Jeff Goldblum is iconic in everything he touches, but there is no role quite so canon as his turn as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, and no scene that captures his essence quite as well as that brief, beautiful moment where he’s sweaty as all hell and shirtless for some reason.
It’s been 25 years since that cinematic touchstone graced this world, and to commemorate it, London’s NOW TV has constructed one of the greatest artistic achievements of our time: A 25-foot statue of a half-naked Jeff Goldblum.
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It was an audacious move on the artist’s part to even try to recreate such an impeccable expression of the human form, but the risk paid off. No detail was spared: The stubble is perfectly rendered, so subtle you’d miss it if you didn’t take a closer look. His hand hangs loose from the wrist in that quintessentially Goldblum-ian attitude of effortlessness, of ease with the self. And those eyes: They gleam with a confluence of fear and knowledge—a mirror image of the look Goldblum flashed the camera just after Dr. Malcolm nearly lost his life to a T. Rex.
As hordes of admirers flock to the Mona Lisa daily or crowds jockey for a chance to glimpse the Sistine Chapel, already, a few fans have begun to express their devotion to Goldblum’s massive, sweaty likeness. Those cultured enough to understand just how monumental this achievement is have made a pilgrimage to the statue, both to take in its full glory and to honor it the best way they know how.
Goldblum hasn’t responded to the statue, and it’s unclear if he’s seen it yet—maybe he’s busy doing a photoshoot with a puppy or practicing piano or something—but we hope NOW TV keeps it up long enough for the real Jeff Goldblum to recreate the scene next to his 330-pound doppelgänger.
If the city of London has a lick of goddamn sense, it’ll keep the monument there for all eternity—maybe even consecrating it as a national landmark. Sure, Goldblum isn’t British, and no, Jurassic Park has nothing to do with England, but just look at that masterpiece: the fleshy bulb of the nipple, the furrows of the chest hair, the pinnacle of what a human face can be.
According to the rules of chaos theory, there’s a world out there in which this monument doesn’t exist. Thank God we don’t live in it.
Correction (7/18): An earlier version of this post mistakenly claimed that Jeff Goldblum was in Beetlejuice. The article has been updated to correct the error.
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