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"Major Spoilers Ahead!" |
Dr. Lewis Dodgson is the main antagonist of Universal Pictures' Jurassic Park franchise.
He is a shady individual who comes from Biosyn, a bio-engineering company that is rivals with InGen and Mantah Corp. At first, Dodgson was an employee who appointed Dennis Nedry to steal fifteen dinosaur embryos from InGen as a corporate spy, leading to the downfall of Jurassic Park in the process. He eventually became the CEO of Biosyn years later where he schemes with Daniel Kon three years later to buy the dinosaurs captured by Mantah Corp for his own company.
After the dinosaurs spread across the world, Dodgson seemingly plans to help stop the spread of giant unidentified locusts across the world nine years later, all while using a facility used as a dinosaur preserve in the Dolomite Mountains as part of his cover, but in reality is plotting to use them to wipe out his competitor's food products, eventually deciding to use them to scheme a way to blackmail the world's population to either rely on his company's GMOs to survive or starve to extinction. He is also the former boss of Henry Wu, Ian Malcolm, and Ramsay Cole, and the archenemy of Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm.
In the film series, he was portrayed by Cameron Thor in Jurassic Park and Campbell Scott in Jurassic World: Dominion, in Camp Cretaceous he was voiced by Adam Harrington.
What Makes Him a Scrappy?[]
- He's regarded as a poor final antagonist for the Jurassic Park saga and the worst human antagonist overall. This is made even worse by the fact that the character was meant to be the overarching antagonist of the entire series yet having barely anything that can live to that hype.
- Despite being the main villain of the series, he has absolutely no presence while on screen, he comes up as a bumbling incompetent CEO that's completely unable to command any respect against anyone on screen and beyond being the cause of the locusts barely possess any threat towards the characters, the only thing he ever does is firing Ian Malcolm, which if anything ended up helping the heroes considering it still give him enough information to save Alan and Ellie.
- He's a complete downgrade from his equivalent from the novel who was a much more competent and intelligent villain that also managed to serve as a personal physical threat towards the heroes and is a very popular character in the novels, which only lead to more disappointment once he was poorly adapted in Dominion.
- His role from the novels is also so reduced that many viewers were bluffed that the filmmakers decided to give him a major role at the very last movie. In the movies he appears in one single scene in the original Jurassic Park indirectly causing the entire disaster on the original park, and neither he nor Biosyn (the company he works for) have any relevance in the last four movies. Instead, he suddenly becomes the major threat after five films (instead of the dinosaurs, any of the organizations from the previous movies or Henry Wu, who was a major antagonist in the last two movies).
- Unlike the previous Jurassic World antagonists, he doesn't have any trained minions or mercenaries that would allow him to become a threat, which leads to the very awkward encounters with his enemies where he just stares there and realizes he can do absolutely nothing against them.
- He's behind the rather poorly-received ploy of using the Giant Locusts to get rid of his competence, which was hated by fans for switching the focus from dinosaurs becoming once again the dominating species over something so unexciting in comparison, like bugs getting rid of crops of food.
- There's also very little in terms of acknowledging his role in the continuity of the rest of the franchise that he may as well be a completely different character and not much will change. Neither his role in the events of the first movie, nor his connection with Dennis Nedry, are revealed or mentioned. He never confronts Alan, Ellie or Ian nor do they discover about it, yet despise him how much his actions had affected them.
- Some also wondered why the franchise even bothered returning Dodgson's character, as his original actor, Cameron Thor, was convicted of sexual assault in 2016, which means fans would not be even able to recognize him as the same actor from the original movie.
- Him taking the role over main antagonist, also seems to be made only to give Henry Wu a rushed heel-face turn, who most fans feel was more deserving of being the final villain, considering he has being a major antagonist in the first two Jurassic World movies and the Camp Cretaceous series. Some viewers were hoping this movie would have him finally receiving his Karma Houdini Warranty which was negated in favor of a poor attempt of trying to make him more sympathetic for some reason and is seen as complete waste of everything the last two movies were building up for. The fact that Lewis is the third corrupted executive villain in a row in the same series, does not help.
- He's also somehow implied to have been behind the creation of the Indominus Rex and the Indoraptor, yet it's never explained as to why he caused those events. Some viewers found this to be another last-minute addition because once again, there's nothing in the first two Jurassic World movies that implies that either Lewis or Byosn had any role in the incidents.
- His plan also makes no sense whatsoever; the Locusts only targeting food crops that don't belong to him would make people quickly suspicious of what is going on and he would have to deal with a lot of dangerous and powerful people that would unsurprisingly have a problem with that.
- He also gives up on his plan rather quickly which makes him come up as anticlimactic, once something starts going against his plan, he quickly gives the order to burn down the locusts and escape.
- Some fans feel the scene where he throws a tantrum at realizing his plan is failing to be one of the most laughable bad scenes in an already polarizing movie.
- Immediately after he idiotically tries to burn his super-locusts without first sedating them, causing them to end up destroying his dinosaur sanctuary in panic.
- His incompetence can be exemplified in the scene where he discovers Ramsay betrayed him, he has no power to do anything about it and all he does is to yell at him while tries to leave the room.
- His treatment of Maisie's kidnapping is also completely clueless, as he does no investigation in the matter and has no idea how to stop her from the leaving the facility.
- Some fans also found his performance to be terrible with the dialogue given to him being really awkward and his mannerisms being distracting and feel like overall he came up as way too cartoony of a villain to be taken seriously. But half cast (the returning from 90s') did a poor job portraying their roles while only the casting from the newer movies tried to give a good performance. Campbell Scott could be one doing a bad job, but was far from being the only.
- To elevate his complete incompetence, Daniel Kon from the Netflix animated series (which was made using a clearly smaller budget) was a better villain in every possible way, even just having real screen time at the last season. Kon had more talent to show how he:
- Accurately manipulated every single person he could, especially his own son after a life ignoring him;
- Had a squad of elite mercenaries able to do any and everything Kon wanted, no matter how dangerous it was;
- And whenever he felt he was losing, Kon get a way to turn the table and regain control.
- Is an actually multi-layered character that's complex rather than one-dimensional like Dodgson is.
- Considering that the cartoon's final villain was way better and felt way more dangerous than the live action's final villain, comparing the budgets and how they let a real presence at the public's minds when the stories were over, is like comparing Lewis to the future sketch of what was being planned to Kon, the animated big bad. When we see Daniel Kon being better in everything that makes a Jurassic Park/World's real villain as a corrupt and greedy executive, Lewis looks like a poor and disappointing try to get there who will never be more than a bad joke.
Trivia[]
- He is a rare instance of a character who arguably started out as an Ensemble Dark Horse (due to the very famous "Dodgson Here!" meme) but became a Scrappy later on.
- His novel counterpart doesn't count as a Scrappy due to having a better reception.
External Links[]
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 Scrappies
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