Customer Reviews

Turok: Son of Stone

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Turok, first published by Dell Comics in December 1954, came out of the anti-comic book hysteria and featured a Native American character having adventures in wild lands populated by dinosaurs. Over the years, the character has gone through various comic books creators' hands and changed with the times, including a series of popular video games, and now an animated film, Turok: Son of Stone. This motion picture attempts to pay tribute to the original comic book concept blended with an edgier, new Millennium sensibility.

The attention to detail is excellent as the lush, primitive jungle is vividly realized, immersing us in this exotic land. Turok: Son of Stone by no means looks like a cheap, direct-to-video rush job. Obviously, great care and thought went into the making of this animated film. While the look of it is in the style of a lot of contemporary Saturday morning cartoons, this film is definitely not for little kids. The opening action sequence quite vividly and viscerally announces its mature credentials with a bloody battle involving severed hands and slow-motion sprays of blood as Turok wipes out his enemies. This scene sets the tone for a series of violent slaughters and vicious skirmishes with dinosaurs. I haven't seen an animated film this unapologetically bloody and violent since Heavy Metal (Collector's Edition)). If you've grown tired of the G rated wholesomeness of Disney, or the bland nature of cartoons on television, then Turok: Son of Stone is a breath of fresh air.

There is an audio commentary by producer Evan Bailey, supervising director Tad Stones, and directors Curt Geda, Dan Riba, and Frank Squillace. Because they were pressed for time during the production, the filmmakers divided the film into three segments with different directors for each one. They spend time discussing the look of the film and why they made the choices that they did in terms of colour, etc. They speak admiringly of the soundtrack and talk about the story and how it developed.

"Total Turok" is an excellent primer to the world of Turok, his start as a comic book in the 1950s and how the filmmakers updated yet stayed faithful to the character in this film.

Don't let the first minute or two fool you - this may start off looking like a Saturday morning cartoon, but this movie quickly disabuses the viewer of the notion with its opening battle.

Remaining faithful to the Gold Key comics, and tossing in a healthy dose of the modern comics' and video games' brutal violence. I picked this up based on a recommendation, and was not disappointed. This was a very entertaining movie, with some nice twists.

Heartily recommended.....and I'd stick with the salad if I were you.
(Watch the movie).

I bought this movie on a blind purchase after I read some reviews, and couldn't find it at Blockbuster. I almost never buy movies without watching them first, but I really wanted to see this one badly. And in the end, I'm glad I did, because this is a movie I'll probably want to share with other people I know, rather than just returning it as a rental and forgetting it.

Being a kid of the video game generation, my introduction to Turok was through the Nintendo 64 game "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter." I didn't remember much of the story, but I remember spending many a late night with my friends playing "Turok 2: Seeds of Evil" on 4-player mode (we would always fight over the Inflater Gun, it was hilarious). I only have a casual interest in comic books, so I was never particularly familiar with the comic incarnations of the character. However, with the snazzy new Turok game out on PS3, my interest in Turok has been rekindled, and after hearing good word of mouth about this DVD, I couldn't resist buying it.

While the new Turok game takes the sci-fi elements of the 80's Turok comics to the next level with a slick re-imagining Turok as a space faring mercenary fighting for his life on a lost world type planet, this movie goes in the opposite direction. This version is more in line with the 50's comics, where Turok is a warrior who is trapped in a lost world with his kin, and it doesn't take long for a villain to show up and recruit some evil Neanderthals to hunt Turok down. The movie has a pretty simple story, but it has some good themes that are clearly tailored towards the adult minds for whom the film was made. It's a respectful revisit to Turok's roots that pays homage to the source, while still maintaining freshness.

The animation is very similar in style to "Batman: The Animated Series" and the recent "Justice League" series. That makes sense, since one of the movie's three directors was responsible for a lot of episodes of Justice League and "Superman: The Animated Series," and another one also directed "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker," which is easily on my short list of favorite animated films. The actual quality of the animation is not quite up there with Return of the Joker, but it's still better quality than the vast majority of kids' cartoons you'll see on TV these days. The character designs are good, and during most of the action scenes they move very fluidly. And the movie has plenty of well animated blood-- I would say it's easily on par with "300" in terms of balletic violence.

Personally, I think it's really neat to see two versions of Turok out at the same time that while radically different, still both manage to pay respect to different aspects of the character. This movie makes a great companion to the new game, if for no other reason than that.

It also has a pretty good featurette that gives some behind-the-scenes looks at it, and it gave me a much better look at the history of the franchise than I'd been previously aware of. If you are a Turok fan, this is a must-have. And if you're like me, and have spent years pining for American animation studios to make more movies for adults, then you'll want to check this out, because it's a big step in the right direction.

As a collector of straight to dvd animated films based on comic book characters, I have to say that this is one of the best which will satisfy any Turok fan. Despite today's generation being mostly familiar with the games, everyone behind this project decided to stay true to the comic to give us an origin story which was very good. If your looking for a break from today's Saturday morning garbage, well you've come to the right place because plenty of blood is spilt in this more mature/adult film.

