I agree with the writers of MovieWeb, the line ‘Hold onto your butts’ does sound like something that Samuel L. Jackson might come up with on a lark, but at the same time learning that it came from Robert Zemeckis during a screening of Death Becomes Her is kind of funny. Obviously things weren’t going too well on that movie it sounds like and to be fair, it wasn’t all that great since it turned out to be just stupid enough to be funny, but not so much that it was considered a massive blockbuster. The whole thing came off as kind of cheesy in a way that felt incomplete, but there were people that liked it for one reason or another. Meh, to each their own, but the line that came from Zemeckis’ lips at that point were added to a script that would eventually become a phenomenon that has yet to reach a terminus if the studio has anything to say about it. At this point it’s more of a wonder if Jurassic Park is ever going to see a definitive end, or if it will still be going when the kids of today have grandkids. That might sound a bit dramatic, but let’s be realistic, Hollywood will squeeze as much money out of something as they possibly can while trying to change things up in a way from one generation to another so that it can attract as many interested eyes as possible. It’s kind of doubtful that Jackson will ever see his way onto a Jurassic Park set again, but the fact is that he helped to make the first movie something great since his character wasn’t so overwhelming that he took over the production, but he was an important figure all the same.
Ray Arnold was a decent character since he was needed and he was necessary, but he played a part that was more or less there to be utilized but not to be seen or heard from in such a big way that it became Jackson’s movie. He does have that kind of presence to be realistic since it’s been shown in a lot of movies and it’s been great. But this time around a lot of us wanted to see the dinosaurs and we wanted to see people in danger and running from these feared and terrible beasts. Arnold’s death scene was kind of dismissive really since he was there one moment and then gone the next, even if he spent a good deal of time in the movie at certain intervals. But really, when one looks at it, Jackson was inserted into key moments in this movie that made it obvious how his character was meant to be portrayed. Had he come off like Shaft, Dennis Nedry might have confessed his plans then and there, but coming off as a computer expert as he was it was still a little confusing that he couldn’t undo what Nedry had done, unless of course Nedry was just that good at hacking. But to think that a young kid could come in and suddenly understand the system because she too was a hacker, which is still a laughable point in the movie, is kind of hard to take since it’s a serious and very obvious McGuffin that says ‘here, you don’t need that guy any longer, this impossible but suddenly possible plot twist will save you’. No offense to anyone that liked this, as it did keep the plot moving forward, but it was kind of a low point in the movie.
We didn’t really need to see Arnold’s death since it’s implication was enough considering that the velociraptors were loose and anyone venturing into the woods would be taking their own life into their hands. Obviously though Arnold made it to the power station before being chomped into bloody bits, though that arm falling on Ellie’s shoulder was timed a little too perfectly, as though the raptors wanted her to be in that spot at that moment, or were squirreling food away for a rainy day, or something. Or maybe Arnold was trying to climb his way out of danger and got his arm stuck, which resulted from an attack that severed the limb and left it hanging precariously. It’s all a matter of circumstances and how they stacked up at that point. But ‘hold onto your butts’ was entirely planned, and it worked pretty well for being such a small part of the story. It is a little odd to see a computer expert smoking around the equipment however, as a lot of people would likely tell you that the smoke from cigarettes can damage the interior components of a computer and degrade them rather quickly. But hey, it’s the movies, we don’t worry about these kind of things when there are deadly animals on the loose. that kind of presence
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