Leading up to the release of Disclosure Day, there was an online rumor that the movie was a secret sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The rumor gained such traction that Spielberg even addressed it in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, “It is not a sequel in any way, shape, or form to Close Encounters.” But while the connection between Disclosure Day and Close Encounters has been debunked, earlier this week I managed to stumble upon a surprising connection between two other Steven Spielberg movies that kind of blew my mind.
In the first Jurassic Park movie, the character of Gerry Harding (Gerald R. Molen) is the dinosaur veterinarian. He’s the guy the main characters meet near the sick Triceratops and who Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) briefly pairs off with afterward. We don’t see him after that, but it’s generally accepted that he left the island on that same boat Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) was supposed to catch.
In the first Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, we meet Sarah Harding (Juliane Moore), an animal behaviorist who is dating Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum). She’s one of the biggest characters in the movie and manages to survive the film.
Apparently, these two characters are father and daughter.
It never comes up in the movies, and it seems like a pretty absurd coincidence that Sarah’s dad and her boyfriend survived the events of Jurassic Park. In The Lost World, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) does mention that Sarah sought Ian out after he went public with what happened on Isla Nublar, but it seems like Hammond probably would have mentioned that she’s also the daughter of the Jurassic Park vet that he himself hired.
But he doesn’t. Nobody does.
In the book that The Lost World is based on, the relationship between the two Hardings is alluded to, but very cryptically. In the scene where she’s patching up the baby T-rex, she briefly mentions, “My father was a vet.” Ian, who has a lot of history with Sarah, seems surprised by this, saying “Your father was a vet?” Then she replies “Yes. At the San Diego Zoo. He was a bird specialist” (of course, as Grant explains in the first Jurassic Park, birds evolved from dinosaurs). After mentioning that her dad was a bird specialist, Sarah says “But I don’t see—” before cutting herself off and changing the subject.
This lines up exactly with Harding’s character description in the first Jurassic Park novel, which says that, before coming to Jurassic Park, Gerry Harding “had been the chief of veterinary medicine at the San Diego Zoo and the world’s leading expert on avian care.” Beyond Sarah’s passing reference in The Lost World novel, it’s never again addressed.
The only time the link between Sarah Harding and Gerry Harding is directly mentioned is in the 2011 video game Jurassic Park: The Game. Gerry Harding is the main character and his youngest daughter, Jess Harding, is also featured. In the game, Jess has an argument with her father and asks, “Have you even talked to Sarah lately?” In a later scene, Gerry mentions that “Sarah got away from me,” implying the two are estranged.
Whether or not Jurassic Park: The Game is canon seems to be in dispute among online Jurassic Park fans, especially since the events of the Netflix series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous contradict the game. Regardless, the characters being estranged would go a long way to explaining why Sarah never brought up the connection in the movies and books. It would also explain why she seems to deliberately hide it in the book. Why they’re estranged is anyone’s guess, but at the very least, with Sarah’s dad being a Jurassic Park survivor and Sarah later her seeking out and eventually dating Ian Malcolm, we at least can assume that Sarah has some serious daddy issues.