I've always liked the character of Turok. My dad grew up reading Turok so when Valiant comics released new Turok comics in the early 90's, we followed them. I had read a lot of good reviews about this movie but I have to say that overall it was just OK. There are two sides to this movie.
First, we have no-holds bar action and violence. There are severed heads, blood splattering, and Turok delivering good old fashion beat-downs on enemy warriors and dinosaurs alike. Turok's design is good and stays true to his comic origins. His sidekick from the comics, Andar, is there too. And the designs for the Lost Land the dinosaurs within are all very well done.
On the other hand, the animation reminds me of some of the recent Marvel and DC animated projects. And while I think that style is good, it just didn't seem to fit with all the violence. Overall, the voice cast is just ok. No one, not even Turok, seems to stand out. The musical score is great at times- very orchestral and moving. But other times, it's almost synthesized and doesn't fit with the movie.
It's an origin story for Turok and covers all the basics while adding new reasons for him to venture into the lost land. I just think this more mature movie would have benefited from more mature animation. But, it is one I recommend anyone give a try because I'm really on the fence about this one.

If you were a kid in the 60s you will love this treasure.To this day Turok lingers as an influence of what is good and noble and no-nonsense in me.Enjoy.Love those old outdated ideas about dinosaurs too though some were dead on.Cant wait for the Russ Manning compilation of Turok and Andar and I hope they do the entire Magnus Robot Fighter series too.Wow what fond memories of sitting on the porch and reading those old stories back when there was so little for an imaginative young boy.

One day I recalled the TUROK SON OF STONE comix from when I was a kid. I hadn't remembered them in years and got to poking around on the Web, to find out that an animated movie on the TUROK theme had been put together recently. I was curious enough to pick it up and give it a watching.

In the TUROK movie, we meet Turok, a young Indian warrior who was ostracized by his tribe for excessive violence. When another tribe, armed with newfangled flintlock mustkets, attacks, Turok jumps into the battle, to end up chasing the chief of the enemy tribe into an underground cavern.

There he finds an underground land full of prehistoric beasts and brutish prehumans, as well as a tribe that seems to be related to his own. The enemy chief organizes the prehumans to attack the underground tribe, and Turok must help defend them.

On going through TUROK SON OF STONE I conclude that Indian warriors fighting prehistoric beasts isn't as cool an idea as I recalled. Of course, the concept might have worked better if this movie had been produced with any craftsmanship, but the reality is that it is utterly shoddy. It is put together at a Saturday-morning cartoon level of production and scriptwriting -- and to make it even more difficult to swallow, it operates at a level of bloodshed and violence that would be absolutely unacceptable in a normal Saturday-morning cartoon.

The effect of mixing a cheap production with bloodthirstiness is distracting, to put it mildly. TUROK SON OF STONE isn't even amusing in a campy way -- it's just tiresome, a throwaway piece of trash.

Any fan of the old Gold Key Turok comics will love seeing this animated film. I liked the fact that it is intended for mature audiences. Yay gratuitous violence!

Imagine if you crossed "The Last of the Mohicans" with "The Lost World." That's pretty much what you get in this direct-to-DVD animated feature: native Americans, wall-to-wall dinosaurs, and non-stop action.

If you grew up watching Saturday morning action/adventure cartoons (and let's face it, who didn't?), this is a great way of revisiting them but in a more adult context. More blood flows here than in "Saving Private Ryan", but it's very stylized, so it's unlikely to traumatize anyone over the age of about 13. (Let me put it this way, if this had been around back in the '80s when I was 13, I would have LOVED it, but I probably would've had to hide it from my parents, who wouldn't have approved.) It's violent but in a cool, samurai-film kind of way. Personally, I thought it was a great idea to combine retro-style 2D animation with modern-day bloodletting. This is no cutesy Disney film, this is traditional-style cel animation for grownups, with no ironic pop-culture references in sight. Pixar should start experimenting with dark animated films like this, and I hope their upcoming John Carter film (films?) will be in the same vein. I love Pixar movies but I feel they've gone to the "cute talking animals/inanimate objects" well too many times. They should start using their awesome 3D animation skills to produce some slightly darker, edgier material rather than just variations on "Toy Story", "Nemo", "Monsters Inc" etc, something like "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" but, well, not lame.

Anyway, back to Turok. The voice cast is good (although the dliaogue delivery is a bit stilted at times), the artwork is quite beautiful at times, and the action comes thick and fast, with lots of surprises and big thundering set-pieces. I would LOVE to see this as a live-action feature. It'd be a summer blockbuster for sure. Adam Beach could reprise his role as Turok in live-action perhaps.

I've never read the Turok comic books, so I'm not sure how this compares to them, but I loved it all the same. Action, adventure, exotic scenery, dinosaurs of all descriptions ... made me feel 13 all over again!

I liked "Turok, Son of Stone." I'm old enough that I read the original Dell comics when they were released and I thought this movie was true to the original characters and setting while bringing in plenty of amped up action which, I'm told (in the nicely done extra "Total Turok"), was typical of the Valiant/Acclaim run of the series. As others have mentioned, some of the production team also worked on the animated Batman, Superman and Justice League series. It's probably not quite as good as the best of those but it is well done. If you can, buy it so that it has good sales and they will make a sequel. That's what I did, even though it was available from Netflix.