be a new revelation to you, either way, it’s something that’s been bugging me forever and I want to get it out.

For the inaugural edition of WBBM (I love to “initialize” things), I want to talk about the death of the lawyer in Jurassic Park. Do you remember that scene?

So to set the scene up: we have the first glimpse of the T-Rex as he is breaking through the electrified fence with the two tour vehicles stopped right beneath him. The rain is coming down, it’s eerily silent, and all you hear is the slow breaking of the electrified fence rails, when all of a sudden, he emerges! He slumbers out waving his giant head back and forth in search of food when he is distracted by the stupid kids turning on the flash light.

Alright, before all of this happened, when the T-Rex dropped the lamb’s leg on the roof of the tour vehicle, Donald Gennaro, “the bloodsucking lawyer” opened the door, abandoned the young kids, and took off for the forest, ie the portable bathroom, and sat himself down on the toilet…only after closing the door. The T-Rex never saw him run off and as far as we all know, he has just escaped and is running “for the hills.”

What happens next has been bugging me for years: so the T-Rex chases Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) away from the cars and to the forest in a very chaotic and random path, and yet at the same time, right towards the bathroom hut where our ole’ good buddy Gennaro is quietly letting nature do its thing. The T-Rex crashes through the hut sending Ian flying off with a broken leg, totally obliterating the bathroom hut, though keeping Gennaro and his toilet completely intact, and what transpires next is the kicker: barely moving at all, say for his hands brushing his hair back and trying to open his eyes because being still makes you invisible to the T-Rex, the T-Rex sees him and chomps down on him and enjoys a well-balanced snack. And then, in the very next scene, Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Lexi (Ariana Richards) are moving about and around and screaming just before the T-Rex gets face-to-face with them and then Grant utters his famous line, making us all feel better, “Don’t move! He can’t see us if we don’t move.”

Hello?! You were moving all over the place while the T-Rex was walking up to you, making all kinds of noise, but just before he scans his huge face across yours and Lexi’s, your stillness happens to make you invisible all of a sudden?! What about Gennaro? He was still for the most part, he wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t making noise, he was just fidgeting and yet he was chomped down on.

There’s no real resolution to this rant, it’s just been bugging me and I wanted to see if it was bugging anyone else. I know he had to die, he was the “bad guy” in the film and as a matter of fact, I felt a sense of relief when it happened. “Good, the bad guy got his.” Nevermind the fact that his death defied everything the movie was trying to teach us about dinosaurs!

So, what’s been bugging you lately?

No related posts.