Goldblum's Ian Malcolm is a renowned mathematician who specializes in Chaos Theory and was originally brought in to help evaluate the state of John Hammond's (Richard Attenborough) Jurassic Park before it opened to the public, alongside paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and a lawyer, Gennaro (Martin Ferrero). Malcolm was the foremost critic of the park upon his arrival, despite being awed by the power of what was accomplished there.
Malcolm, Grant, Sattler, Gennaro, and Hammond's grandkids, Tim and Lex (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards), were taken on a tour upon their arrival to Jurassic Park, taking a run through what would've been the main attractions. However, the tour was met with a number of issues, many of which proved Malcolm's theories about the park to be true. The power is shut down when the group stops in front of Jurassic Park's T-Rex paddock, stalling their vehicles and allowing the prehistoric carnivore to escape. The T-Rex begins to attack the vehicles, including the one with the kids in it, prompting Grant to step out of the vehicle with a flare to distract the beast. Malcolm follows suit, popping a flare and getting the T-Rex's attention, but instead of standing still with it, he starts to run in order to lure it away from the kids.
Although Grant yells at Malcolm to "freeze" the enigmatic mathematician fails to listen and is chased down by the T-Rex, who eventually knocks him through an onsite restroom (where Jurassic Park's Gennaro was hiding), knocking him out and leaving him with a broken leg. Malcolm was later rescued but spent the rest of the film laid up and wounded as a result of his actions. However, in the latest trailer for Jurassic World Dominion, in which Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler return, it appears the chaotician has learned his lesson. In a sequence in which the group is confronted with the Gigantosaurus, Malcolm is seen holding a torch, which he waves back and forth in front of the beast. This time, he's doing something notably different than what he did in Jurassic Park: standing still. It would appear that Malcolm has learned from his past mistake the first time he tangled with a dinosaur and has now ed to hold his ground, just as Alan had taught him years ago.
Interestingly, Dr. Alan Grant doesn't elaborate that far in the movie, so it appears to be a fragment of information that was adapted, but maybe not entirely understood.
However, Grant's prevailing theory has been proven untrue in reality. In 1993, a professor at the University of Oregon recreated models of the T-Rex's head and conducted a number of scientific experiments to determine the animal's actual visual acuity. The experiments were aimed to determine the visual field, depth perception, and binocular range of the T-Rex. The result of the experiments came to the conclusion that the T-Rex actually had excellent eyesight that was more akin to the binocular vision of eagles or hawks, with visual clarity up to 13 times better than a modern human, whether they're standing still or not. So, while Malcolm learned his lesson in Jurassic Park, it appears that real-world science hasn't caught up to him yet. It's entirely possible that Jurassic World Dominion will prove or upend the theory entirely.
