Walking With Dinosaurs - The Movie

So I've been seeing promos on TV for the "Walking With Dinosaurs" movie coming out this Christmas and they've taken a great premise and totally trashed it IMO.  The new trailers have the dinosaurs "talking" and making fart jokes.  Here's a trailer for what could have been before Hollywood morons got involved (notice there are no stupid talking dinosaurs, just the great CGI from the BBC that marked the documentary series.  Hollywood had to "dumb it down" for America of course):



And here's the stupid, dumbed-down for America version because we're a bunch of facebooking, texting, morons with the attention span of an ant:

I wasn't aware of the 2 different versions. I had plans on taking my son to see it during the Christmas break. Now that I know we're getting the "dumbed-down version", I'm feeling gypped. Thanks a pant-load, Toho.

Watch some British television shows and it's easy to see how dumbed down we are by comparison. This surprises me not one iota, few British films ever play in the theater here (and how sad is that considering we speak the same language) and in many cases they will be edited so as not to confuse the great masses of boneheads that stumble like zombies from Wal-Mart to the multiplex on the weekend here in the states.

Anyone who's seen the original BBC series knows that each episode tells a "story", following a central dinosaur or series of dinosaurs just like most good animal documentaries do.  Such a shame because this could have been great; the animation still looks great as usual for a BBC production but the "talking dinosaur" routine was totally unnecessary for anyone with half a brain.

Hopefully there will be a DVD release for the original version.

tohostudios wrote:

the "talking dinosaur" routine was totally unnecessary for anyone with half a brain.

Yeah, but "half a brain" is a pretty good description of many of the general public in the States.  

Sad but true.

I'm just so disappointed because I have all the "Walking With..." (Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Beasts, etc) on DVD and was really looking forward to this.

Another example of the US screwing up a great BBC documentary series is the "Life" series. The inimitable David Attenborough narrated the original BBC series. Guess who narrated it when it aired in the US? Oprah Winfrey!!!!!

Fortunately the Blu-ray version restored the original narration. That's what I'm hoping happens when the Walking With Dinosaurs movie sees it's DVD/Blu-ray release.

Interesting review from my trusted genre critic, Richard Scheib, which completely confirms what Toho's saying: http://moria.co.nz/fantasy/walking-with-dinosaurs-2013.htm.

Looks like Americanized garbage, essentially.

I think it currently holds a 4.7 score at imdb

My brother and I took our boys to see this one over the holidays. While it wasn't terrible, you could see that it was obvious that the voice-overs were done well after the production wrapped. There was zero-effort to make the dino mouths move in sync with what they said and all the dialog was written as an afterthought to the action on the screen. Charaters were saying "wacky" things that had nothing to do with the visuals.

While I probably wouldn't have been fussed by it, knowing what I knew just made it that more obvious. And I fell asleep for about a half-hour.

S.D. wrote:

Watch some British television shows and it's easy to see how dumbed down we are by comparison.  This surprises me not one iota, few British films ever play in the theater here (and how sad is that considering we speak the same language) and in many cases they will be edited so as not to confuse the great masses of boneheads that stumble like zombies from Wal-Mart to the multiplex on the weekend here in the states.

Ouch. Good to see people on the board recgnising this, though, and reassuring to know you're not all like that.... even in Australia, we get force fed the dumbed down American stuff, which doesn't paint the 'average American' in a flattering light. Mind you, some people's impressions of the 'average Australian' doesn't do a great job either!   

Sutekh wrote:

S.D. wrote:

Watch some British television shows and it's easy to see how dumbed down we are by comparison.  This surprises me not one iota, few British films ever play in the theater here (and how sad is that considering we speak the same language) and in many cases they will be edited so as not to confuse the great masses of boneheads that stumble like zombies from Wal-Mart to the multiplex on the weekend here in the states.

Ouch. Good to see people on the board recgnising this, though, and reassuring to know you're not all like that.... even in Australia, we get force fed the dumbed down American stuff, which doesn't paint the 'average American' in a flattering light. Mind you, some people's impressions of the 'average Australian' doesn't do a great job either!   

Australia seems like heaven on earth. My brother-n-law migrated there years ago, and of course there's you, SSD, and ADR that enjoy it as well. With cinema, though, I understand it's always been problematic; but you guys have released some true gems in the past.