r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Morr4Seiya • 4d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated)You know this cute couple we spend the last movie developing?Yeah,they broke up off-screen

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John and Lori-Ted 2

Sam and Mikaela-Transformers 3

Wade and Vanessa-Deadpool and Wolverine(yeah,i know the ending implies they get back,but it just begs the question what was even the point,even Morena Baccarin Vanessa actress complained about how her character was sidelined)

6.0k Upvotes
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893

u/jbwarner86 4d ago

Ellie and Alan in Jurassic Park. Debate still rages over whether or not they're an official couple in that movie, but c'mon - they're all cuddly and goo-goo eyed with each other all the time, they're talking about having kids, Alan even straight up tells Ian that he and Ellie are an item. You can't convince me otherwise.

And yet for some reason, they're split up in Jurassic Park III because suddenly Alan changed his mind back and didn't want kids after all? It was a contrived excuse to keep Ellie out of the action, and it showed 😑

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u/Adrenapup 4d ago

She could have literally just been home with THEIR kids.

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u/Mrwright96 4d ago

But then how would she have the connection to have the military rescue dr. grant and the Kirby’s in Jurassic park 3?

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u/Adrenapup 4d ago

Home with the kids during the adventure in the 3rd movie doesn't mean stay at home mom with no job. Just home instead of helping Alan with the current dinosaur crisis.

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u/Mrwright96 4d ago

I know but how is Ellie supposed to call in a rescue to the island without a military connection?

Here’s my pitch, have Ian be a politician, maybe a congressman or senator, hell, maybe a governor, then when the kid tells mom about dad being “on site B” Ellie calls Ian claiming an emergency and he sends out the call to rescue them

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u/RobsonSweets 3d ago edited 3d ago

She could work for or with the military. As well as be a mother

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

I'm in. How do we fix the timeline and make this happen.

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u/carpincho_carajo 4d ago

We need the fanfiction writers, I need this to exist

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago edited 3d ago

Listen. I'm not saying I finished 20,000 words of Grantler fic on Friday. But I'm not NOT saying that.

ETA: a word

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u/bloodhawk268 4d ago

Mark is her brother instead of her husband, and he and Alan get along great. Problem solved.

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u/Mrwright96 4d ago

That or make Ian a politician (what’s more chaotic than politics, has experience “working”
With “dinosaurs” and let’s be real, the man who stood up to a t-Rex and won is a shoe in for popular vote)

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

I also accept this answer.

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u/rowan_sjet 4d ago

They could have just written a different ending without the military.

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u/mandalorian_guy 3d ago

The military already was quarantining the island and we know INGEN satellites have been monitoring the island from JP2. So the military launches a rescue mission to get the plane survivors while tracking them to the beach (they already tracked them to the beach in the movie so that isn't really a change).

Or it could be as simple as Ellie calling Hammond who in turn calls the State Department.

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u/Empigee 3d ago

Meh. Ellie doesn't strike me as a stay-at-home mom. That said, they could have said that she had recently given birth and wasn't up to fighting dinosaurs.

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u/rhuiz92 3d ago

When her son answers the phone, he tells her 'it's the dinosaur man' calling. Doesn't sound like something a kid would call his dad.

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u/Adrenapup 3d ago

This reply is so stupid.
You obviously didn't read what I was replying to.

I KNOW her kid isn't his. This is about how the movie could have kept them together without her being with there on the island with him.

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u/BananaShakeStudios 4d ago

It’s OK they get back together in 2022 movie nobody watched

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u/The_Amazing_Emu 4d ago

Didn’t she have a husband and kids in the third Jurassic Park movie?

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u/Ok-Astronaut8074 4d ago

Yes. But in Jurassic World 3 she tells Alan she’s divorced and the kids are off at college. Honestly their only purpose in that movie is to have three way sexual tension with Jeff Goldblum and get back together.

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u/Jackal209 4d ago

"three way sexual tension with Jeff Goldblum"

Well shit, now I have to watch the movie. Thanks.

