Dinosaur Revolution

I must preface this review by saying that I've only seen the last episode of this nonsense, which was about T-Rex. And I don't think the scientists involved in making of this ''documentary'' are responsible for the ridiculous animation. They must have seen it only after it aired, I assume.

Science is not always 100% sure when it comes to measuring, guessing, ascertaining things that happened many millions of years ago or many thousands of light years away. This is not to say that science is unreliable, in fact, I would argue otherwise is true. Because scientists are fully aware of the difference between when they make an educated guess and when things are unambiguous. Especially, when it comes to dinosaurs, scientists know what they know and what they are guessing. And to be fair, all animated documentaries about dinosaurs depict them based on speculation, in terms of color and behavior. But when we know so little about their colors, it's not acceptable to give them very specific color schemes. Their depiction of a T-Rex looks like an idea of an 8 year old boy: T-Rex have conveniently skull-shaped, white war paints on their faces! Their behavior is also laughable. They cuddle like kittens in their nests. Smaller dinosaurs sneak up on sleeping T-Rex to steal their eggs and when it wakes up they are afraid and they make a sound similar to a dog whimper. I must stress again, I am aware, almost all documentaries about dinosaurs try to make them appealing to a general audience. But this was insulting not only to the scientist but also to the audience as well. I really felt the urge to say a few things about this. Who ever made this should be ashamed of themselves.

I can understand the hardships of CGI, but this is a sorry excuse for this movie. The animals act too human-like and not enough like animals. The dinosaurs are unrealistically colored and there are sound effects every 2 seconds as their on camera. unfortunately, this is a flaw in many documentaries, and I wish that there could be a documentary that fixes all of these flaws, and Dinosaur Revolution acts like it did... but it failed at doing so.

But on the bright side, at least they tried to do so, and I have to give them credit for adding feathers to their dinosaurs.

Turns out it was meant to be a comedy rather than a documentary, so...yeah.

While some paleontological information is offered from very famous experts in the field occasionally, with some footage of excavations, there really is not much educational content to be given.

The biggest pro I can give this program is the designs of the dinosaurs. They're very colorful and creative. Very birdlike, which is something most dinosaur documentaries actually lack, going for duller browns and greens primarily.

Everything else though is pretty bad. The animations of the dinosaurs are strange. It's jerky and looks like they're moving at a different framerate then they should be. They also act way too much like domesticated animals like dogs, and even some human-like behaviors are present as well, which is my biggest con. This honestly feels more like a high-budgeted cartoon than a documentary.

This is honestly one of the worst dinosaur documentaries of recent years. If you're looking for something educational on the subject matter, check out other Discovery Channel documentaries such as "When Dinosaurs Roamed America".

Take a smattering of randomly themed vignettes, add some excitable paleopublicists, curiously proportioned and bizarrely animated models, throw them together, blend, and pour.

Is this entertainment? Education? I'm really not sure, and neither is it. Some paleontological background is presented, but in a token way, with a few stock shots of hammer wielding Indiana Jones style field workers cutting to a hand waving exposition of the conclusions, with no connection between the two. Science by assertion.

Pragmatically though, all television is a way to attract eyeballs for advertisers, and this series is clearly aimed at doing just that.

To its credit, there is an underlying theme to each episode, such as parental care. But this is illustrated with tiny minidramas, jumping around between eras and species in a disjointed way that prevents any subject being explored in depth.

And there are also some highly spurious scenarios, presumably thrown together more for re-use of models or raw drama than through any suggestion from their tame pseudo-science mouthpieces - giant killer mosquitoes, being a standout example.

The animation is passable, barely. Strangely staccato, it's more reminiscent of Harryhousen than Jurassic Park. Since the latter was made twenty years ago, there's little excuse for such jerky, hesitant beasts that float and waft through their environments without any interaction.

All of this I could forgive, but for one thing: the comedy anthropomorphisation of the stars, with a side line in puppyish behaviour.

Apparently the way to sell dinosaurs now is to have them react like people or our favourite contemporary beasts, to project human problems and emotions and reactions on to them.

Dinosaurs perform double-takes, females sport rounded, darkly lined eyes - I could swear that some of them were batting lashes. A sleepless night leads to a tired, grumpy dinosaur during the day. It's an animal! If it's tired, it will just lie down and sleep, problem solved.

This theme continues through the episodes that I bothered to watch, but eventually I realised that I was watching popular entertainment that simply isn't very entertaining.

Although the animations are stiff at times i really liked the colorful and imaginative take on the different species, especially the t-rex which looked like death itself. But despite this fact i cannot like this series when every single scene is filled with straight out ridiculous behavior from animals which intelligence and behavior should have been similar to their modern counterparts. When i see a hunting dinosaur nod to its fellow hunter i cannot help but shiver out of dismay, the animators obviously had no idea about animal behavior and seemed to have given the dinosaurs almost human personalities.

I suppose the purpose of this series was to display dinosaurs as more caring for each other, but the way it was executed reminds me of a Disney movie, the only thing missing is the animals actually talking to each other.