The Lost World: Jurᴀssic Park dropped the book’s main villain Dodgson, who finally made his return nearly 30 years later. There was such compeтιтion to adapt Michael Crichton’s Jurᴀssic Park novel that major names like Tim Burton, Joe Dante and James Cameron made bids to helm the project. Of course, it became a Steven Spielberg movie, who turned it into an instant classic. It should be noted that while the original is broadly faithful to Crichton’s source material, the screenplay made many changes.

Jurᴀssic Park is nowhere as bloody as the book, the character of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) survived while Hammond (Richard Attenborough) became far less of a villainous figure. The original also introduced Lewis Dodgson, the head of a rival company who tries to steal dinosaur embryos from under Hammond’s nose; this kicks off a chain reaction that leads to the dinosaurs breaking loose. Dodgson disappeared from the Jurᴀssic Park movies for decades, despite having a juicy role in Crichton’s novel sequel.

Lewis Dodgson Didn’t Appear In The Lost World, Despite Playing A Big Role In The Book

Dodgson was replaced by Peter Ludlow in The Lost World

In Crichton’s The Lost World, Dodgson becomes the main human antagonist and his nastiness was fully unleashed. He leads a team to InGen’s “Site B”, and whereas Malcolm and his friend Sarah Harding (played in the movie by Julianne Moore) head to the island for a rescue mission, Dodgson intends to steal dinosaur eggs. Along the way, he also tries to kill Harding to prevent her from interfering with his expedition. Dodgson and his people later appear to take some T.Rex eggs – a plan that ends very badly.

While he survives the initial wrath of the angry T. Rex parents, Sarah later pushes Dodgson into the jaws of a T. Rex when they are attacked; the deceitful Biosyn head is killed soon after. If the character’s fate sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because much of Dodgson’s role was ported over to the character of Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) in the movie adaptation. Ludlow is Hammond’s nephew in Spielberg’s Jurᴀssic Park sequel, who becomes CEO of InGen and intends to take dinosaurs from Site B to solve the company’s financial problems.

While not an outright attempted murderer like Dodgson in The Lost World novel, Ludlow is still an aloof, callous figure. His fate is a modified version of Dodgson’s too, and involves a parent T. Rex feeding Ludlow to its child as its first kill. While The Lost World cherry-picks the novel’s setup and certain pᴀssages, the sequel largely does its own thing. Given Hammond’s survival in the original film (the character was eaten by a group of Compies in Crichton’s book), giving the sequel’s villain a personal link to InGen’s founder made a certain amount of story sense.

Dodgson’s Absence In The Lost World Set Up His Jurᴀssic World Dominion Comeback 27 Years Later

“Dodgson! We’ve got Dodgson here!”

The Jurᴀssic World movies brought back most of the franchise’s most popular characters, including Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie (Laura Dern). Even fans of the saga probably weren’t expecting a Dodgson return, but that’s what they got with 2022’s Jurᴀssic World: Dominion. This reveals that Dodgson (played by Campbell Scott) has become the CEO of Biosyn Genetics. On the surface, Biosyn’s goals appear noble, though it’s discovered throughout the story that they’ve engineered a horde of giant locusts to devour crops not produced by Dodgson’s company.

This was due to Dodgson’s goal to control and monopolize the world’s food supply. On one hand, it was nice to see Dodgson return after the original’s setup of Biosyn as an InGen rival, but he’s ultimately not a very effective villain. The locust subplot is one of Dominion’s most critiqued elements, and while Scott is a fine actor, his Dodgson just doesn’t make for a compelling foe. That said, his eventual death at the jaws of three Dilophosaurus is a nice full circle moment.

It would have been interesting to see Dodgson as the main human antagonist of Spielberg’s The Lost World, but it wasn’t to be. Still, like any long-running franchise, rejected ideas tend to cycle back around, and Dodgson’s comeback was a nice way for the Jurᴀssic World films to tie themselves back into the franchise’s origins.