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u/syrioforrealsies 3d ago

Honestly, it's not as bad as I expected it to be, and I HATED the other two JW movies. If it was just the Ellie/Alan/Ian part of the story, it would have been an okay sequel to the original films.

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u/braxzilla13 4d ago

Dammit, look what you've done, now people are going to watch Jurassic World III and its all your fault.

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

Yeah, they also break up off camera, lmao.

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u/SeonaidMacSaicais 4d ago

Eh, this time there was a 20ish year gap. That’s more explainable.

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u/PresentationPure3163 4d ago

The 2022 movie that nobody watched? Shit grossed a billion dollars. It was one of the most hyped movies of all time

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

I came here for this and have been bitter since I was a child. Never watched any of the sequels because my first reaction was, "Wait, why isn't the second one following Dr. Grant? He was the main character?" And then my next reaction was "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY BROKE UP?!"

Don't get me started on completely ignoring his character arc from the film and the absurdity of a paleobotanist giving up her career to write children's books. Dominion gets them back together, I guess, but it doesn't get credit from me because they never should have been broken up at all.

I need a drink.

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u/catchyerselfon 4d ago edited 3d ago

Fuck, I forgot Ellie is no longer a paleobotanist in Jurassic Park III! Why did they have her give that up just because she has a toddler, she can’t be a professor/writing instead of away on dig sites?! It’s like the film makers took away her science-based job and gave her one more nurturing and humanities-based so she’d be “acceptably feminine”… but she’s still not a love interest?!

Like you, I’m forever mad about splitting up Allie and Ellie, a couple I didn’t realize watching as a kid appealed to me because I’m demisexual: here I was seeing two adults (Laura Dern was 24 but Ellie definitely isn’t) who clearly started as friends and colleagues before getting romantic, but they’re not all over each other and she’s not sexualized, it’s very “brainy is the new sexy” for both of them.

Most of the romantic relationships in media aimed at kids in the ‘90s had a big sexual dimorphism element: huge guy and tiny girl, athlete/warrior and princess or geek and hot popular girl, and they fall for each other mostly based on looks, the chase/obstacles takes most of the movie with the happily ever after/the issues of being in an actual relationship is not shown because the story is “over”, etc… Starting in medias res with Alan and Ellie working alongside each other and goodnaturedly discussing their differing world views instead of a “slap slap kiss kiss dynamic” = chemistry, had a positive impact on me. I had to pretend I was interested in certain boys and celebrities so other girls would stop asking. It took until I was at least 30 before I realized “oh I need to get to know someone really well to feel attraction, that’s why love at first sight felt so alien to me”.

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

You get me! He respected her as an equal the entire time and that is what made them so great!

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u/noradosmith 4d ago

Tbh if ever a film didn't need any sequels at all it was Jurassic Park.

They made the perfect movie in 1993 and have been piggybacking off that for 30 years.

Hollywood and cinema haven't been magic since the 90s and early 2000s. Occasionally Marcel movies manage it but they're the exception.

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

It's true, and it's weird to me, as someone who was a kid when JP came out, to see World milked in... New and interesting ways? Like, who is this for? These movies are terrible. I've seen clips of Dominion and I can't get over how UGLY it is next to the first film.

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u/jbwarner86 3d ago

So many movies in general are just ugly to look at now. Dim lighting, drab color palette, muffled sound - the original Jurassic Park has scenes set in the dark, sure, but you can still see what's happening. And the scenes in the light are vibrant and eye-catching and get you engaged in what's happening. I feel like that's been lost.

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

Buildings, clothes, movies - EVERYTHING is so ugly now. I wanna go back so bad

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u/jbwarner86 3d ago

I wanna go forward, but to a future where we're allowed to have fun again 😕

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u/Sudden_Ad_3308 4d ago

I might be misremembering but I’m pretty sure the actress for Ellie was blacklisted after playing a lesbian in the Ellen sitcom. That might be why her role was reduced.

