While we don’t see it on screen, the death of Ray Arnold, played by Samuel L. Jackson in the first “Jurassic Park”, should have been shot and featured in the final cut of the film.
When we see the state of his arm – separated from the rest of his body and discovered by Ellie Sattler in a dark corridor of Jurassic Park – we suspect that the last moments of Ray Arnold must not have been a cakewalk .
Left on his side to restore the current in the park, the computer scientist embodied by Samuel L. Jackson in the film of Spielberg was indeed shredded and devoured by the raptors. The scene, which we imagine to be particularly violent and which does not appear in the film that we know, should however have been shot, and appear in the final cut.
Indeed, as the actor had declared in an interview for A.V. Club in 2018, he had been called back to the set to film the sequence, but had never been able to get there because of the terrible hurricane that had hit the set during the production of the film.
Universal Pictures
“I was supposed to come to Hawaii to film the scene of my death”he said. “But there was a hurricane that destroyed all the sets. So I couldn’t come to Hawaii… Everything you see [dans le film], these are the remains of my body, my arm. But yeah, I was supposed to be on set.”
Impossible to know what Steven Spielberg intended to do with the sequence in question, and if he was really considering a bloody or violent scene. After all, the death of hunter Robert Muldoon, which occurs in similar circumstances, is filmed almost off camera.
That said, in the original work by Michael Crichton, the disappearance of Ray Arnold is described in a rather brutal way. The poor technician indeed finds himself pinned to the ground by a raptor, which begins to plow his chest with its claws.
Universal Pictures
Another anecdote concerning the character of Ray Arnold, who we see smoking like a firefighter throughout the film: the cigarettes used by Samuel L.Jackson on the set were fake.
“[Spielberg] shot some of the footage that I’m in, in this lab, with this long trail of ash hanging down from this (…) fake cigarette”confided the actor, still at the microphone of A.V. Club.
“I had quit smoking, and [Spielberg] wanted to make sure I didn’t relapse, so he found me the fake cigarettes that tasted the worst possible.”
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Jurassic Park: 10 details hidden in the film
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