The character:	John Hammond
The actor:	Richard Attenborough
The movie:	Jurassic Park (1993)

For a guy who gets criticized for making sentimental movies without emotional depth, it’s interesting how few great villains there are in the Spielberg oeuvre. Apologies to the AFI, but the shark in Jaws is not a villain. The Indiana Jones movies have their share of unsavory characters, but the majority of them boil down to “Nazi,” which is not like, a dense characterization. Ditto Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. Within Spielberg’s contemporary films, there are really only two villains to choose from, and they come from two of his most arresting movies, full stop. There’s the truck driver in Duel. And there’s John Hammond, the disgustingly rich, disgustingly irresponsible founder of Jurassic Park.

In the ’20s, the thing that makes Hammond stand out from today’s capitalists is that his product actually works. There really are dinosaurs, even if the dinosaurs are kind of busted from a sexual standpoint. (Big ups to Michael Crichton, who anticipated “This Whole Thing Smacks of Gender” years before @dril got there.) The way he inveigles associates and flunkies and outside parties is reminiscent of the kind of thing we see from our current scourges. Think of the way that your average tycoon did the Pride logo on Twitter in Obama Junes, and now they can’t wait to give gifts to Trump in the Oval Office. Hammond would be right at home in that setting. It’s all a way to scrape and claw for control, for mastery.

One of the best scenes in Jurassic Park is that conversation between Hammond and Dr. Sattler, where she scolds him, and herself, for believing that the park could ever be reined in. “When we have control again,” he muses. Loss of control is temporary for the Hammonds. There’s always something, he believes, that will put him back at the wheel. “We spared no expense,” he says over and over again. The irony in the line is that for someone as wealthy as Hammond, the expense is negligible. It is the perfect way to convince himself that his efforts are serious and that his plans are secure, and yet the actual cost matters so little to him.

Spielberg has never been one to shy away from putting children in harm’s way. At least a dozen of his movies put kids into the line of fire, not least in wartime: Empire of the Sun and Schindler’s List, of course, but War Horse as well. Jurassic Park, even more than Jaws, which actually sacrifices a boy to Bruce, works on the premise that kids are in mortal peril for the entire runtime of the movie. The T-rex in the rain, the stampedes, the Velociraptors in the kitchen, and, not least among these, electrocuting the bejeezus out of Joseph Mazzello. John Hammond is an Agamemnon in this circumstance, with his grandchildren playing the role of Iphigenia. In Greek myth, Iphigenia is rescued at the last moment by Artemis, who secures the life of the princess. The unlikely Artemis of Jurassic Park is Alan Grant, who may not be quite as chaste as the virgin goddess of the hunt, but who is the last bulwark of sanity against the depravity of an aging magnate crying out for a final success.