I really enjoyed the movie. I really enjoyed the book.
But there's quite a bit different between the two and I'm going to summarize a bunch of 'em, perhaps get you interested in reading the book. Cuz hey, we've all seen the movie.
Fair warning, there are a lot of spoilers in here, but I'd think you can still enjoy the book after reading all these.
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The book starts off with incidents and reports of compy attacks on infants and a girl on the mainland of south america. They change the girl attack scene a bit and it is actually used as the opening for the Lost World movie. In one attack, compies eat a newborn baby's face off before the nurse comes in and scares them away. Gruesome, no?
There is also discussion of how universities and institutes used to be lofty places of learning and discovery for the sake of learning and the honor of having one's name go down in history for the discovery. But then things changed, especially with the emergence of bioscience and bio-engineering, and companies marketing the results to great profits. So, this becomes the backdrop for the story, mentioning how the In-Gen company became part of this industrial boom and that this is the story of how they went bankrupt, lots of nondisclosure agreements all around, and the whole incident was swept under the rug. Everything about the park was meticulously kept a secret.
John Hammond is actually a bit of a conman. He gained funding for the park and all the equipment and stuff by suckering in people with a display with a pygmy elephant that was only like a foot tall or so. His group has partially created the elephant to be that size, but it was also sort of a random accident almost, something he and his group couldn't replicate. Investors could just imagine how much money they could make if they could turn animals like elephants into tiny versions of themselves and market them as pets. And Genaro, lawyer and investor, helped him in this scheme.
The book actually goes quite a bit into chaos theory, which wasn't explained much or very well in the movie. I think the underlying idea has to do with probability and control. And that all simple systems are actually complex at their core. And that we don't have control even when we think we do. Like with the water drop falling down one side of Ellie's hand rather than the other, even simple actions can diverge and the accumulation tears away the system from the expected pattern. There is so much more to it in the books that I can't explain very well. Plus, it's been a while since I went through it.
Speaking of Ellie, she's actually one of Dr. Grant's students and is in no way romantically involved with him. She is either married or has a fiance at this time.
Robert Muldoon, the Australian hunter from the movie is an African hunter in the book.
In the book, Tim is older and Lex is younger. Lex is also a huge brat. At one point in the book, her loud and incessant whining almost gets them eaten by the T. Rex.
Oh, Dr. Grant loves instead of hates kids in the book. How could he hate the group of humans who loves dinosaurs as much as he does?
Also, the T. Rex swims. Like an alligator.
You know that waterfall scene in the Lost World where the T. Rex sticks its head in to try to get people. That happens in the first book to Tim and Lex, and the rex can use its tongue to grab things and almost gets one of them.
During their trek, Lex, Tim, and Grant go through the pteradon cage. Those things are mean AF.
In the book they explain the Nedry was being gyped by Hammond in his programming contract with him, so he was losing a lot of money. So he was susceptible to Dodgson's corporate espionage offers. Still gets eaten by dilophosaurs.
Remember that guy with the glasses driving the Jeep after they get off the helicopter? He has a name and a bigger role in the book. He ends up acting as babysitter for Lex and Tim. In the book it is him, Regis, who abandons the kids when he sees the Rex. He gets eaten by the young rex.
Because yeah, there are two rexes in the book- the second is a juvenile.
They see many other dinosaurs, some with ridiculous coloring schemes, in the book and the tour isn't the let-down it is in the movie.
The whole triceratops being poisoned every so often that they don't explain in the movie? In the book, that happens to stegosaurus and they discover the cause, which involves gizzard stones and raptor/stego breeding grounds.
Malcom dies of his wounds.
Hammond dies. Lex and tim use the control panel to play a recording of the rex roar across the outside speakers in order to scare away the raptors. Hammond is outside and runs away in a blind panic, thinking the rex is near him. Then stumbles and breaks his leg. Compies find him and kill him. They have a numbing, paralytic venom.
Genaro is depicted much differently in the book and iirc, he survives.
There is a discussion in the book between Hammond and Henry Woo about how the dinosaurs aren't real dinosaurs. In the book, they hide the fact from Grant and crew that they use genetic coding from other organisms to fill in the sequence gaps. Hammond wants to leave the dinosaurs as they have managed to create them. As pure and as close to 'real' dinos as they can get. Woo wants to change them to make them be the way people expect them to be- and to make them safer. Public expectation for the really big dinosaurs is for them to be like really big, slow, stupid cows. They are not. In fact, they are quite active and the raptors are incredibly fast. Like bird and praying mantis level reaction fast. Jurassic World, as you all know by now, directly uses the idea of Woo purposely modifying them.
The book also goes into more detail about how the park is set up and organized, and about all the failed cloning.
The dock and the boat are more important in the book. The boat is how compies have sneaked off onto the mainland. Grant and crew see that raptors have snuck aboard the boat going back to the mainland and it is a race to get the power back up so they use the radio/phone to call the ship back, preventing the raptors from escaping to and breeding on the mainland.
In the end, they are rescued by the military and they bomb the whole island to wipe out the dinosaurs.
