Henry Wu

"Monster is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We're just used to being the cat."

- Wu after Masrani calls the Indominus rex a "monster".

Dr. Henry Wu is a character that appeared in the Jurassic Park series, serving as a supporting character in the original novel and the 1993 original film, and later a major antagonist in the 2015 sequel Jurassic World. In the film, he gets hired by Commander Vic Hoskins to create dinosaurs for his security force. He will return in the upcoming sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

He is portrayed by B.D. Wong, who also played Hugo Strange in Gotham and Whiterose in Mr. Robot.

Jurassic Park
Henry Wu, PhD was the chief geneticist for Jurassic Park and was responsible for creating the dinosaurs. He was a slender man at thirty-three years old.

Two weeks after the funeral of geneticist Norman Atherton, eccentric venture capitalist Dr. John Hammond came to see Wu. When Henry Wu was first recruited by Hammond, he was a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student getting his doctorate at Stanford under the chief lab scientist Norman Atherton. Everyone in the lab knew that Atherton had had some association with Hammond, although the details were never clear. Norman always said Wu was the best geneticist in his lab, and it was this recommendation that caught Hammond's attention, making Wu the clear candidate to help Hammond with his secret project. Hammond gave Wu $10 million a year in funding for five years to take a crack at the impossible, what he called "cloning reptiles" at the time, which turned out to be dinosaurs, more like avian cloning than reptilian cloning.

Halfway through the original novel, Hammond and Wu have a discussion. Wu says that they could and should make better, slower and tamer dinosaurs. Hammond scoffs at the idea, saying that they have real dinosaurs; who would want more? Wu's reply is that they should not bother with reality because the people coming to see Jurassic Park do not want reality, they want their expectations. With Hammond's dismissal, Wu is forced to realize that Hammond cares far less for his opinion than he did when Wu was first hired. Around the time of this conversation, it is hinted that Wu may have had some romantic interest in Marìa, a silent serving girl whom he could not take his eyes off of.

Prompted by Alan Grant later in the novel, Wu checked the dinosaurs' DNA to find which species had amphibian DNA. He discovered that the species that were breeding all contained amphibian DNA. Wu did not understand the connection between amphibian DNA and the dinosaurs being able to breed, as Grant never had a chance to explain it to him, but nevertheless, Wu was then convinced that they could breed. Although he would never admit it, Wu was strangely proud that he had recreated animals so lifelike that they could reproduce themselves. Shortly after, it was Wu who discovered that Nedry had stolen embryos, worth between 2 and 10 million dollars.

When Wu and the rest of those in the control room realized that the park had been running on backup power, Wu's job was to stay in the control room until Arnold could reboot the system. Then, Wu was supposed to start up the computer and restore power to the fences. Unfortunately, he was forced to rejoin the others in the Safari Lodge after two failed attempts to reboot the system from the maintenance shed. On his way to the lodge, Wu picked up an injured Robert Muldoon and brought him back with him in the gas Jeep. Later on, over the radio, Wu talked Grant through rebooting the park's systems. Soon afterwards, Wu, while telling Ellie Sattler to come back to the lodge, is ambushed from above by Velociraptors and devoured alive after being sliced down the stomach while lying on his back.

Jurassic Park
Henry Wu is a Chinese American from Ohio with a PhD in genetics. He is a senior member of InGen's project to recreate the dinosaurs via cloning. When the team had discovered large amounts of dinosaur DNA, Dr. Wu proposed that they could start to clone dinosaurs by filling in the missing parts of the dinosaur genome (DNA) with DNA from extant species, in which the investors preferred this approach because it was faster, easier and cheaper. Thus, the board gave Dr. Wu a promotion to be the chief geneticist.

In this approach, Wu decided to use the DNA of several species of amphibians, including the Common reed frog (Hyperolius viridiflavus), to supplement the dinosaur DNA. The first prehistoric animal was cloned in 1984. Aware with the potential dangers of the cloned dinosaurs, Wu also decided to build in a few safety measures, which later revealed only worked properly. His created dinosaur clones have their chromosomes designed such that all animals were female, so they could not reproduce. He also made the dinosaurs unable to produce Lysine, so they would die without the supplements in their food.

When the endorsement team visited the Isla Nublar Laboratory to see the Velociraptors hatch, Dr. Wu was among the scientists in the laboratory at that time. He joined the group and answered their questions. Wu probably left the island on the C-3208 boat during the storm evacuation.

