ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (20)
By:
September 11, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
DENNIS NEDRY
Dennis Nedry did nothing wrong.
The man was a brilliant computer programmer who single-handedly networked eight connection machines and debugged two million lines of code. That code was arguably as significant an achievement to the would-be success of Jurassic Park as the genetic breakthroughs achieved by the InGen scientists who brute-forced dinosaurs back into existence by sheer force of unchecked capitalist greed. Don’t tell John Hammond that though. Mr. Affable Eccentric Billionaire, Mr. “Spared No Expense” may have had a singular vision, but that vision didn’t have a place for the Dennis Nedries of the world, the underpaid keyboard jockeys who made Jurassic Park feasible. What good is a zoo full of resurrected flesh-eating abominations if you can’t make the safety of your guests feasible? Nedry got stiffed, backed into low-balling his own skill for the “privilege” of working at Jurassic Park. Note how there’s no part of the tour that lets the prestigious doctors Grant, Malcolm, and Satler fawn over the nerds and chain-smoking middle managers who keep JP running from a single, windowless, sparsely furnished room.
It wasn’t Dennis Nedry who invited several surprise guests for an unplanned soft opening of the park. It certainly wasn’t Nedry’s idea to have children on the island when he intended to be risking his own life to cross the island while the security fences were down. Hubris, thy name is Hammond! Spared no expense for leasing an island, voice-overs for automated tours, bougie ice cream, and Chilean sea bass, but when it came to the central nervous system of his grand and exciting creation it was penny-pinching all the way down a Tyrannosaurus’ throat. Three people dead (including Nedry!) isn’t that bad when you think about it. It really could have been much worse.
All Dennis Nedry wanted was his fair share of a job well done, and if Hammond wasn’t going to give it to him then who are we to blame the man for dabbling in a bit of relatively harmless corporate espionage?
Poetic justice would have been Hammond getting eaten alive by his precious creations (Hashtag “Deny. Devalue. Devoured.”?). But instead that cruel irony was reserved for Dennis Nedry, an avatar for all of us cubicle-dwelling schulbs – fed up, underpaid, and exploited – wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt.
Dennis Nedry did nothing wrong.*
* Okay, if — and this is a big if — Nedry did anything “wrong” it might have been neglecting to memorize the park’s roadways. And also accepting a mere $1.5 million for 15 stolen dinosaur embryos. Wow, maybe he is just really bad with money…
ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Kathy Biehl on DR. FRANK-N-FURTER | Catherine Christman on ALEXIS CARRINGTON | Crockett Doob on M3GAN | Nick Rumaczyk on AURIC GOLDFINGER | Mariane Cara on MIRANDA PRIESTLY | Trav SD on PROFESSOR HINKLE | Alex Brook Lynn on TOM POWERS | Lynn Peril on ENDORA | Adam McGovern on EDDIE HASKELL | Mimi Lipson on SUE ANN NIVENS | Heather Quinlan on HAROLD SHAND | Tom Nealon on SKELETOR | Matthew Hodge on BARRY LYNDON | Josh Glenn on JOEL CAIRO | Dan Reines on WALTER PECK | Mark Kingwell on HARRY LIME | James Scott Maloy on CLARENCE BODDICKER | Nikhil Singh on LOCUTUS | Carolyn Campbell on CARSON DYLE | Tony Pacitti on DENNIS NEDRY | Gordon Dahlquist on WALKER | Colin Campbell on RUTH LYTTON | Marc Weidenbaum on THE XENOMORPHS | Susannah Breslin on ANTON CHIGURH | Micah Nathan on PATRICK BATEMAN.
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