Most you have either watched the movie or read the book, but briefly, the character of Ian Malcolm is a mathematician specializing in a branch of mathematics called "Chaos Theory," which analyzes the impact of uncertainties and randomness on deterministic models. In the book he seems to be used as Crichton's mouthpiece, criticizing the arrogance of those that believe they can harness and control nature because of its inherent unpredictability.
In monologue after monologue after monologue.
Now, I want to state at this moment that Jurassic Park is otherwise a very enjoyable read – it's a hell of an idea for a story and even though the characters are fairly one-dimensional, Crichton paces it well and I had a hard time putting it down (even though I read it already, albeit almost 30 years ago).
Ian Malcolm, though… hoo boy. He's a one-dimensional mouthpiece for Crichton, who spends pages ranting through Malcolm about scientists' conceit. I get it – mankind's hubris makes for a great theme, and concerns about genetic technology are an interesting theme to mine.
The thing is, though, Crichton undermines his own argument. That argument basically boils down to "scientists are young and lack the experience and wisdom that decades of scratching and clawing to the top brings with it in other careers." But then what does Crichton go do? He makes 76-year-old John Hammond the primary antagonist – a guy that spent his life clawing his way to the top but, like a petulant child, refuses to listen to every else around him. The primary scientist (Henry Wu), suggests they "start over" with the dinosaurs before the park opens so that they can make changes and improvements, but Hammond refuses to listen because "it's what people expect to see."
So despite Malcolm's bloviating, the real villain in the film is not science, but capitalism. The scientist wanted to slow it down. The businessman wanted to speed it up, damn the risks. Thus, it's not scientists' hubris – who just want to study things – but the greed of the park owners and creators that need to turn a profit and do it quickly without concern for the ramifications.
The rest of the book is pretty rad, but I had to get that off my chest. Fuck Ian Malcolm.
by FunetikPrugresiv
34 Comments
He was my favorite character LOL
Awhile ago I picked up a double edition with both Jurassic Park and Lost World combined. You’ve reminded me I need to actually dig it out and re-read them because I haven’t since the 90s either. I’m really fuzzy on the details of them compared to the movies.
Science has to take a little of the blame, it’s not like capitalists could have hatched a single egg on their own.
I couldn’t stand the young girl Lex Murphy in the book. Whined, complained, just down right irritating. Thankfully they toned it down in the film.
I do recall him being very preachy through Malcom. Thought it was cool when I was 24, but now I feel like his speeches are just him just setting up an opposing viewpoint then dunks on the viewpoint. Like the whole “pfft global warming and how we have enough nukes to destroy the planet? This planet has been here long before us and it’ll be here long after. How arrogant are humans to think we can stop this immortal thing.” Like dude when people say “destroy the planet” they mean the current life, not weird amoebas that’ll survive in our volcanos.
This isn’t directly related to Ian, but my favorite thing about the book vs the movie is how Hammond is portrayed. The Wu vs Hammond “these aren’t even real dinosaurs” argument is my favorite scene and I loved Hammonds death. Just felt poetic
Well… that’s always the argument I make when people say the book is better than the movie. Ian Malcolm is great and suave in the movie. They got Jeff Goldblum delivering this razor sharp commentary. You can’t beat that. You love Malcolm in the movie. You hate it in the book. ‘Nuff said
Science damn you
I recently read it for the first time and thought he was perfectly cast and wished more of book Ian was in the movie 😅
Perhaps the real point of the book is that science and capitalism make poor bedfellows. When there is an incentive to cut corners and rush out a “product” rather than do the long and difficult work of generating a deeper understanding, respect for the subject is lost and calamity follows.
Wu isn’t really a good guy either in this. He is bored with his work and cares very little for the animals he is creating. When they first see the baby raptor, Grant asks Wu how he know it is a velociraptor and Wu admits that he doesn’t really know. They are just sort of guessing what each animal is.
Wu wants to move on, but he is stuck. He can’t publish his amazing work because Hammon won’t let him and he can’t do anything else, because Hammon won’t let him. He was interested in genetics, not the animals he created and now he is stuck with a zoo.
