My Girl Lex from ‘Jurassic Park’ Deserves More Love

A lot of physical and digital ink has been spilled praising Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece, Jurassic Park. Why wouldn’t that be the case? Jurassic Park has everything you want in a good movie: suspense, amazing action sequences, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, dinosaurs, wiggling Jell-O. Fifteen years after its premiere it still holds up as a near perfect movie. But there’s one excellent part of Jurassic Park that has been chronically snubbed over the past decade and a half. Ariana Richards’ Lex transformed a stereotypical preteen girl into the nuanced, liminal, and heartfelt action hero this movie needed.

While everyone else was (rightfully) fawning over Goldblum’s Dr. Malcom, Sam Neill’s Dr. Grant, and Dern’s Dr. Sattler, there was only one character who was fully worthy of my eight-year-old self’s attention — Lex. At that point in my life, there were few characters I related more to in my life than Lex. She was a headstrong girl with an annoying little brother who was forced to hang out with random adults her grandfather knew. She didn’t really care about dinosaurs; she was just nice and along for the ride. Of course I fell in love with her immediately. But as time has passed, the sassy charms that originally drew me to Lex have transformed into glaring flaws that have made me love her even more.

Simply put, Lex is annoying. She has the energy of her younger brother Tim (Joseph Mazzello), but instead of childlike wonder she’s defined by teenage arrogance and awkwardness. Jurassic Park as a concept is one of the coolest theme park ideas ever conceived, something so magically impressive that it causes professional archeologists to gasp in wonder. And yet Lex pretends to be dismissive and unimpressed by it, often hanging back from the rest of the group or remarking on a small detail that misses the larger, more fantastical point, like worrying about a goat that was fed to the raptors. Throughout most of Jurassic Park, Lex is trying desperately hard to be cool and mature, and watching it now, it’s clear she’s failing. The divide between how teenagers see themselves and who they really are has been the basis of countless teen comedies, but it quietly and humorously plays out in the background of Jurassic Park.

Lex just has so many eye roll-worthy preteen girl moments. She’s a vegetarian who talks about her diet way too much. She’s a teenage hacker who’s confident that her Unix skills can save the day (even though the system they’re using clearly isn’t Unix). Even while on the run from dinosaurs, she takes a moment to be cartoonishly grossed out by Brachiosaurus snot. And then there’s her relationship with Dr. Grant.

Lex’s crush on Dr. Grant is something almost every preteen girl has experienced a thousand times — unrequited love for a man who is clearly older and not interested. As she tries to flirt and prod information about him in her own bumbling way, everyone knows that something romantic will never happen between them. The fact that Lex is never sexualized makes their dynamic that much better. For all her big talk and cooler-than-thou attitude, Lex is still just a kid with a dumb crush.

In between these intentionally insufferable moments, Lex starts to become the heart of Jurassic Park. The adults’ and Tim’s awe over this world highlights how incredible Jurassic Park is, but it’s Lex dropping her “cool girl” demeanor to gawk at dinosaurs that really sells it. Then when the tables turn, she perhaps more than anyone else is the least prepared to handle the dinosaur outbreak. She knows next to nothing about dinosaurs, doesn’t have any helpful skills (besides using not-Unix, I guess), and feels obligated to look after her brother. The only way she’s able to survive is through the help of the adults around her, her wit, and dumb luck. Of course she and her brother are at the center of the velociraptor chase, one of the most stressful scenes in the movie. In this world Lex is a chronic underdog, and there’s nothing more fun than watching an underdog survive.

Seeing Lex at eight gave me a hero I could relate to. She didn’t have a secret list of superpowered skills, and she wasn’t very witty. She was just a regular 12 or 13-year-old girl. But seeing her now, I love Lex for an entirely new set of reasons. She’s a reminder that there’s humanity and heart hiding beneath every preteen, despite how frustrating they can be.

Where to stream Jurassic Park