The Dinosaur Project

Galvasean

I must admit this looks awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYBASC9O35Y

'Found footage' movies need to hurry up and go away.

the_syco

The question is; will the t-rex have scales or feathers in the film?

Galvasean

Judging by the unconvincing CGI critters in the trailer it's gonna be scales all 'round.
Notice the little frilled Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus rip off guy.

Adam Khor

Awful.

Also, you have to be very stupid or very blind to mistake those CG pterosaurs for "birds". Especially if you're actually looking for them.

Galvasean

Let's see what the Smithsonian have to say:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2012/07/the-dinosaur-project-prepares-for-launch/

Galvasean

Early reviews are not encouraging...
Only 20% fresh so far on RottenTomatoes, with a 4.6/10 average so far.

I can't say it looks terribly exciting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN7xbrI846k

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Early reviews are not encouraging...
Only 20% fresh so far on RottenTomatoes, with a 4.6/10 average so far.

I can't say it looks terribly exciting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN7xbrI846k

I was hoping for a large predator to attack the guy while he was distracted

Galvasean

"Oh look, a baby theropod... I think I'll rub my scent all over it. Surely its parents won't eat me."

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

"Oh look, a baby theropod... I think I'll rub my scent all over it. Surely its parents won't eat me."

Well, in honor to the truth, even "leading expert" Sarah Harding in the awesome TLW made a similar stupid mistake by WEARING a jacket smeared with baby T-Rex blood even though she said T-Rex had the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom...

Galvasean

Apparently this came out on DVD on Monday (same day as Dinotasia).
http://www.filmdates.co.uk/films/4209-the-dinosaur-project/

Must have a look and see if they'll give me a discount if I buy 'em both.

Galvasean

Bought the DVD yesterday.

Galvasean wrote: »

"Oh look, a baby theropod... I think I'll rub my scent all over it. Surely its parents won't eat me."

Actually, the fact that he has the baby's scent on him is the very thing that stops them from eating him!

Shows what I know! :pac:

Galvasean

This review sums up how I feel about The Dinosaur Project.

Ziphius

This wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Certainly not a good movie, mind.

TerrorFirmer

Just watched it there. Was better than I expected, not an amazing movie but pretty competent with some nice visual effects.

Adam Khor

Yeah, I think I'll swallow my words too, again XD


I actually enjoyed this. Much better than most "found footage" movies and actually good for dinosaur movie standards (most of them are terrible...)

The special effects are quite decent; the story isn´t anything special but then again, its supossed to be a "found footage" movie so... and dinos are cool. Bonus points for

not having a giant theropod as the "boss" for a change, and for creating a very interesting looking creature that you can easily mistake for a weird pterosaur but seems to be more a ceratosaur that evolved into something similar to a bat

. The main character could use a better haircut tho. (The fact that I had a similar one couple years ago notwithstanding). :pac:

Owryan

It was ok , better than a lot of other "found footage" films and at least it had an established cryptide as the basis for the expedition.

Suppose its a film you need to switch off your common sense for. I could just about accept the idea of the dinosaurs being trapped in a valley, but the pteranadons (or whatever) surely faced no such barrier. So how come no one ever came accross them or found a dead one ?

Or have I missed something, I watched it with my 4 + 2yo's so maybe I did

Galvasean

You didn't miss a thing. It's just a little bit rubbish...

Adam Khor

Owryan wrote: »

It was ok , better than a lot of other "found footage" films and at least it had an established cryptide as the basis for the expedition.

Suppose its a film you need to switch off your common sense for. I could just about accept the idea of the dinosaurs being trapped in a valley, but the pteranadons (or whatever) surely faced no such barrier. So how come no one ever came accross them or found a dead one ?

Or have I missed something, I watched it with my 4 + 2yo's so maybe I did

Yeah, there's really no good explanation for that. Even the fact that they are Pteranodon is weird. If we assume that Pteranodon survived until the latest Cretaceous (and beyond, in the film's logic), it would still be weird to have Pteranodon 65 million years later without any modifications. One would think they would have evolved at least a little bit...