This is the science hubris. Wu makes all these animals without even bothering to learn the most basic thing about them. He can’t be bothered to determine what species they are or how they fit into an ecosystem. No one got a dinosaur expert on the team and Wu and his team couldn’t be bothered to learn about the dinosaurs. Wu thinks that he can just make them do whatever he wants, because he created them. That he can just alter their DNA a little bit to solve any problem he wants. And, what’s more, he doesn’t view them as anything but his creation.
That’s so funny the way people react differently to the exact same things. I always loved Malcolm in the movies and reading the books made me love him MORE – yes, he’s a self-important asshole, but that’s what makes him a fun character, to me. I also don’t think Malcolm is ignoring the capitalism aspect at all, and I don’t think Henry Wu is innocent in all this either, I think Wu waits until too late to actually realize the impact his carelessness has and he places too much faith in Hammond until it’s too late to really push back.
I don’t think Malcolm is always right like he thinks he is, but I think he’s right more often than other characters would like him to be, lol.
Reading this in college while doing a very non-mathmatical degree I kind of enjoyed the contrast between my own thinking from the humanities to how hard nosed mathmetical Ian was, I defintely read him as being intentionally kind of unlikeable but its interesting to see people have different takes on him.
Another thing that might’ve helped is I listend to the audiobook, and the chaos theory ramblings may have gone over better or themtically interesting for me having Ian actually literally talk at me about it
The thing to remember about moralistic fiction is that the author gets to decide how things turn out for the characters. Crichton made a lot of bank writing cautionary “science” stories, and if you read his later books, you can see that he became incredibly formulaic about it.
Prey was a perfect example. His moral heroes are always ignored, are always proven right, and are the only ones to survive the absolute cluster-fuck they get tied up in, by pulling a last minute ass-pull. In the real world, _everyone_ dies.
It’s also why I get annoyed with people treating Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as a textbook on “how to run societies”. Specifically the train scene. In the book, the “hero” overrides his employees’ concerns about the warning lights and full steams ahead to get to his meeting on time because he “knows the schedules inside out”. God help him if something had caused the other train to be late.
In the real world, faults rarely occur one at a time and the newspaper headlines would likely read “Arrogant Industrialist kills Hundreds. ‘He’s Pulled This Shit Before’ Says Digruntled Employees.” But Ayn wanted to hammer home the idea of Genius Being Held Back By Mundanes, so Mr Arrogance gets to arrive safely.
I actually kinda liked Malcom more so in the book.
He’s the only voice of reason that doesn’t seem infatuated with the idea of dinosaurs being brought back to life. Even Dr. Grant and Ellie are beholden to the idea at first and are victims of the for profit landscape of Paleontology research. If they didn’t need their expeditions funded, they wouldn’t have the need to be there.
One of the few books I’ve read that I actually enjoyed the movie much more. I also realized I’m not a huge Michael C. fan. I did enjoy Andromeda Strain, but that’s about it. His writing style it too choppy for me.
God help you with The Lost World. He’s even worse.
Plus, the trope of “Science Marches On” hit that book *hard*. Basically every single thing Malcom bitches about and claims is highly unlikely and on and therefore unknowable is basic science today.
He’s right though. Not only does he predict it but he figures it out before anyone else does. Malcolm figures out the dinosaurs are reproducing and running free unmonitored in the park almost the moment he arrives.
And it’s not some gut feeling. He reasons his way through it and has the park staff provide proof in a matter of minutes.
As for his lecturing, the man is a lecturer. I know plenty of people like that. it doesn’t make them one-dimensional. Malcolm build a career around warning against exactly the thing he sees in Jurassic Park.
I also think you’ve kind of missed the point of the story. You seem to think the story is supposed to blame science while in reality it should blame capitalists.
Crichton’s / Malcolm’s point is that the way science works allows us to learn new knowledge faster than we learn to be responsible for them. The fact that the capitalists pushed a little harder than the scientists wanted to go is irrelevant.
The point is that the way science works is that it’s building blocks on building blocks. Nobody has to learn everything from scratch. Everyone just builds on the work of their predecessors. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.
And that’s how we end up with nearly godlike powers and a child’s sense of responsibility. The scientists and capitalists were quibbling over details. The point is that because the science came so easy to them, nobody learned how to use it responsibly.
