Sam Neill's tree rescue scene from Jurassic Park is one of the best in the franchise, and one that made Alan Grant an iconic movie character.
. Naturally, a figure who was well-liked around the globe and starred in some of the biggest films of all time merited tributes from fans and friends, withdirector Steven Spielberg celebrating his “exceptionally collaborative” star, noting that his role as someone who didn’t like kids couldn’t have been further from the reality of Neill as a person.
Laura Dern, his scene partner for multipleGiven the iconic status that Neill achieved thanks to his role in, it’s worth remembering, though, that when Sam Neill first appeared as Alan Grant, he was far from a household name. Though Neill had been acting regularly by that point since the ’70s, including in films opposite the likes of Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, it was his work in Spielberg’s 1993 classic that propelled him to superstardom.
Neill’s work as Dr. Grant inis exceptional from the first frame he appears in until the last, but there’s one moment in particular that might be his most memorable, and it features no dinosaurs at all. In the aftermath of the T-Rex attack, while stuck on thetour, Alan Grant finds himself in the second scenario that day that he never imagined would befall him. The first scenario was, of course, seeing a real-life dinosaur in the flesh walking around.
As for the second, and what we’re looking at, it was becoming the only adult to look after a pair of kids who weren’t even his.don’t think too hard about the geography ), Grant finds himself facing two distinct choices: The first, how he’s going to help these kids survive, and the second, how he’s going to accomplish the first when one is stuck in a car that’s also stuck in a tree. Before ascending the tree to rescue Tim, Neill delivers one of the best dramatic moments of the entire movie when he tries to speak to a frantic Lex about his plan to help her brother.
The clearly distraught Lex can only repeat “He left us,” recalling the cowardly departure of the lawyer, Gennaro, who left them in the car alone as the T-Rex escaped its confines. Neil says eight words that change the tone of the scene entirely and mark the real delineation point for Grant’s growth over the rest of the film:After climbing into the tree, Grant is not only faced with the reality of how he’s going to help Tim get out, but the fact that he doesn’t even really know how to speak to a child, never mind one that just experienced the most traumatic moment of their entire life.
We can hear this in Grant’s assurance to Tim that he won’t tell anyone that he threw up in the Jeep, a brief moment of levity as they both prepare to get out of the wrecked car and get back onto the ground. He offers more words of encouragement that further cement Grant’s new trajectory:Jurassic Park Didn’t Need Dinosaurs to Thrill, Just Sam Neill Getting Tim out of the Jeep is just the beginning, however, as the descent from the tree reveals a new problem: the car itself is coming down.
The moment is one of screenwriting brilliance, as it is a plot moment that was caused by the characters themselves, as Grant’s reach over the steering wheel to help Tim escape is what causes the wheels of the Jeep to shift and eventually give way from the vines holding it up. The carefully planned escape now has to be a hasty one.also needed Neill to sell the drama, which, of course, he does.
Neill’s performance in this scene has a few distinct emotional beats. The first is the calming sense of reassurance he wants to offer Tim, both before he gets out of the car and after.
Second, he has to sell the speed of switching gears from calm to quick-thinking. Finally, he gets the chance to bookend these tense, dramatic moments with levity. After the “I won’t tell anyone you threw up” moment, and making it out of the tree before the Jeep falls on top of them again, Tim laments, “We’re back, in the car again,” prompting Grant to reply, “At least you’re out of the tree. ”The scene works for a slew of reasons.
Spielberg’s flawless sense of staging for the action, Dean Cundey’s epic cinematography that captures each moment, the cutting by editor Michael Kahn so that there’s not a wasted second, and John Williams’ thrilling music that keeps the energy up. But the truth is that without Sam Neill’s performance, this moment may not be the noteworthy piece it is.
Sure, it would still be thrilling and fun to watch, it would keep audiences that had never seen it before on the edge of their seat about what happens next, but it needed all of those shades that Neill brings to Grant. The vulnerability, the authority, the caring, and the sense that he was growing.made an icon of Sam Neill and several of his other co-stars, and though he would go on to inhabit other characters, it was Dr. Alan Grant that became the role which defined him.
Though there are countless moments from the original film that helped define the character, the moment where Grant begins to shed his cold exterior and become the man we know at the end of the film is one that still resonates with fans today, and the one that changed the trajectory for him as the film expanded into a full-blown franchise.
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