Customer Reviews

Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Nobody should confuse this with a course of paleontology. Nobody should even confuse this with a broad survey of the subject. Instead, it is a magnificent flight of imagination based upon some real science but which does not let the science take precedence over the wonder. It is wonderful

This is a series of three programs. Each deals with prehistoric life before the advent of the dinosaurs.

In the first program, we are treated to one theory of the formation of our planet and introduced to the Cambrian seas. There are not dinosaurs here. Fish barely even exist. That does not stop the cycle of predation in a world of gigantic marine scorpions and the proto-fish prey. We see the colonization of the land by the first plants and encounter the first amphibians, learning a little bit about the evolutionary pressures that drove their emergence. The program ends with the first true reptiles and the hard shelled egg.

The second episode takes place more on land. Gigantic arthropods contest with gigantic amphibians and the odd reptile here and there. We see the first strains of reptile that will eventually give rise to the mammals. Life is still a contest of the predator and the prey.

The third episode advances the story through the lives of some early, pre-dinosaur reptiles. The motif of eat and be eaten is still the rule of the day. The episode ends with the apprearance of true dinosaurs, where the series first began.

There is a lot of speculation in this work. Some of it is well reasoned and logical. Some of it is much less so. Only a few species are looked at with any degree of detail. The great Devonian age of the fishes is bypassed in a short sentence. That does not stop the wonder of it all. It is fascinating seeing the fossils come to life even with the speculations.

The DVD also includes a "making of" segment which covers all three of the series. It too is worth watching.

This will never replace real coursework and has all of the depth of the old, "Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom" but neither was ever intended to teach zoology. Both were meant to kindle a sense of wonder. Both accomplish that end.

Three episodes that explore the life, or what life might have been like, before the dinosaurs showed up onto the stage. With only about 90 minutes that does seem to leave a lot of details out but most of the major turning points are hit on - animals and plants moving from the oceans to the land, the development of certain organs for survival, evolution working to make animals and plants more fit. Sea scorpions, giant spiders and killer fish that could take on sharks make me happy I live NOW and not back then.
The DVD extra, the Trilogy of Life, talks about the history of the THREE shows, Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beasts and Walking with Monsters to show how the first series produced the next and so on.
I really enjoyed this series and wanted more - I think dinosaurs get too much of the spotlight and would like to know more about life before and after them.

this special was amazing. i am really 16, and have always been a fan of creatures from before dinosaur supremacy. however, i think 90 minutes is far too short for such a huge amount of life. most of the time periods up until the early Permian were skimmed over, and the Ordovician period was completely passed over, without a word said.

also, there were many creatures that i was disapointed not to see get re-created in this special. a few apperences, such as Gorgonops, Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, Euparkeria, Pterygotus, etc, i was happy to see. however, i was dissapointed when i did not see Icthyostega, Estemmenosuchus, Protorosaurus(earliest known archosaur), and many more creatures that i would like to know more about.

it is good, for 90 minutes, but if the creators were to re-create it as a four hour special, it could become something truly spectacular.

Seems that Tim Haines and BBC decided to follow in George Lucas' footsteps. Making what would be best accepted by the public first, then completing the series later with the more controversial stuff (if Lucas had made the Phantom Menace first, no one would know what Star Wars is today - the story is far too complicated).
Walking With Dinosaus and Prehistoric Beasts were both quite good, except the narration by Kenneth Branaugh, who seemed like he could care aless about what he was talking about and give the impression that these animals were failures (which they were not!) There are some things about the series that I didn't like, mostly the animatronics and some facts, nitpicking stuff.
Walking With Monsters, in my humble oppinion is the least strong of the series for the following reasons. 1: It was too short. 2: The animals didn't act as naturalistically as they did in the others (spiders don't stab and stab their prey like a human murderer, they jab and then wait for their poison to take affect). 3: It seemed rushed - sequences that should have taken 30 minutes took half that.
Despite these fallbacks, the CG is quite good, animatronics was used VERY sparingly and the Dimetrodon sequence is GREAT! It was my favorite of all of them. I would recommend this DVD just to complete the Walking With story. If you want more on PreDinosaurs, go for The Shape of Life DVD set. It's GREAT. So, on it's own, Walking With Monsters is a waste of time (in my oppinion), but with Walking With Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Beasts, it works fairly well. And despite all the series' fallbacks, everyone should have the complete series in their collection.
Other Great Dino Series: When Dinosaurs Roamed America, WWD: Chased By Dinosaurs, Dinosaur Planet. Hope this was informative, thanks for listening (or reading more like).

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!

This could have been a truly wonderful experience, but it falls quite short of the rest of the series. The animations are still good, and it's wonderful to see all of these reconstructions (even when artistic licenses are invoked), but there are many parts that may mislead the casual viewer.

