Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters
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Actor: Kenneth Branagh, Nigel MarvenBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: E2418
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:
- Before Humans Before Dinosaurs Our Planet Was Ruled By Monsters.,/i>From the makers of Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts comes the prequel: the epic and entertaining story of life on Earth before the dinosaurs and beasts. It s life, but not as we know it.Before dinosaurs a succession of fantastic animals and plants ruled the planet. Many of us are completely unaware that
DVD Reviews of Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters
DVD Review: A great "walk" into the dawn of time!
Summary: 4 Stars
This ambitious video takes you walking far, far back in time, nearly to the beginning of life...or at least, life that was visible to you and me. It starts with the Cambrian era of ocean life, with a weird-looking arthropod that may have been the very first predator. From then on, it is a running competition between arthropods and chordates, predator and prey. Highlights are the first land creatures, the amphibians, and the lush Carboniferous era of swamps and giant dragonflies. Then on to the time of Dimetrodon, which we know as "the sailback lizard", and to a weird assemblage of mammal-like reptiles called Synapsids which survived into the dry, hellish Permian era. All of these creatures are depicted with stunning realism through computer animation. The scenes are as vivid as any documentary about Africa... you really feel as if you are there!
I highly recommend this video, which does everything that Jurassic Park did, without the cornball story line. However, I have a few points of criticism which knocked my rating back to a "4". The authors of the series have set up little scripts, mostly about creatures fighting and eating each other. This gets a bit tiresome after several million years. I'm sure there was a lot of predation in the Paleozoic era, but I'd like to have seen more variety in the script. Perhaps some speculation about other animal behaviors, such as mating or reproduction, or adaptations to the environment. And why are Arthropods always set up as the "bad guys"? Just once I'd like to see insects get the respect they deserve!
My other quarrel is about the depiction of the Permian Era. The narration tells us that it was a "dry time" and a time of climatic upheaval, when creatures were "stressed" and many died. This is a gross understatement. Something happened at this time which caused the greatest mass extinction in all of Earth's history. It is estimated that 90 percent of all species were snuffed out. Scientists are now speculating that a comet or asteroid may have struck the Earth, rupturing its crust and leading to massive volcanism. Continent-sized volcanoes poisoned Earth's atmosphere, killed most of the ocean life, caused a runaway greenhouse effect, and raised the planet's temperature higher than at any other time.... perhaps 16 degrees C.
Why downplay an event this dramatic? It would have made a hell of a movie all its own! The fact that life recovered from this trauma is truly miraculous. Walking With Monsters does show that life recovered, and 10 million years later, weird-looking critters were still struggling to avoid being eaten by other weird-looking critters. And in the final note, new kinds of reptiles appear... the first dinosaurs.
Watch it all!
Description of Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters
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