Samuel L. Jackson Just Retconned an Iconic Sci-Fi Movie
Keep holding on to your butts.
“No body, no crime” is a common phrase in law and Taylor Swift's lyrics. But when it comes to movies and TV shows, the rule is “no body, no death.” Unless we see a character’s corpse, they could still make a return (and in some cases, even if we see a body, a resurrection is still on the table).
Samuel L. Jackson has been demonstrating this for decades by claiming his Star Wars character Mace Windu is still out there, despite having his arm cut off before being pushed out a tall window by Emperor Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. Now the actor is claiming another character he played survived losing an arm — Ray Arnold from Jurassic Park — despite the fact Arnold probably didn’t have any Jedi powers.
Jackson has long claimed Mace Windu survived his long fall.
In a recent GQ video, Jackson once again defended his belief that Mace survived. “Mace Windu is not dead," Jackson said. “Come on. That's what I keep telling them. I said, 'There’s a long history of people in the Star Wars world with one hand, one arm, you know, and they're still around here kicking ass. Jedis can fall from great heights without dying.’”
In 2016, Jackson told Entertainment Weekly that he asked George Lucas if there was a chance Mace could have survived, even though Luacs no longer had any say over official canon. “George is like, ‘I’m okay with that. You can be alive,” he said. He brought up the point again at Star Wars Celebration 2017, and then again earlier this year; the man is a steadfast Mace Windu truther.
But this video brings a new character into the conversation: John Raymond “Ray” Arnold from Jurassic Park. Viewers never saw the chief engineer die, only lose his right arm. To Jackson, that’s enough reason to believe he’s still kicking. “I got killed in Jurassic Park. Well, they say I got killed,” he said. “I still got this thing in my head where dude's got one arm, and he's around here riding around on velociraptors. He made peace with them and figured out how to use them to his advantage or whatever.”
Ray’s severed arm is the only evidence we have of his death. Is it enough?
While that’s all fine and good for one actor’s headcanon, there are some issues within the greater franchise. Jurassic Park is now Jurassic World, and with Jurassic World Rebirth now done filming, the question remains: if this guy is alive, why haven’t we seen him yet? Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum all returned for Jurassic World Dominion, but Jackson’s character hasn’t even been mentioned. In fact, according to Jackson, there was originally supposed to be confirmation he died, but when the scene couldn’t be shot due to weather, the arm scene was used instead.
So don’t expect Arnold to ride in on one of his raptors to save the day, but it’s still a fun theory. Mace Windu could have been living on Coruscant all this time under a new identity, and Ray could have had a long life palling around with the dinosaurs, each of them getting by with just one arm. If Jackson believes it, we can too.
