What Happened to John Hammond in the Original Jurassic Park Book?

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1993’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg, portrays John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the CEO and co-founder of InGen, as a man unwilling to hold back on costs. He invites three experts – paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Stern), and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) – to inspect his creation, Isla Nublar, home to the groundbreaking Jurassic Park, a park and zoo where dinosaurs are brought back to life using ancient DNA.

However, when Dennis Nedry, the dissatisfied Jurassic Park computer technician, intentionally triggered chaos by sabotaging the systems on the island near Costa Rica, the dinosaurs were able to escape again. Consequently, Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), game warden Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck), and chief engineer Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) all met unfortunate ends during a disastrous park tour.

In Hammond’s case (who went to great lengths, save for his technician), survival was achieved and eventually, he managed an escape from the island accompanied by his grandchildren Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello). He reappeared in the sequel titled “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” (1997), which begins with a horde of Compsognathus attacking a young girl on Isla Sorna, an island located 87 miles southeast of Nublar, a sister island to his original location.

In the film, the girl manages to make it through, however, character Dieter Stark, the dinosaur hunter played by Peter Stormare, meets an unfortunate end when he comes across the “compys.

Life, uh, finds a way

The scenario is reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s classic Jurassic Park novel, in which the character Hammond meets his end when he’s overrun by a group of creatures similar to the ‘Procompsognathus’, which serve as the book’s version of the compys.

In the “Hammond II” chapter, Hammond sustains a broken ankle when he tumbles down a slope on his way to his bungalow. At the age of 76, he struggles but is unable to climb back up the hillside. Instead, he hears the chirping sounds of small scavengers, similar to chickens, which feed on injured creatures. These venomous compys attack Hammond, and ultimately, his last sensation is a faint discomfort as they sink their teeth into his neck, leading to his demise.

David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for the 1993 film “Jurassic Park”, mentioned Hammond’s original ending in the recent issue of Empire Magazine. This magazine, celebrating the 50th anniversary of another Spielberg movie based on a novel about a dangerous beast – the 1975 film “Jaws” – makes a parallel to Peter Benchley’s book. In the movie, a subplot involving Hooper (portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss) and his affair with police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) prior to being killed by the shark was left out from the novel.

Koepp explained to Empire that such decisions are typical when adapting a novel. In the case of Jurassic Park, the book is slightly darker than the movie because Richard Attenborough’s character (Hammond) meets an unfortunate end, consumed by his own creations. He found it too somber a note to include in the film.

Koepp expressed, “We’ve taken quite a liking to him; is it not possible for him to grasp his lesson instead?” This reminds me of a similar situation in the movie _Jaws_. Instead of having an affair, he has a great white shark as a challenge. That’s already plenty to work with.

In the Jurassic Park film, Sir Attenborough’s character, Hammond, is portrayed less sympathetically than in other versions, showing more disregard for his park staff and the loss of their lives. Contrastingly, in Michael Crichton’s The Lost World novel, the deceased Hammond is described as a shrewd businessman, or “hustler,” whose main skill was generating wealth.

Koepp also penned new movie Jurassic World Rebirth, which stomps into theaters July 2.

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2025-04-10 03:10