…but they swap it to occuring to basically a completely innocent family who is vacationing on a nearby island, just a totally different and made up set of characters, where its now just some random assholeish wealthy corpo father who is being hubristic, and iirc, a little girl is seriously injured, but not killed…

I recall the last chapter of the first book (it's been awhile since I've read it tho) mentions reports dinosaur attacks in nearby villages. But movies are "show don't tell" so a similar scene is shown. Spielberg isn't going to show a child being killed, but the point is the same.

Also I think Spielberg making Hammond be for the most part a kindly grandfatherly kind of guy was a smart move. We do see him as being a ruthless kind of person when talking to Nedry, but super kindly when dealing with customers. Many times that's how it goes, people have said Donald Trump is a nice guy when they meet him in person. And many times billionaires will talk about their lofty altruistic visions, like Mark Zuckerberg talking about wanting to "help the world communicate."

Hammond being a mustache twirling villain isn't as interesting as Hammond being a billionaire wanting to secure his legacy by making something the world has never seen before while being out of touch with reality.

You don't become a billionaire without being able to get investors to buy in to your "vision". Elon Musk was really good at getting people to invest in projects that'll never work (like Hyperloop and Starship) by promoting a a rose tinted vision of these projects working. Could even get scientists on board with these projects because those scientists are just thinking about specific problems. not how the whole thing will work together. At least until Musk freaked out about his kid being trans and started hitting the drugs. Hammond in the movies is somewhat similar to Elon Musk before he went nuts... or before he started became very public about how nuts he is.

Eccentric billionaire that seems altruistic, but in the end just an arrogant asshole that gets people killed because of their negligence.