My favorite dinos were actually the flying ones (I'm pretty sure they were NOT pterosaurs), because they could very well be a new kind of dino evolved from Cretaceous ancestors in all the time they supossedly survived. That's why the frilled, giant lesothosaurs didn´t bother me either. I can already see some people complaining about how these two creatures are "inaccurate", tho...:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Galvasean

Adam Khor wrote: »

My favorite dinos were actually the flying ones (I'm pretty sure they were NOT pterosaurs), because they could very well be a new kind of dino evolved from Cretaceous ancestors in all the time they supossedly survived. That's why the frilled, giant lesothosaurs didn´t bother me either. I can already see some people complaining about how these two creatures are "inaccurate", tho...:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Funny that. I, like you, would be far more concerned with a film neglecting that the dinos would evolve over the course of 65 million years. Plus, it's not like we've discovered all the species of dino either.

Owryan

Galvasean wrote: »

Funny that. I, like you, would be far more concerned with a film neglecting that the dinos would evolve over the course of 65 million years. Plus, it's not like we've discovered all the species of dino either.

Like how ST:Voyager evolved them into a space faring race lol ?

The thing is, imo, people wouldnt want to watch a film about dinosaurs that have evolved over 65 million years set in present times. The whole mystique about them is how they looked/behaved in their time and how that would cross over to our timeframe.

Whereas UFO/Aien invasion films tend to go for the vastly more evolved/advanced alien race as its what people seem to want, with dinosaurs they want them big n mean regardless of what modern research has revealed.

Adam Khor

Owryan wrote: »

The thing is, imo, people wouldnt want to watch a film about dinosaurs that have evolved over 65 million years set in present times. The whole mystique about them is how they looked/behaved in their time and how that would cross over to our timeframe.

Whereas UFO/Aien invasion films tend to go for the vastly more evolved/advanced alien race as its what people seem to want, with dinosaurs they want them big n mean regardless of what modern research has revealed.

You may be right, there, but if filmmakers stuck to the "classic" look of dinos and to the handful of "popular" species such as T-Rex, Triceratops etc, the genre would be extremely limited. I personally don´t have anything against "evolved" dinosaurs especially if they're supossed to be survivors instead of say, time travelers (like in Primeval) or clones of the originals (Jurassic Park). I remember when I was a kid, I would read books on Mokele Mbembe and co., or the Ica stones and other so called "surviving dinosaurs" and I was always skeptical precisely because they seemed to be too similar to the (back then) accepted idea of what Mesozoic dinosaurs looked like. People talk a lot about how crocodiles and sharks haven´t changed a bit since prehistoric times, but that's really not all true. Why would dinosaurs be different?

Plus, they can still be "big and mean" even if they're not the big and mean classics of old times...

Owryan

Regarding image if you put a "jurassic park" velociraptor beside what more recent reports suggest, ie scaley v feathery/downy, most people would refuse to believe they are the same creature .

I think most film/tv show makers will go for the classic rather than the more modern image because it is what the average viewer will recognise.
I think its a trade off of realism against ratings sadly.

Maybe my arguement is hopelessly wrong and i ll happily admit that my knowledge of dinosaurs is less than scant lol but (in my head) it has some sense lol.

As for evolving, if for example there was a pocket of dinosaurs living in the deepest parts of Africa undisturbed for millenia surely any evolving or changes would be minimal ?

Adam Khor

Owryan wrote: »

Regarding image if you put a "jurassic park" velociraptor beside what more recent reports suggest, ie scaley v feathery/downy, most people would refuse to believe they are the same creature .

I think most film/tv show makers will go for the classic rather than the more modern image because it is what the average viewer will recognise.
I think its a trade off of realism against ratings sadly.

That may be correct- especially because new discoveries change everything so fast that the public has little time to "adjust" to the new things.

Owryan wrote: »

As for evolving, if for example there was a pocket of dinosaurs living in the deepest parts of Africa undisturbed for millenia surely any evolving or changes would be minimal ?

That would be very unlikely because we're talking about millions of years, not just millennia; in order for the creatures to remain the same, their habitat would have to remain the same too which did not occur; there wasn´t rainforest in central Africa in the Cretaceous, and many different habitats must have existed, replacing one another, in the 65 million years since the accepted extinction of dinosaurs; therefore if any dinosaurs had survived in Africa after the end of the Cretaceous, they would have been forced to evolve and adapt to those changing conditions just like any other creature.

By now they would look very, very different.

Ziphius

It's been a while since I read it but I think they was a part in Jurassic Park park that explains that most of the dinosaur species have gone various iterations -- they describe them as velociraptor 2.0 and so on.