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u/braxzilla13 4d ago

Dunno about that. It was mostly due to Joe Johnston not liking them as a couple, and only wanting Laura Dern to have a less involved role, script wise.

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u/Jolly-Present2608 4d ago

The idea of not wanting Laura Dern in your movie is crazy to me.

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u/braxzilla13 4d ago

Innit? Even crazier is that its only because who the writers were that Dern even came back for the small cameo. She had previously worked with them and they wrote her cameo in becuase of it.

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u/Ok_Conclusion_6324 4d ago

David Lynch would never have made such a mistake

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

Now I want to see "David Lynch's Jurassic Park."

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u/Jolly-Present2608 2d ago

Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as Ian Malcolm and Dinosaurs controlled with Sock Puppets and Stop Motion.

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u/unholy_hotdog 2d ago

It's perfect.

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u/PotatoOnMars 4d ago

They also weren’t a couple in the book. Ellie was a 24 year old set student interning under Grant and she was engaged to marry a doctor.

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u/Top-Idea-1786 4d ago

Which is terribly ironic considering who the book version of Alan Grant is based on

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u/PotatoOnMars 4d ago

Yeah, Jack Horner actually married a student and was good friends with Epstein. Robert Bakker is clearly the superior paleontologist.

2

u/Special_Cicada6968 3d ago

Further irony is him going to a billionaires' private island full of predators who want to eat children...

2

u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

I shouldn't have laughed at that.

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

Yeaaaaah, but we didn't know that back in 93. Alan Grant is still clean.

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u/SeonaidMacSaicais 4d ago

Plus, it’s Sam Neill. That man will always be a god.

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

I was so upset when he died. My local theater did a retrospective for him (which of course included JP and got me back on my bullshit) and I just miss him so much

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u/braxzilla13 4d ago

Which also makes her not returning more trivial because JPIII wasnt based on any of the books yeah? So writing her in wouldve made as much sense writing Alan in.

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u/DoktorClankhardt 3d ago

My theory was that III not being based on a book was why she's suddenly married to a new guy. The writers are insecure about it or something and bring as many book-only elements in as they can to say "See, we're not just making shit up!" Setpieces like the aviary full of pterosaurs or a theropod attacking a boat, Grant's speech about theme park monsters, and Sattler being married to someone else.

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u/syrioforrealsies 3d ago

In fairness, seeing some of the stuff from the book make it to the big screen was the best part of JPIII. They just should have skipped Ellie's marriage.

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u/Billybob35 4d ago

Even so, they could've had it where they weren't spilt up and it wouldn't have changed the plot much. Have Alan just be like "Hey honey, this couple is paying me a fortune to go to this island, be back!". 

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u/RadioLiar 3d ago

Fortunately they have now been immortalised as a Magic: the Gathering card for all eternity

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u/unholy_hotdog 3d ago

I never understand what the hell is going on in MTG, but I love them for this.

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u/NomadFH 4d ago

They got together later though

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u/Funkopedia 4d ago

Ian and Alan each got a "solo" movie. Jurassic4 should have been an Ellie solo movie. Then Jurassic5 should have started The Jurassic 5.

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u/AvenueRoy 4d ago

He learned to like kids, doesn't mean he wants his own kids

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u/FormerPirateKing92 4d ago

They shouldn't have been together in the first place. She was his student. And they weren't in a relationship in the novel.

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u/jbwarner86 4d ago

That's the most common argument against them having a relationship, from what I've seen - "But in the book..."

The movie changed a ton of things from the book, and this was just one of them. Ellie is made older so she's closer to Alan's age, and she's not a student - they're portrayed as colleagues, and as equals.

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

And it's not like Michael Crichton wasn't one of the screenwriters. Didn't seem to bother him.

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u/unholy_hotdog 4d ago

Sure, in the book; but she's not his student in the film where they are a couple.

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u/Empigee 3d ago

Probably they just didn't want to pay for Dern coming back along with Sam Neill.