Netflix has produced a new big budget
dinosaur documentary series, with Steve Spielberg producing. I went into it with high hopes, as it LOOKS absolutely gorgeous. But the history and biology presented are... well, it's clear they had paleontologists write the initial scripts, but then film directors took over the task of adapting everything in a way that could be shown visually, and in so doing wrapped in just about every trope imaginable of how the public tends to misunderstand evolution. Often the animal on the screen is described as the "first" or the "last" whatever they are, "trying to adapt", or if they failed to adapt, just sort of wandering sadly about burned forests waiting to go extinct. I realize its supposed to be a poetic metaphor or something, but as it corresponds to a common and popular way of imagining evolution wrong, it really started to bug me by episode three. There's a few other gripes, too; I think they are in such a hurry to cover the while 170 million year time span, they don't always get all the way through explaining things. Like, they make a big deal of the splitting of the ornithischians and saurischians, but then don't really explain what the difference actually is. The effect of this and other similar fast forwards is that I think the documentary probably makes a lot more sense to someone who already knows quite a bit about dinosaurs than it would to someone whose knowledge is minimal or out of date. And of course there's lots of anthropomorphization, as in most nature docos. The writeres seem very confused throughout about what is or isn't a "reptile". Lots of rather speculative or creative etiology.
Still, the animations are lovely, and its nice to see some screen time given to some geological events that aren't often depicted on screen, such as the Carnian-Pluvial episode which was so important in the development of life but often gets ignored in favor of the period-ending extinctions. Great also to see some animals, like Yutyrannus and Rhynchosaurus, that are pretty neat but rarely seen in documentaries. And correct depictions of some of the creatures previous media have gotten wrong, it is especially lovely to see dilophosaurus in her full size and glorious violence - feeling a bit guilty, there, Steven? Overall, I think the series would make for a fantastic ambience video to have on in the background, but if you want to learn some stuff about dinosaurs, it might be best to have Wikipedia spooled up so you can fill in the gaps of what's presented. It's no
Prehistoric Planet or
Your Inner Fish, but it looks better than either, and despite my gripes, the narration is still better than your average nature documentary.