If you thought the Ian Malcolm monologues were bad in JP, don’t even bother with Lost World. Malcolm is the main character and the book is nothing but his monologues.
Maybe I completely misread it…it has been years for me as well, but my takeaway was always more capitalism shouldn’t drive science, because bad things happen when investors and deadlines are a concern…
I didn’t really see science as the villain as much as ramming unfinished products thru for profit.
Honestly the only thing that made him not seem extremely and unbearably pretentious in the movies is the acting power and humor of Jeff Goldblum
I love the t rex river chase portion. I also love how it goes into the background of the parks and all the little maintenance buildings they’d have across the park.
As someone who watched the movies long before reading the books I love how reading it just adds so much more to the story and the background.
Side note I hope one day we get a truly fleshed out game based on the original park so we can see more of the park like we do in the books. I liked how the telltale stories game gave us a glimps of it but I want to see the park like it is in the fan made “Jurassic Dream” game.
He does it in literally all his books. State of Fear especially…
I love how Jurassic Park III took a playful jab at this.
“Did you read Malcolm’s book?”
“It was really preachy. And too much chaos. Everything was chaos, chaos, chaos. It just seemed like the guy was high on himself.”
I enjoyed both books. Malcolm is terrible in the first one. He loudly announces how the park will fail because Hammond made a fatal error, and then he refuses to elaborate until the very end where he reveals everything, but it doesn’t feel like the reveal adds anything.
I also didn’t really like the very end of Jurassic Park, where >!they find the cave with the raptors who are sneaking onto the boats. Suddenly, everyone turns on Gennaro who has been nothing but helpful and force him into the cave to explore. Muldoon even threatens him with a stun prod or something. Hammond’s death is also out of nowhere and just kind of funny.!<
The part where he’s laid on the table monologuing all calm and coherent while the raptors are actively clawing in through the ceiling above him was definitely too much lol
Nah Malcolm’s opiate fueled rants are everything
All the characters in the book version of Jurassic Park suck. The movie is a vast improvement in that it makes them much more likeable.
One of favourite parts of the book is a Malcolm scene: the bit where he’s asking about how the software scans for dinosaurs in the park to account for them all. The dread and horror as you realise what’s wrong, and how simple an error it is, is fucking incredible, and is probably the best bit of horror that I’ve read. It sums up the human arrogance so neatly.
Yeah, he’s a pretentious wanker and absolutely insufferable in the book. He’s pretty much the same in the movie, it’s just that Jeff is so goddamn charismatic that we love him anyway.
>but the greed of the park owners
“No expenses spared!”
One IT guy [1]. A single IT guy. That’s all you need to know.
Even in the movie it’s less the hubris of the scientists and more trying to pinch pennies. The whole time Hammond is spouting his “spared no expense!” line, even when it comes to the tubs of ice cream, except when it comes to dealing with the “computer nerd” who designed his park’s entire security.
Nedry tells Dodson not to get cheap on him with the check because “that was Hammond’s mistake” and right before he goes ahead and sets off his computer program designed to such down the park’s security he basically pleads with Hammond not to maker him do it, rehashing his case that he deserves to be paid more one final time. Hammond tells him to deal with it, he signed a shitty contract and he needs to live with the mistake. We can have Jeeps outfitted with military grade night vision goggles, but our park security guy gets paid peanuts. So Nedry gives Hammond the big middle finger and puts the park’s downfall into motion.
Yes, Nedry may be slovenly and annoying (played perfectly by Wayne Knight), but his interaction with Hammond illustrates just how much more Hammond cares about things, and the show, then he does people, It’s only when his grandchildren’s lives are on the line does he at all back off from that line.
The dinosaurs did start breeding, sure, nature finds a way and all that. But the park wouldn’t have hit the throttle on a full Ian Malcom “chaos theory” model without Nedry looking to supplement his income because his employer was putting money everywhere but his chief tech guy/head of security.
You missed the point in all his monologues, his point was re-creating the dinosaurs being the mistake, remember “life finds a way” the scientists were just a culpable as Hammond, it wasn’t capitalistic greed it was the unethical manipulation of life.
The book had more rocket launchers being used then the movie, so the book is just slightly better.
This is an unpopular opinion but the film is much more coherent in every single way. Far superior than the book.