Dennis Nedry, the villain of “Jurassic Park,” was not such a good hacker after all, as real programmers have proven. Here’s why…
Even though we’re a long way from the days when evil hackers wore ski masks and randomly hammered keys on their keyboards, hacking scenes in movies often remain unrealistic – and mocked by those in the know. .
What about Jurassic Park in 1993? Remember the park’s chief programmer, Dennis Nedry (played by Wayne Knight), who, due to financial problems, agreed to donate dinosaur embryos to Biosyn. His plan was to use the malware “Whte_rbt.obj” – a reference to Alice in Wonderland (“white rabbit”) – to disable the park’s security system in order to conceal his theft by releasing the dinosaurs.
Developers analyzed the source code that we can see on his computer in the film and it’s not great…
The discussion around Dennis’ code began years ago on the StackExchange forum. After examination, users decided that what we see on our screen cannot be used to free the dinosaurs. So Dennis is not a super hacker: what we see in the shells (command interfaces) is just sample code provided by the program he uses, Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop.
If at first glance, the windows and their contents seem quite complicated, on closer inspection, the bad guy would not even have managed to get past the security system!
Did you notice this Easter egg?
And this is of course not the only anecdote of Jurassic Park. In the list of Easter eggs from the feature film for example, we can cite this hidden detail, also linked to Dennis Nedry, visible for the first time at 43 minutes and 12 seconds of the original film. Still on the character’s screen, we can see a video playing in a small window. Steven Spielberg fans are more likely to identify the film playing there: it is indeed a scene from Jaws!
Shortly after, the screen in question can be seen again (43 minutes, 53 seconds) and the film is still playing. However, the timing doesn’t add up. Whereas in Jurassic Park itself there are about 41 seconds between the two scenes, in the shark movie there are about 25 seconds longer.
Universal Pictures
Some might say that since Dennis was not seen for a short time, he was able to move the film along a little faster. But this doesn’t seem so plausible because of his position and his conversation with John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) which takes place at that time.
Either way, the situation is rather ironic when we know that Dennis himself is about to end up in the jaws of a monster…
Universal Pictures
You can also take a look at the window that is open on the same monitor, 54 minutes and 18 seconds into the film (see above). While a video call is supposed to take place with the Isla Nublar marina, it is in reality a simple video player that we see on the screen: the mouse cursor is in fact positioned on the “button” reading” !
Jurassic World 4: it’s official!
And yes, Jurassic World will reopen its doors! This is what Universal announced last week. Currently in development, Jurassic World 4 will be written by David Koepp, the screenwriter of the first Jurassic Parkand its sequel, The Lost World: that promises!
No director is yet attached to the project but the film should feature “a new Jurassic era” according to The Hollywood Reporter, with a new story and different characters than those of the previous opuses. We do not yet know if it will be a 100% original film or a spin-off on a character we know as rumor wanted after Jurassic World: The World After.
With Steven Spielberg as executive producer, Jurassic World 4 could see the light of day around 2025.
In the meantime, the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World trilogies can be seen again on Netflix.