Wu returned to the island in November 1994 as part of the operation to deconstruct the ruined Jurassic Park. His job was cataloging specimen numbers, and to identify exactly how the animals were breeding. Wu discovered that the amphibian DNA enabled the animals to change their sex through a chemical trigger which disintegrated the female organs to create male sex organs.

Between events of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World
Wu kept leading the research team at a financially struggling InGen. The breeding dinosaurs had shown him that not only the DNA of various species could be combined, but also their observable characteristics. In 1995, Dr. Wu wrote the book The Next Step: An Evolution of God’s Concepts. In this book, he proposed the hypothesis that he could bring brand new species into fruition by the combination the traits of various species.

In 1997, Wu and his team actually succeeded in creating a hybrid organism. They had combined the DNA of several plant species to create a new plant, Karacosis wutansis (or Wu Flower). The creation of this hybrid plant gained worldwide media attention.

In 1998, the Masrani Global Corporation took over InGen. The CEO Simon Masrani promoted Dr. Wu within the ranks of the InGen company in December 2000. Wu supervised the creation of new dinosaurs in the Hammond Creation Lab for the new park Jurassic World which opened in 2005. He and many other InGen scientists were involved in the creation of Indominus rex.

In November 2014, the new InGen facility named "Martel" opened in Siberia. The goal of Martel was to extract Pleistocene dated organic materials from glacial ice. He showed excitement for the project believing it will expand InGen's genome library, but he withheld from speculating about using any found materials to create Cenozoic animals for Jurassic World at the moment. In a paper for a scientific journal that was published by Wu in March 2015, he reported on the possibility of using InGen's genome library to help Medical Health in their research of diseases.

Jurassic World
Dr. Wu first appeared explaining to investors that the Indominus Rex wasn't bred but was designed and that she was already to be open as an attraction. After the Indominus rex escaped, Masrani confronted Wu about how the animal was created. Wu did not tell Masrani that part of it is Velociraptor, but he did mention that it had the genes of cuttlefish to help her withstand an accelerated growth rate, which resulting her possesses the ability to camouflage. Tree frog DNA was also used to adapt the hybrid to the island's tropical climate, but it also gave her the ability to hide her infrared signature from the thermal seeking cameras around her paddock. He also reminded Masrani that he was the one that asked for a bigger, scarier and cooler dinosaur, not thinking of the fact that genetically altering dinosaurs would naturally cause them to become less predictable and more dangerous. but Masrani accused him of creating a monster instead. Wu then states that "monster" is a relative term between a cat and a canary; they are used to being the cat. Though he seems to be somewhat unpleasantly (or possibly pleasantly) surprised at how deadly the hybrid has turned out, he does not appear to be remorseful about the deaths that it has caused, deeming them merely "unfortunate", and is unconcerned that he has committed numerous crimes against nature by creating the hybrid in the first place, believing that it was in the name of furthering the science of genetic engineering.

While everyone evacuated, Vic Hoskins, whom Wu was secretly working for behind Masrani's back, had him evacuated with a case of embryos while he and his team take the rest, possibly to create more hybrid dinosaurs for battle combat where some of the said hybrids are seen on his computer near Hoskins when confronted by Owen, Claire and her nephews before mauled by Delta.

Trivia

 * Henry Wu appeared in the first Jurassic Park, but as a minor character and only had one scene which was to explain the process of bringing back the dinosaurs. In the book he had a more major role, but wasn't a villain but was one of the supporting protagonists & was killed in the book version by the Velociraptors. In Jurassic World, Wu is much more cold hearted, not feeling remorseful that his hybrid dinosaur has killed people, but instead chastises Masrani's ignorance and carelessness in wanting to create genetically modified dinosaurs without thinking of how unpredictable and dangerous they would become. It's possible the death of John Hammond affected Wu deeply and that caused his changed personality.
 * Wu's conversation with Masrani about using DNA from various animals to make them "cooler" & not scientifically accurate is a reference by Collin Trevorrow on why he didn't feature feathered dinosaurs in the film, as frog DNA is commonly used in the entire series to create dinosaurs that resulted in ones like the velociraptors being more reptilian in appearance.
 * It was confirmed that Henry Wu will return in the sequel of Jurassic World which would be released on June 22, 2018.
 * As Wu was the architect behind the creation of the dinosaurs and ultimately the indirect cause to every casualty, he's considered the bigger bad of the whole Jurassic Park franchise.

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Henry Wu