The video starts will the collision of a large bolide that led to the formation of the moon, and then we jump to the Cambrian and <Anomalocaris>. If you are interested in geobiology, early plants or other invertebrates of the early oceans, don't even pick this video up; they are mentioned in passing if at all. Okay, so I guess we are talking about `monsters' and <Anomalocaris>, not microbes, the first plants or other inverts, was the monster of the time, but the video moves on to <Cephalaspis>, hardly a monster. Granted, eurypterids are covered, but the chronology of their evolution becomes quite confusing. Now, I am expecting some of the true monsters of the late Paleozoic; <Dunkleosteus>, xenacanthid sharks, <Onychodus>, etc. Instead we leap ahead to <Hynerpeton> and the land invasion of the amphibians (<Stethacanthus> is shown, but never mentioned by name). Suddenly, we are in a <Dimetrodon> landscape (how about that amniote egg?--why not convey its importance?). Here is where a lot of speculation stretches the limits of reason. Apparently, though there is no evidence of it, baby pelycosaurs would cover themselves in dung to escape the cannibalistic adults. Funny, but I never came across anything like that in any of my paleoecology work... Later, the video implies that the <Dimetrodon> eggs hatch in mere hours! Of course, there is a segue at the end leading us toward the dinosaurs, but there is no mention of the Permian extinction, or any extinction for that matter, and its causes!

I was reluctant to give this video three stars; the reconstructions are cool enough to warrant 2.5. Since I couldn't record such a score, I was forced, based primarily on the glaring omissions, extreme exaggerations and lack of continuity, to drop it down to two stars. If you own the other "Walking with..." videos, you will obviously want this video. If you are a paleontology minded person, you will enjoy seeing these fossils come to life. If you are a casual science fan, keep in mind that you are seeing only a very small and very random part of the picture. Less time should have been spent with creating a "Crocodile Hunter"-like program, and more time should have been spent showing how these monsters came about and why they are no longer around.

After the astounding Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts, the time had come to tell the story of life before the dinosaurs. Many people probably know less about this strange collection of creatures than they do about the prehistoric mammals of Beasts, but nonetheless these are fascinating animals.

Many familiar Walking With locations are used, such as New Zealand and Argentina. The animation is probably best in the entire series. From the undulating body of the Pterygotus sea scorpion to the incredibly detailed legs of the giant Arthrofleura, the animation team really should give themselves a pat on the back.

My only problem? Sometimes this show seems to have a feminist slant. All of the giant predators are females!

This documentary is a view of life on earth before the dinosaurs. The film begins with the creation of the Moon by the impact of the hypothetical planet Theia with the Earth. Starting with the Cambrian period 530 million years ago, the evolution of life on earth is documented, starting with the earliest of man's ancestors, the Haikouicthys, an orange "fish" the size of a thumbnail. The progress of the sea-dwelling creatures is charted as they evolve into being able to exist on land and ends where the documentary "Walking with Dinosaurs" picks up, at the end of the Triassic period, with the first dinosaurs walking the earth and forcing the smaller mammalian creatures into a nocturnal existence of hiding.
DVD extras include a thirty-minute documentary entitled Trilogy of Life. This documentary covers all of the Walking with series (Dinosaurs, Beasts, and Monsters). There are numerous interviews with the filmmakers and producers of the series. There is even footage of the real locations and backgrounds before the animated beasts were inserted by computer. It's funny to see the filmmakers kicking up dust and moving trees with wires "pretending" to be the dinosaurs since the dinosaurs would be inserted later.
The documentary itself is presented with a great deal of detail and authority, as if the filmmakers know for a fact that this is exactly what took place, when in fact it is all quite hypothetical. However, you have to watch it understanding that its purpose is not to present an academic thesis. Instead, its purpose is to bring prehistory to life, just as if you were watching present-day animals being filmed, complete with animated prehistoric beasts occasionally bumping into an imaginary camera.
My stepchildren absolutely love this documentary. This film just goes to prove that science can be made interesting, inviting the viewer to further investigate what is being presented. That is the purpose of the film, and it does succeed brilliantly.

The movie is beautiful done and artfully narrated. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys animals species and learning about the biological and social facts behind them.

I just enjoyed watching the abridged movie length version yesterday. I enjoyed this much more than the other chapters of the story (Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts). Walking with Monsters appears to me to have a number of advantages.

Firstly, the animation appears to me to be more believable, at least in parts. The animals appear more at home in their environment, and less clunky. Though I can appreciate that this view would differ from person to person: at the time this thought occurred to me, someone spoke out to say that it looked fake!

Secondly, the narration by Kenneth Brannagh is much easier to listen to. It is less overbearing, and less obtrusive. The images and the story carry more weight than his voice acting in this "speculation".

Thirdly, the story gives more emphasis on the theories especially relating to evolution, and less on the dramatisation of the lives of animals. It was particularly effective to see the changing shape of the animals postulated through evolution, and to have the periods/eras of time clearly highlighted. We have a poster of these time periods and our eight year old enjoyed referring to these while we watched the DVD. He especially delighted in hearing about our ancestry being traced back to the fish!

Overall the series is a great achievement, and I'm sure has made some advancements towards society's understanding of the concepts that we can gather from our prehistory. Its certainly improved my knowledge.