Either this is the kind of stuff that kids find entertaining these days, or the executives at 20th Century Fox are a bunch of complete F#%KING IDIOTS. I’m not just disappointed by this movie, I’m pi$$ed off.
Back in 1993, the film Jurassic Park revolutionized the capabilities of special effects, and made dinosaurs more awesome than they’ve ever been. In 1999, BBC released a dinosaur documentary like no others that came before it. In this 6 part miniseries, they didn’t just look at the bones, show interviews with paleontologists, or show some illustrations, or anything else like that. It was like a documentary you would see about polar bears. It was just dinosaurs living in their natural world, or as close as they could make it look like their natural world, given that it was a TV show. It featured state of the art special effects that still look good to this day. It was like Jurassic Park, a combination of practical props with CGI. They blended both elements almost seamlessly to make one of the most immersive and impressive dinosaur documentaries ever made. It was highly educational, it won a few awards, and even got a live show. And yes, the live show is great. I’ve been to one.
Even though some of the information given in the show is outdated (with some scientific speculation) and not entirely accurate to the fossil record as we know it today, there is still a lot to be learned. It was cool back then, and it’s still cool now. When I heard that it was getting a feature length film that would be released theatrically, worldwide, for the whole world to see, I about $hit my pants. If you don’t know, I am a HUGE dinosaur fan. I love learning about them, and I love watching shows about them, specifically in the style of Walking With Dinosaurs. Anyway, it was finally getting a big movie. The first trailer looked great!
A few questions came to mind. There was always a story to what the dinosaurs were doing, but it was written to resemble the events that could possibly have taken place in the prehistoric world. With this movie, I wanted to see a completely different and new story about the dinosaurs. It was nice to see lesser known species such as Pachyrhinosaurus and Gorgosaurus. What sort of adventure would they go on? What kind of story would they tell? I couldn’t wait.
The next trailer not only lowered my expectations, but dug a 120,000 meter grave for everyone else’s expectations, and any hopes that the movie would be good. Just… watch.
They…. talk. Ummm…. didn’t we already get that with Disney’s Dinosaur in the year 2000? Speaking of which, I’ll get to that movie soon. But why the hell did they need to talk in this movie? They never spoke in the freaking show! Or the live show! Or anything else!!!!
This is when I and everyone else in the world realized that this was not Walking With Dinosaurs. I didn’t expect it to be the exact same as the TV show, but I also didn’t expect this! What is this abomination? The filmmakers pulled another Godzilla 1998! They just took the name and slapped it on with no respect for the original show or the audience’s intelligence. No respect for how the original show presented the prehistoric world. BBC took a more mature approach to how they presented it. Like I said before, they made it look like an actual wildlife documentary like you’d see with wolves or elephants. They didn’t dumb it down to make it ‘fun for all the kiddies’. And you know what? Even with this realistic approach, it still managed to keep kids entertained throughout. I should know. I was a kid once.
As it turns out, the film was originally going to be silent. The filmmakers just wanted to show a story about dinosaurs that was interesting enough without dialogue or narration. But executives at 20th Century Fox told them to add voice overs to make it easier for the kids of the audience to connect to the characters. Did those dumb@$$es think this was the Land Before Time? The creatures in Walking With Dinosaurs are not supposed to have character development like you’d see with a human, or a cartoon animal. They could have settled for a narrator, but NOOOOOOO, their minds went straight to dialogue between the animals. What’s even worse is that the filmmakers got all the animation done before this decision was made. They didn’t have the time to go back and make mouth movements, so you know what they did? They just threw in the voices like Homeward Bound. Can you imagine how out of place and unnecessary that must be? Well, try listening to that for an entire feature length film.
It’s even WORSE that they went with the most retarded and annoying voice overs anyone could possibly comprehend! The dubs on the old Godzilla movies were more pleasant to hear! The voices in Walking With Dinosaurs are not only annoying, but they’re offensive. It insults the audience’s intelligence by even being there. Not only for older viewers, but for kids as well. Do the executives at 20th Century Fox really think that kids wouldn’t be entertained by this unless they threw in a bunch of inappropriate and immature poop jokes? Did they think it would keep them interested? Or help them connect to the characters? Well, I can tell you right now that if I was a young kid, I’d hate this movie to the core just like I do now! Kids probably think this is the stupidest thing to ever be shown in theaters! It’s not entertaining, It’d be more interesting to watch paint dry, and it makes me want to slaughter the characters if that meteorite didn’t do it for me in the first place!
On top of that, the voice over actors say the stupidest things ever! Their dialogue is full of modern phrases like “worst migration ever!”, “dude”, “bro”, and a bunch of other crap. There was one line that got a chuckle. ONE. SINGULAR. LINE. It’s when the main character is looking at this lake where all these dinosaurs are and there’s a bunch of cool looking nature shots, and a bird, played by John Leguizamo, says “It’s a future oil field, so don’t get too attached.” But Leguizamo uses some weird, cartoonish, Spanish accent. It doesn’t fit at all… just like all the other voices.
The part of the dialogue that got me really confused was when the main Pachyrhinosaurus was talking to the love interest (yes. Dinosaur romance) about their future. Taking this literally, the love interest said something along the lines of “Future? You mean the Cenozoic Era?” First off, how in the holy mother of turds do the dinosaurs know what names the humans gave to the different eras of the world? It makes no sense! Speaking of names, how do the dinosaurs know and call themselves the exact scientific names that humans gave them? Do you really think a Triceratops would be aware that its species name was Triceratops? Again, no sense is made.
