Hollywood icon Samuel L. Jackson played a memorable early role in Jurassic Park, but his character John Arnold was originally planned to die onscreen. Referred to as Ray in the movie, reportedly to avoid viewers getting confused by a John Arnold and John Hammond both working inside the park, Arnold was the chief engineer of Jurassic Park, both in Michael Crichton's book and Steven Spielberg's film. As it is, Arnold really doesn't play that big a role in the story, but he at least gets to utter the immortal "hold onto your butts" line.
While John Arnold was a small role, it's still a very memorable one, partly because Jurassic Park is such an iconic film overall, and partly because Jackson has so much charisma that even when he's playing a fairly bland character, the eye can't help but drift his way whenever he's onscreen. Jackson would become a superstar the very next year, when Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction became a critical and commercial smash.
What many Jurassic Park fans may not know is that Arnold's death was originally supposed to play out onscreen, and not just be a case of his body being found later by Ellie Satler. Here's why those plans changed.
Jurassic Park: Why Samuel L. Jackson's Death Scene Was Cut
In the Jurassic Park book, John "Ray" Arnold dies in pretty gruesome fashion. Instead of how he heads off to the maintenance shed to get the park back online in the film, Arnold in the book doesn't go alone, heading off with Muldoon. It's a small change though, as Muldoon still gets attacked by a group of raptors, leaving Arnold on his own. He gets to the shed, only to be brutally killed by a lone raptor. It's unclear if Arnold's planned death scene in the movie would've been the same, but Samuel L. Jackson has himself confirmed that he was supposed to head to Hawaii to film his final scenes, only for a hurricane to rip through the area, destroying all the outdoor sets.
Instead, Jurassic Park didn't shoot any more footage of Jackson, and just had Dr. Satler find his disembodied arm in the maintenance shed, which they were able to film back in the U.S. on an indoor stage. It's a disappointing outcome, but real-life circumstances demanded it be so. Watching Jackson act out being killed by a raptor would've surely been a sight to see. At least he did eventually get to suffer a pretty terrific death in the 1999 movie Deep Blue Sea, infamously getting eaten by a shark mid-speech.
