Jurassic Park‘s Dennis Nedry must have been a fan of ’80s fashion, because his outfits in the movie closely resembled those worn by the kids in The Goonies. Actor Wayne Knight starred in the sci-fi adventure film in 1993, and the film has since become a beloved classic. Jurassic Park‘s debut came eight years after Richard Donner’s The Goonies, another highly revered film.
At the time of Jurassic Park‘s debut, Knight was best known for his role as Newman in Seinfeld. Nedry in Jurassic Park was just as memorable considering he played the weasel within InGen’s workforce. Nedry was computer programmer that sabotaged the dinosaur park’s security system, which he needed to shut down to steal dinosaur embryos after being approached by a rival company. A bad storm arrived on the island as Nedry tried to escape to the docks. Nedry crashed his jeep and lost the embryos before karma caught up with him as he was killed by a Dilophosaurus.
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Jurassic Park was directed by the legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Almost a decade prior, Spielberg worked as the executive producer on The Goonies, and also created the story, but his influence wasn’t the only connection between the two films. Jurassic Park paid homage to Spielberg’s past by using Nedry’s outfits throughout the movie to brilliantly mirror The Goonies. The similarity had gone unnoticed for quite some time but it has recently been making the rounds. The side-by-side outfits (via Twitter) are now blowing the minds of viewers who love both movies.
The first outfit in focus was Nedry’s meeting with the rival client. While meeting at the beach bar, Nedry wore a green, pink, black, and white floral shirt to fit in with the vacationers. The shirt was very similar to Chunk’s (Jeff Cohen) floral shirt in The Goonies. Corey Feldman’s character, Mouth, wore a gray jacket that looks just like the one that Nedry later wore in the computer lab. Finally, when Nedry went on his mission to the docks, he wore a bright yellow rain jacket over his other layers which was strikingly similar to Mikey’s (Sean Astin) look in The Goonies.
Whether this was a planned attempt at paying homage or an unintentional coincidence is still unclear. It’s more than likely that the costume department decided to subtly use the outfits as a tribute to Spielberg’s time on The Goonies. Nedry had his own hidden mission throughout Jurassic Park in the same way that the kids embarked on their secret adventure. Or maybe Knight was a huge fan of Spielberg’s work and he wanted to honor his director in a special way without putting too much attention on himself.
- Jurassic World 3 (2021) release date: Jun 11, 2021
