Dinosaur Revolution

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.

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.

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.

They exaggerate a bit with these '' funny behavior of animals '', they were supposed to show these animals as not stupid but also caring for their young, etc. They were about. Well, if they prefer a rigid version, it can let them into the henhouse? There they will find the appropriate traits that dinosaurs might once inherit. Arguments like 'The animators had no idea of animal behavior' are just ridiculous. You might as well find fault with Jurassic Park / World movies, especially the second part of Fallen Kingdom, but well. Is it wrong that they portray these animals in such a non-"rigid" way? After all, how are we supposed to picture these animals? But well, they are more or less right with that, but here in these movies, this is exactly what it was about to portray dinosaurs in this way.

This miniseries was much disliked by its' viewers.

That said, yes it had fairly jerky animation, and yes, it had many silly and/or gory moments.

So if the above makes you feel this production is not worth your time, I've already gotten the critique out of the way. However, if you, like me, have more than just a passing interest in dinosaurs, you are in for a real treat.

For all of its' quirkiness, this series is the first of its' kind to set up its' species as characters that the viewer can be invested in. If I were you, I'd be protesting that "Walking With Dinosaurs" already accomplished that, but you'd be wrong.

Anyone who's ever dealt with snakes or alligators will tell you that even they have their "adorable" moments. This series takes that angle as well. We see these animals as clumsy and imperfect, with personality and quirks. Another twist is the illustration of some species fighting to survive AFTER the well-known asteroid impact.

Dinosaur Revolution takes a sympathetic view of its' subjects, even T-Rex. It is obvious that this series was not meant to have narration or "talking head" interviews as each subject has more than enough personality to carry each story. The problem was the late revision to present this as a documentary, rather than a docudrama.

The article here says that the producers are re-editing this series to reflect the original vision. If so, I'd be happy to see it, but I'd be surprised if anyone would change their opinions on it. The criticisms about the animation are justified. The silliness, however, I found endearing.

I'd say this video would do well as a foil between viewings of other CGI dinosaur documentaries. It fleshes these species out in a way that has never been, and likely will never be, done by anyone else.

If nothing else, consider this the, intentionally, campy dinosaur documentary.