Nick Van Owen

Nick Van Owen was a photographer who accompanied Eddie Carr and Ian Malcolm to Isla Sorna in order document dinosaurs. He was hand picked by John Hammond because he had done many jobs in combat situations. He was also an active environmentalist and a member of the Earth First! organization.

Bio
Nick formerly worked for Nightline, where he visited counties like Rwanda and Bosnia. Hammond sought him out to be part of a research team that was traveling to Isla Sorna to document the dinosaurs there. Apparently, Hammond also hired him to sabotage Ludlow's attempte to abduct the dinosaurs from the island.

Although he was trying to do the right thing, many of his actions led to disaster for others. When Peter Ludlow's men came, he infiltrated the camp with Sarah and unlocked the locks on the cages, leading to the destruction of all the team's communication's equipment. Later on, Roland came and found a shattered lock. That drew his attention to noticing that someone else was on the island.

He was the one who brought the infant T-Rex to the trailers so its broken leg could be mended, which led to the death of Eddie Carr. The baby's parents arrived, once they had their baby back, proceeded to push the trailers off a cliff before leaving. When Eddie went to save them, he managed to secure a rope for Nick, Ian and Sarah to escape, but he was eaten by the T-Rex parents when they returned to stop his interference.

His next mistake was disabling Roland Tembo's gun. After finding out that Roland came to the island to hunt a male T-Rex, he stole the ammunition the instant he saw Roland put the rifle down. This led Roland using a tranquilizer gun to incapacitate the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which the InGen team brought alive to San Diego. Once there, it escaped confinement and attacked the city. Nick left before Ian and Sarah went to interfere in Ludlow's plans, and therefore had no part of the San Diego Incident.

But despite the disaster his actions caused, he also had some accomplishments. Those accomplishments included pulling Sarah and Kelly behind the waterfall decreasing the chance of them dying when the female T-Rex chased them. Also, he went to the control room alone, despite knowing there were Velociraptors in the area. He called a helicopter before Sarah Harding, Ian Malcolm, and Kelly Curtis Malcolm could be overwhelmed by a pack of Velociraptors.

Trivia

 * Doesn't like onions on his cheeseburger.


 * His character is possibly inspired by a mercenary called Van Owen in the song, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevlon.


 * When one takes in the big picture, Nick Van Owen can be seen as one of, if not, the most important character in the movie. Nick's actions drive several of the most pivotal plot points. Nick releases the captured dinosaurs from InGen's encampment, leading to the destruction of their equipment, stranding them all on the island. Nick is also the one who brings the baby T-Rex back to the trailer, leading to the first Rex encounter, and Eddie Carr's death. Later Nick sabotages Roland's elephant gun, removing the .470 slugs from their casings, preventing Roland from killing the male T-Rex and essentially making possible the entire final third of the movie. Finally Nick goes alone to Site-B's abandoned operations building to radio InGen's HQ for rescue.

Quotes
"Do you see any resemblance here?" - to Eddie about Kelly and Ian

"Hammond warned me these people might show up...so he gave me Plan B...me" to Sarah Harding

"Seems I won't be needing these anymore" - Right after this he drops the bullets he stole from Roland's gun.