Part of the rational for this was to make the dinosaurs closer to the public view of dinosaurs (at the time slow cold blooded reptiles). I used this as an explanation for some of the scientific inaccuracies of the film.

I think it could also be a fun way to reconcile a more scientifically accurate prequel with the original film.

Owryan

Adam Khor wrote: »

That would be very unlikely because we're talking about millions of years, not just millennia; in order for the creatures to remain the same, their habitat would have to remain the same too which did not occur; there wasn´t rainforest in central Africa in the Cretaceous, and many different habitats must have existed, replacing one another, in the 65 million years since the accepted extinction of dinosaurs; therefore if any dinosaurs had survived in Africa after the end of the Cretaceous, they would have been forced to evolve and adapt to those changing conditions just like any other creature.

By now they would look very, very different.

Apologies, never considered the impact of habitat on evolution or how different it is today compared to then . Real rookie mistake for ya lol

Adam Khor

Ziphius wrote: »

It's been a while since I read it but I think they was a part in Jurassic Park park that explains that most of the dinosaur species have gone various iterations -- they describe them as velociraptor 2.0 and so on.

Part of the rational for this was to make the dinosaurs closer to the public view of dinosaurs (at the time slow cold blooded reptiles). I used this as an explanation for some of the scientific inaccuracies of the film.

I think it could also be a fun way to reconcile a more scientifically accurate prequel with the original film.

That's true, the book includes a conversation between Henry Wu and Hammond (a flashback, so to speak) in which Wu tells Hammond that the future visitors to the park won´t accept the dinosaurs as "the real deal" because they are "too fast", amongst other things, and that they should make the dinosaurs slower, dumber, swamp-dependant, I don´t think they ever say "cold blooded" but it's kind of implied.
Hammond refuses, however, saying that he wants the creatures to be the real deal, otherwise he's cheating the public. So in reality, the dinosaurs as presented in the book are NOT the 2.0 versions Wu wanted to make, but the actual, closer to reality versions that Hammond approved despite their being both extremely dangerous, and different from what people would have expected.

So it doesn´t really help explain any film inaccuracies. The truth is, both the dinos of the novels and the films were created based on what was believed to be close to reality back then. The only justification for the "inaccuracies" (which I think its pretty reasonable) is the fact that the dinosaur genetic code was not complete and so there had to be some tampering with it.

Ziphius

I see. Quite a while since I read it. But that passage stuck out in my mind. I think the official in-universe explanation for the discrepancies is the added frog DNA (did the book also mention bird and crocodile DNA being used?).

The inaccuracies in Jurassic Park never bothered me. I think the film is brilliantly ambivalent so that the viewer can invent an explanation for them as ever they see fit.

Galvasean

The book describes the raptors as having forked lizard like tongues that flick out. Was that considered orthodox science at the time? I have never seen a restoration of a dinosaur (outside of Victorian times) with such a trait.

Ziphius

Galvasean wrote: »

The book describes the raptors as having forked lizard like tongues that flick out. Was that considered orthodox science at the time? I have never seen a restoration of a dinosaur (outside of Victorian times) with such a trait.

Weird. You're right, don't think dinosaurs were ever portrayed with lizard tongues except back in the 1800's when they were literally thought to be giant lizards.

I remember seeing a deleted seen of the raptors with snake like tongues tasting the air during the kitchen scene. The scientific adviser (Jack Horner I think) vetoed this idea. It did make them look a bit more sinister.

Adam Khor

Ziphius wrote: »

Weird. You're right, don't think dinosaurs were ever portrayed with lizard tongues except back in the 1800's when they were literally thought to be giant lizards.

I remember seeing a deleted seen of the raptors with snake like tongues tasting the air during the kitchen scene. The scientific adviser (Jack Horner I think) vetoed this idea. It did make them look a bit more sinister.

Had that been kept, however, lots of people would still be complaining about it today regardless of how cool it would've looked.

Interestingly, it appears that some dinosaurs (Allosaurus among them, I think) did have a Jacobson's organ. This doesn´t necessarily mean that they had a forked tongue like a snake or lizard, but you never know...

Myrddin

I watched this last night, surpassed my expectations actually - I found it quite decent

Question about the very end scene:

Just before the credits roll, we see the kid actor talking into presumably the fixed satellite phone...except you can make out someone standing beside him. Was it his dad, who we presumed dead by falling off the cliff face?