Is Sarah supposed to be stupid, hypocritical, or poor writing?

I'm actually watching it for the first time right now, 30:27 in... and keep in mind I love Julianne Moore... but, holy crap Sarah is a moron!! I wanted someone to slap the hell out of her already. Wow, what an idiot!

Why do they insist on writing these awful female characters who will NOT listen to anyone (eg. a person who has experienced things first hand), who constantly do hypocritical things, and basically act like they've got the behavioral capacity and respect for their environment (and, frankly, anyone else) of a 12 year old adolescent with ADHD.

That is NOT how you write a strong woman. That is how you write an idiotic woman.

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I think she suffered most from being in a Spielberg film. He often makes everything else secondary to surface effect, but he really outdoes himself with this one. Here, the characters just chop and change, taking whatever shape is necessary to make the next sequence work, with very little effort towards a cohesive arc.

And the characters of Sarah and Kellie especially seem mere populist tokens; they don't seem like a lot of thought went into them.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

I think that they didn't want to fool with the formula of the first Jurassic Park. Remember, this is based on a Michael Crichton book--and that man had a pathological distaste for creating 3 dimensional, real woman characters. He just would not let a female he could control (his characters) be anything more than anatomically-controlled. They could rise to the heights of their profession, but they'd never escape their biologically-destined role as mother, nurturer, partner to a man.

Remember how the supposedly professional scientist played by Laura Dern was practically drooling over the dinosaurs in the original? She had her estrogen levels so out-of-whack, she was mothering anything in sight--in spite of the fact she's supposedly a Ph.D. who has chosen as her life's work a career that keeps her as far from children as about any career could possibly be (scientific digs for bones of long dead critters far from civilization). Then she mothers those grandchildren of Hammond's, even carrying them around. I'd have expected her to act as tho they were space aliens--after all, where would she have encountered kids, at least since she left for college?

Juliane Moore's behavior was a chip off the old Crichton block, within seconds of meeting her on the island, she was creepily fawning over the baby dino with the adults close by, mothering a T-Rex baby, bonding with Ian's daughter--her entire role was consumed with traditionally female biological activities, hormones flowing. Women are destined to fulfill their roles as a means to reproduction and raising offspring--and if they don't give in to this urge, it warps their entire personality, and they become as the antagonist in Disclosure. Stealing the men of other women, forcing them to return affections...

So stupid, yes. Hypocritical? Only as any woman who thinks she can be anything but a mother, a nurturer, because it will come back to bite her in the butt... And poor writing? Definitely!

Vince Vaughn's character abducted the baby Rex - everyone always seems to forget that and blame Sarah. She even tells him it was stupid to do, but I guess it's easier to blame the woman.

You could see that she was incredibly stupid in one of her first scenes, when in unsettling the baby steg after her camera goes off, instead of running out of the danger area back to Ian and co. despite having ample time and space to do so, she actually runs the other way into the pack of the angry stegs. That unintentionally already suggested she wasn't quite all there in the head.

But yes, it's down to the writing. There are plenty of moments littered in this film that make characters look dumb e.g. the guy who decides to walk as far as possible to go take a pee and then gets lost, the guy who screams his lungs out when he sees the T-Rex at their camp, people not instantly running away when they see a large ship approach their dock at speed etc.

I'd say all three.

Sarah was a fusion of several different characters from the book. I get the impression that the screenwriters in trying to keep all the characteristics got confused. Malcolm's daughter likewise is a fusion of two characters and didn't come off very well onscreen.