Field biologists on film: the good and the bad
Science and Hollywood have always had a complicated relationship: filmmakers love using scientific ideas to drive storylines, but they frequently misrepresent scientists as social misfits (see all versions of Frankenstein) or unemotional automatons (the science officer, Ash, in Alien is literally a robot!). These scientists have “Eureka!” moments at just the right time to cure a disease or save a city from being destroyed by a giant marshmallow man. I don’t fault Hollywood for this; after all, they’re trying to sell tickets and nobody wants to watch a movie about a group of well-adjusted scientists working steadily for five years to make incremental progress on a relatively obscure topic. But still, some movies do better than others, and they deserve to be recognized.
Here I present to you my list of best and worst portrayals of field biologists on film. I chose to focus on field biologists because that’s what I am myself, and I chose to focus on only fictional characters (sorry Gorillas in the Mist and Never Cry Wolf. I still love you!).
Ash is a robot!
The Good
Jaws (1975)
Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper is one of the all-time great portrayals of a field biologist on the silver screen. Hooper is sharp and knowledgeable about sharks, passionate about his work, and ready to throw down on the open ocean. But the best thing about Hooper is that he isn’t an ivory tower academic who dismisses people who aren’t as well-educated as himself. On the contrary, he relishes trading stories with the salty sea captain Quint and learning about shark behavior courtesy of Quint’s dark past as a sailor during World War II. This is how most field biologists I know actually operate: they combine hardcore book-learning with the on-the-ground expertise of local fishermen, hunters, and amateur naturalists to gain deeper insights into their study species and ecosystems. Setting aside the long list of issues with the actual depictions of shark behavior in Jaws, Hooper is a winning character and relatable field biologist.
Hooper and Quint compare scars
Jurassic Park (1993)
I know, I know, bringing dinosaurs back to life with ancient DNA and gene-editing is highly suspect (for now), but Laura Dern as paleobotanist Ellie Sattler is just too good. The best scene is when Sattler plunges her arm into a steaming pile of Triceratops feces up to her elbow to try and figure out what the Triceratops ate that made it sick. Also, Sattler’s pure joy at seeing a Triceratops for the first time is infectious. These are both attributes of almost every field biologist I know: a never-ending fascination with the species they study and the willingness to endure horrible sights and smells for their science. My own love of alligator vomit should be enough to convince you of the latter.
Sattler and the Triceratops
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
The field biologist in this movie, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), embodies the romantic Victorian era natural historian. A jack-of-all trades scientist, Maturin is the ship’s surgeon as well as a natural historian who is excited about the opportunity to collect samples of flora and fauna from obscure islands in the Pacific. Clearly meant to evoke Charles Darwin’s own adventures on the Beagle to a certain extent, Maturin recognizes the value of describing and cataloguing new species as a means to understand how the diversity of life came to be and how all of nature fits together. Really, though, I just love the idea of wandering across the Galapagos Islands looking at blue-footed boobies all day.
Maturin enjoying the Galapagos Islands
The Bad
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Sequels are rarely better than the originals, and Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is no match for Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park. Harding is a behavioral paleontologist who travels to Isla Sorna for the chance to study the behaviors of real live dinosaurs, but she repeatedly makes a fundamental mistake: she gets way too close to her study species! First, she approaches, photographs, and touches a baby Stegosaurus, prompting the parents to defend their baby and try to kill Harding. Then, she helps bring a baby T. rex back to basecamp to mend its broken leg, prompting the T. rex parents to attack the basecamp in an effort to get their baby back. Any good field biologist knows that interacting with babies can be dangerous because many mothers (and some fathers) will violently defend their young. So why does Harding invite disaster repeatedly? Especially with such large animals? I can see interacting with a baby bird (if the species is on the smallish side) because the parents can’t really do much to you other than chirp their heads off (and maybe dive bomb you), but no rational person would try to approach a baby elephant in the wild because adult elephants can KILL YOU. This is a classic example of bad field biology on film.
"Mommy's very angry."
Godzilla (1998)
Field biology can be dangerous, so we field biologists tend to be very safety conscious. You have to know your study species, your equipment, and how weather might impact your safety if you want to survive in this business. Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), a biologist with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, clearly didn’t get the memo. When we meet Tatopoulos he is collecting worms from the site of the Chernobyl disaster using a “worm shocker.” This is a real device that biologists use to collect worms. It works by sending electricity through the soil, and the worms respond by coming to the surface. But when Tatopoulos uses it, he turns on the juice and then walks over to the worms to pick them up with his bare hands in the middle of a rainstorm! In real life this is a surefire way to get electrocuted. Not smart Tatopoulos, not smart.
Tatopoulos using a worm shocker
Prometheus (2012)
This sci-fi adventure contains possibly the worst depiction of a field biologist ever on film. The biologist in question is Millburn (Rafe Spall). When the crew of the Prometheus land on the moon LV-223, the crew disembarks to explore a nearby structure. Millburn and another character, Fifield, get lost during the trip, and end up encountering a snake-like animal. Millburn decides to approach this alien creature and tries to touch it. It promptly attacks and kills him. This whole sequence of events is ludicrous. Forget that Millburn is supposedly a trained biologist. What person in their right mind would try to touch an alien lifeform that they know nothing about? I don’t even touch caterpillars I’ve never seen before because I know some caterpillars are poisonous! Also, it’s been shown that primates (like us) readily learn to fear snakes. Even primates who have never seen a snake before quickly learn to be scared of them. So why try to pet an unknown snake-like animal in a hostile environment? It boggles the mind. If I had been there I would have kept my distance and maybe tried to get a few pictures, but that’s it.
Millburn gets killed by an alien "snake"