The Dinosaur Movie Iceberg

June 26, 2023 5:40 PM

Dinosaurs have had a rich history within the film industry, brought to life on the big screen with the use of an array of methods and featuring in many different genres. [SLYT]
posted by rebent (11 comments total)

@Dino Diego hits it out of the park again with a fantastic summary of dinosaur footage across film. If you're unfamiliar with an Iceberg, it is a way of collecting information about a topic from most pedestrian to most obscure. You can see icebergs at the ice berg community at icebergcharts.org
posted by rebent at 5:49 PM on June 26, 2023

I recently saw some of the stop-motion footage from One Million Years B.C. and pondered that 27 years separate its herky-jerky plasticine dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, while thirty years separate the Spielberg movie from us.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:50 PM on June 26, 2023

"herky-jerky plasticine dinosaurs"

That's the work of Ray Harryhausen you're demeaning - it's neither herky-jerky nor plasticine.
posted by misterbee at 6:54 PM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

Look, I don't need to hear ninety minutes of some fancy-pants YouTuber yammering on and on to know that Tammy & the T-Rex is the best dinosaur movie ever made, but you know I'm just going to assume that's what the video is about, so good on you, Dino Diego
posted by phooky at 7:07 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Too bad he can’t make his own films.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:57 PM on June 26, 2023

Oh, I am aware it’s Harryhausen; my point is that the depiction advanced huge amounts in one generation and more or less zero in the next.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:38 PM on June 26, 2023

my point is that the depiction advanced huge amounts in one generation and more or less zero in the next.

Ok so I'm too lazy to look up an exact date (and also a bit drunk), but there is a specific point where contemporary film started that happened in 1992-3. Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park, and Toy Story all came out at around the same time, and movies never were the same again.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:24 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm going to go RTFA (WTFV?), but I remember loving Harryhausen animation as a kid, eagerly eating it up, and loving dinos, and I still love both dinos and Harryhausen's work to this day. Watching Jurassic Park in a theater when it first came out was a completely different thing. For me it was, and I think also for many others, a turning point in verisimilitude with dinos on screen. Advances (or changes, at any rate) in scientists' thinking about dinos aside, nothing has ever hit the same "this feels real" chord. I don't think realism is the be-all-end-all of art, not even close, but the impact of the scene that begins with the Brachiosaurus is impossible to overstate. I will always love stop motion and other forms of animation, but I don't expect anything else like that moment in my lifetime, unless we hit a point of immersive 3D that's fully indistinguishable from reality.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:44 AM on June 27, 2023

everyone gets to do the herky jerky eventually

one day they'll look back on us, with all their neural implants, teledildonics, and holodecks and say "those primitives used to take it all in via eyes and ears only??"
posted by elkevelvet at 6:50 AM on June 27, 2023

Definitely watch the video. Everything mentioned in the thread is covered in the video, and more.
posted by rebent at 6:57 AM on June 27, 2023

Thanks for posting this! I haven't watched it yet, but I have seen his deep dives on Theodore Rex (the movie nobody wanted to make) and slurpasaurs -- regular lizards with spines glued to them, filmed in miniature sets. When I was young, I would see that kind of thing in old movies, and I thought they were funny and almost realistic. But until I saw his video, I didn't realize how cruelly the animals were treated when they were used that way.

I also have a soft spot for Harryhausen. The uncanny effect of the herks and jerks, the painted or fiery eyes of the creatures -- those made it more effective to me.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:15 AM on June 27, 2023