It’s also stupid that the Leguizamo bird is telling this story to a teenager through flashback. I should probably explain. Before the movie goes into the prehistoric story, it shows Karl Urban, of all people, driving his niece and nephew to a fossil dig site in Alaska. This teenager, despite having such little screentime, also sucks as a character. He has his hood up and says crap like “I don’t like digging for dead things” and other stereotypical teenager stuff. Then a crow, which is the descendant of the Leguizamo bird (with the same voice, and conveniently the same memories) shows up and starts talking to him… without talking to him. Again, it uses Homeward Bound style dialogue for the animals.
So the Leguizamo bird tells him the story of Patchi. Get it? Patchy? Because he’s a Pachyrhinosaurus? SO CLEVER. Even more stupid is the fact that Patchi and the Leguizamo bird constantly argue over who gets to narrate what part of the story. Sometimes they don’t tell you when they’re just talking in the story, or when they’re actually narrating. Both narrations and regular dialogue are equally obnoxious, so it’s hard to tell sometimes.
Perhaps the worst part of the narration was when the main pachyrhinosaurus fell into a river, and he says he dived into it, obviously not wanting to seem stupid and clumsy (how ironic!). But the John Leguizamo bird says “you didn’t dive” and (I’m not kidding here) rewinds the footage and shows him that he indeed fell. Was that necessary? At all? NO.
One of the other weirder things about this is the fact that not all the dinosaurs talk. It’s not like the Land Before Time, or Disney’s Dinosaur where only the plant eaters talk but the meat eaters don’t. The 4 main characters talk, but the rest just roar and sound like real dinosaurs. What’s the point of having 4 talk without the rest? That’s what makes it even more out of place!
Let’s see, what else doesn’t fit with this movie? How about all the pop songs? Yes, this movie has several modern pop songs playing in it. I don’t know which songs they were, but they sure don’t belong here! It fits with the prehistoric world about as well as a human romance story fits in a Transformers movie. In other words, not at all.
But they do keep true to Walking With Dinosaurs in one way, however. It tries to be educational. The key word is ‘tries’. They barely teach jack squat! You might learn some dinosaur names, when they freeze the film and name them all, but that’s it. They do have this scene where it teaches about Gorgosaurus, but it’s with this weird diagram that they never do for any other dinosaur. But it wouldn’t be fun for the kids if they didn’t throw in some childish humor about how small the Gorgosaurus’s arms were, would it? They hammer the tiny arms joke in more than the first Pokemon movie hammers in the message about how wrong fighting is. If you have any idea of what I’m talking about, then you know how bad it is.
Besides, the tiny arms thing is reserved for the T-Rex.
So, it’s not educational, it’s not even the slightest bit entertaining, it’s insulting to audiences, whether they be adults, teenagers, or little kids. The voice overs are so out of place, it’s like some sort of sick joke. I was hoping for a mature, realistic movie that just showed a grand adventure of some dinosaurs doing what dinosaurs would do. But I guess that’s not what audiences deserve. I can guarantee every executive at 20th Century Fox, and executives at every other studio that ever decides to make a dinosaur film similar to this, that you don’t need dialogue between the dinosaurs (especially not like this) to get kids interested in a story about dinosaurs, to keep their attention, or help them connect with characters. Want to know why? Because they’re not as stupid as you’d like to think! Kids can pay attention to a story about dinosaurs just fine. You don’t need some idiot voice telling them “something bad is about to happen, get ready! Are you ready? Because it’s about to get tense!” If anything, that’ll make kids feel stupid.
I have concluded that the only way to watch this movie is on mute. The voice overs are unnecessary, retarded (yes I said retarded. Shoot me), and all the other bits of child pandering are what brings this film DOWN. You could tell that the animators were trying to tell this grand scale adventure story with these creatures, but it was all ruined by the lobotomization by 20th Century Fox!!!!! Speaking of which, the animation is the ONLY good thing about this movie. Look at how beautiful it is in the trailers! Heck, the posters look great! It’s one of the best works of CGI I’ve ever seen! They made the dinosaur world absolutely incredible! The dinosaurs look great and colorful and alive! That is more than enough to capture the eyes of children.
This could have been nearly perfect without the voice overs. I would have loved and cherished this as a revival of one of my favorite TV shows. And when I say that, it doesn’t mean I’m ‘blinded by nostalgia’ at all. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it. this isn’t some established franchise with its own unique characters like Transformers. It was a documentary. This could have been what the TV show was, but on a huge, fantastic, cinematic scale that I and many, many people of the world would die to see. Other people would have been happy to watch and be amazed at the dinosaur world, but it was all ruined with the ear rape. Yes, ear rape. That’s what it was.
I wanted this movie to be good. I wanted to like this. This had the potential to be the dream movie that dinosaur lovers around the world would be able to experience in cinemas like no other dinosaur movie that came before. But as long as studios think that child pandering and dinosaurs is a good mixture, then we will never get what we always hoped for.
However, this movie didn’t ruin my childhood. I still have the original show on DVD. If you watch anything with the title of Walking With Dinosaurs on it, make sure it’s the 1999 classic. Stay as far away from this movie as possible.
FINAL RATING: 7 / 50
STORY: 0 / 5
VOICE ACTING: 0 / 5
CHARACTERS: 0 / 5
CGI: 5 / 5
ADVENTURE: 2 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 0 / 5
TONE: 0 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 0 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 0 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 0 / 5
It has come to my attention that with the Blu-ray of this movie, they give you the option of watching it with no dialogue! That’s great! Why did it have to be a DVD exclusive and not what people saw in theaters!? That’s just like the DVD’s of the old Godzilla movies that give you the option to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. It gives you a reason to pay attention to what’s going on, and it’s easier to take seriously. So if you have a Blu-ray player and the money for a copy with the dialogue free version, go ahead, and enjoy the lack of ear rape.
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