Smart Girl Character Makes Jurassic Park Movie Better than the Book
Cantel January 16, 2014
Everybody’s seen the movie “Jurassic Park,” right? A bunch of people must have also read the book by Michael Crichton, so you know the movie follows the book very closely. Except there’s one big change, and it’s such a good change that it really makes the movie better than the book. I’m talking about the girl character Alexis.
In the original book, Lex is just an immature, annoying brat the whole time. She never develops as a character – through all the danger and adventure she never gets any wiser or more reasonable. Here are just a few examples of her lines from the book:
- “Do something!” Alexis screamed. “Do something!”
- “I’m sorry, Dr. Grant!” Lex wailed. “I didn’t mean it!”
- “He’s going away!” Lex squealed, clapping her hands. “He’s going away! Naah-naah-na-na-naah! Stupid dinosaur!”
- “Kids,” Grant said, “shut up.” “Why?” Lex said, “I can do what I want, if I -” Then she fell silent, because she heard it, too. It was a bloodcurdling shriek, from somewhere downriver.
In making his film adaptation, Stephen Spielberg must have had a great insight because he made the Lex character smart, inquisitive and practical-minded. She’s way more likeable and realistic. Here are a few of her lines from the movie:
- I think Dr. Grant is really – smart.
- No, no, sh, sh, sh – stop! Stop! Stop! Don’t let the monsters come over here!
- What are you gonna do now if you don’t have to dig up dinosaur bones anymore?
- This is a Unix system. I know this. It’s the files for the whole park. It’s like a phone book – it tells you everything.
People make fun of her for the Unix line, of course, but that’s way better than how she is in the book.
It’s true her character is older in the movie than the book, but age shouldn’t have much to do with it. A kid can be curious and practical-minded at any age. And it’s certainly possible for a girl character to be smart and practical too. Three cheers for smart girl characters! I’m biased, of course, because my own yet-to-be-published novel features a smart 12-year-old girl character.
1 Comment
Sure, she is better than her book counterpart. But that might as well being up for an upgrade from a goldfish to a can of sardines. Sure, it made her character more useful, but that does not suddenly exonerate her for all of the stupid actions that she took during their encounter and escape from the T-Rex. She might be book-smart now, but she’s still dumber than a rock in terms of street smarts. And her “lil brother” clearly shows some of the intelligence and capabilities he was supposed to have before the role change, and even he was not spared from bad writing or plot convenience such as not letting of the wire fence. But whatever, anything to make more token female characters, right? Sorry but in all honesty she should’ve died right from the start. And I’m not the only one since The Atlantic also puts her as #4 for the most that deserved to die in that movie. #4 compared to her brother’s #7 (all of which was out of 11 rankings positions). And the brother was arguably the least contributive in a way compared to his sister in the end, and yet she gets higher ranked. There’s nothing wrong with putting in smarter female characters, in fact, I’m actually up for diverse characters and roles, but simply being book smart and even if you have a PHD doesn’t cut it, and definitely does not give you a free pass to acting stupid in a dire situation or when it truly counts. Otherwise, all you’re accomplishing is, like I said, in making a token character. No more, no less. Therefore, no matter what background you put them in, female characters will never get respected until they earn that respect. A character can claim to have all of the degrees available to get in the world, but that won’t matter to the readers or audience (at least the smart ones with some common sense) if they don’t actually do something worthy to earn those due respect. And Lex just simply hacking to make up for all of her mistakes or uselessness earlier (like the torch she used to draw the T-Rex, or how she screamed like a useless screaming female caricature, and only bogged down Dr. Grant esp when they were trying to survive, and did nothing while Grant was trying to save her brother) and yet the hacking did very little to stop the Velociraptors in the end, other than to buy time for them to escape into the ducts, certainly was not worthy of redeeming her. And funny you complain about character growth when the kids arguably experience the least amount of growth compared to the adults, esp in the lessons that they’ve learned through this. And no, the hacking part only barely counts as growth, which is funny that she can only display her hacking skills during that time only when they could’ve far used it a long time ago. Could’ve even saved poor Samuel Jackson’s character since he was just doing his job. Hopefully, you make that “smart 12 year old girl character” of yours more useful besides her initial role, outside of being a mere “plot device” character. What we need in this world is actual “smart” and sensible characters. Not characters that is simply biographed as “smart”.