The Jurassic Park Scene That Aged Poorly

Universal Pictures and director Steven Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment, famously bought the film rights to Michael Crichton's novel about dinosaur clones before it was even published, figuring they had a hit on their hands (via The Guardian). Their instincts were correct: When Spielberg's adaptation of "Jurassic Park" hit theaters, it became the highest grossing film of 1993 and, until the release of "Titanic," it was ranked the highest-grossing film of all time (via Entertainment Weekly).

Enhanced by a mix of then cutting-edge CGI and practical effects, "Jurassic Park" wowed audiences with its re-creation of the dinosaurs, before terrifying viewers with scenes such as the T-Rex flipping over a packed car. The sequels, including "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and the current "Jurassic World" trilogy have tried to recapture the magic of the original film, but to mixed critical and commercial success, per The Numbers.

As much as the first "Jurassic Park" has endured as a classic, however, there is one scene, in particular, that doesn't hold up to scrutiny in the 21st century. Here's the moment in the 1993 film that has aged poorly.

The plot of the first movie really begins when Jurassic Park programmer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) shuts down the park's security system so he can steal some dinosaur embryos, unwittingly trapping everyone on the island. Only John Hammond's young granddaughter, Lex, knows how to bring things back to normal, uttering the line that inspired an entire subreddit: "It's a UNIX system...I know this!"

According to Wired, UNIX actually is what a computer geek like Nedry would have used for Jurassic Park in 1993. But the scene where Lex "hacks" into the security system by typing extremely fast is very inaccurate and today looks unintentionally hilarious. Unlike common Hollywood portrayals of computer hacking, real hacking is often complicated and it's not something a 13-year-old would just know how to do simply because they use computers.

And where UNIX was once extremely modern technology, it now looks a lot simpler than the coding used in security systems today. Much of "Jurassic Park," like the velociraptors entering the kitchen, is still thrilling in 2021, but this scene simply didn't hold up well.