Dinosaur Revolution (2011) User Reviews

Voyage of the Disneysaurii

[RogerBorg · 3/10 · 26 January 2013]

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.

Definitely flawed, but still breaks new ground

[qabala · 8/10 · 27 April 2012]

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.

Why not go all the way and make the dinosaurs talk?

[philip-hellzen · 1/10 · 24 February 2014]

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.

People criticize him too much

[xKubayashi · 9/10 · 24 June 2021]

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.

Too much "artistic privilege" makes it just a cartoon pretending to be educational

[unclegerald2004 · 1/10 · 17 October 2013]

This cartoon is as educational as Spongebob Squarepants.

This program is dangerous as it masquerade as something educational, but it's pure cartoon taking extinct creatures and creating a Disney/World Wrestling Entertainment-type drama.

This entire program is based on iddy biddy tiny bits of actual facts (i.e. giant raptor) and piling on so much artistic/entertainment privileges like color, mating behaviors, family scenarios, close misses, surprise twist endings, "color flashing" etc... It's just a cartoon with little or no educational value.

This show is what the WWE is to wrestling. Not real, not educational, just fake.

Not fit for a documentary

[jurassicsean · 2/10 · 6 June 2018]

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".

A documentary much better than it's reputation

[tyrannophillip · 8/10 · 10 January 2021]

I have first seen this documentary a few years ago. I have heard that it was totally cartoonic. Then I watched it myself. Personally, I think this is an awesome documentary that didn't deserve all the hate and instead was a very good and enjoyable documentary. First off, I have to say that the dinosaur designs are not just pretty detailed, but those dinos are probably the most accurate ones we have seen in a documentary so far. They're even more accurate than those from " Planet Dinosaur" (2011). No other documentary I know had such realistic dinosaurs. Also, the animation quality and the CGI are very, very good! It really looks like these dinosaurs are really standing in those landscapes. I also like the fact that there are human scientists featured in Dinosaur Revolution, it shows that there are actual scientists who can explain the events of the series well. The dinosaur designs themselves also look beautiful ( colourful male Gigantoraptor or Allosaurus just to name a few). In addition, the theme of the series is epic and a good piece of music. Also, this documentary's T. rex is really cool, it has a dark skin colour but a ghostly- looking, white face. Pretty scary, but cool. Yes, dinosaur revolution can be really silly at times ( for example, a Shunosaurus eats a poisonous mushroom and acts like it's drunk. ), but that hardly destracts from the many cool aspects of this documentary. Sure, it's no " Walking with Dinosaurs" or " When Dinosaurs roamed America", but it's definetly worth a watch.

Decently Accurate But Human

[irockonthursdays · 4/10 · 26 June 2022]

I want to commend this documentary for being a tribute to how much our perception of these magnificent animals has changed over the years. I want to commend the plausible speculations related to these magnificent creatures, using papers available at the time. I want to be in awe at the magnificent proto-birds on my screen. But I cannot when I am bombarded with. I cannot however when I am distracted by these animals periodically acting like humans and not the birds/crocodiles they were. While the accuracy does have flaws, I am willing to forgive some of it (trust me I googled several papers to make sure) as long as a general sense of consensus is present. The problem comes in some of the behavior depicted. The mating dances and caring for young is not the problem here, its stuff like "broken jaw" forming an alliance with the sauropods to defeat the big scary new dino. Point is, I cannot feel like im learning anything when i am being shown land before time.

A sorry excuse of a dinosaur documentary :"(.

[tankace · 4/10 · 21 June 2016]

Dinosaur Revolution is not in part with its predecessors of Walking with Dinosaurs fame and to say the truth does not even deserve to be called a documentary,more like a over styled cartoon. To say the truth I had to figure ti out went in any break I saw "This show is sponsored by Nissan". It could have been called "A Nissan commercial with Dinosaurs" and it wouldn't make any difference. So why did this revisit of the Mesozoic epoch failed so badly?

For starters the CGI is a over the places and it looks uglier than those in Walking ,who were more than a decade older in the time of the release of this documentary. The reasons ,for this was that the project had more than one animation team and so the models could not be constant. An other was the program was at first going to be in total about twelve hours long and in was cut in just four, so many parts look broken. One more ,which I sensually tell if this was to make fun of the audiences or to ridiculed themselves, was that many of the stories showed were based on Looney Tunes cartoons, WHY IN GOD EARTH??!?1?

Also an other factor was the studio interference ,which made some of the scientist working in the project disown their work in it. Man you it is bad when even your crew deserts you. To the dinosaurs again, they are depicted human like and the sad fact is that some of the designs are quit accurate, like the raptors, but if you have them act in this manner then your work lose credibility's.

To conclude it was painful see the real life dragons be treated like that for profit and the advancements in the study of their lives going back to a preschool level. In the end ,no matter the project if your team isn't loyal to it and the leaders want to do it only for money ,is going to be a disappointment.

Too Unrealistic...

[countmustard · 4/10 · 18 May 2017]

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.

The dumbest ''documentary'' I've ever seen about dinosaurs

[utku_kamil_ozen · 1/10 · 10 January 2019]

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.