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Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 19, 2023 8:51:30 GMT 5
One week until LOOP is out! I will be taking some bets now, based on the trailers: -I bet the Dunkleosteus will have to try several times before catching an ammonite. -I bet the Arthropleura will be just peachy. -I bet the gorgonopsid will successfully hunt the pariesaur. -I bet the Lystrosaurus will be pretty lonesome. -I bet the Plateosaurus hatchlings will have adult company. -I bet the sauropod in the river will drown. -I bet the Triceratops will be T. rex lunch. -I bet the cave lion hunt will not succeed. -I bet there will end up being some injuring conflict between the Titanis and Smilodon no matter which side wins. I would be very surprised if the cave lions get the baby mammoth. Same, same. The baby mammoth is VERY well defended in the trailer: that prediction about the mammoth and lions is one of my most confident ones. In this regard I think it is a nice contrast from WWB that showed the cave lion as a serious risk for if the mother mammoth's guard dropped. |
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Post by Exalt on Oct 19, 2023 9:15:12 GMT 5
Also, it's hard to imagine them killing off a baby mammoth of all things.
Honestly, how did the largest group of terrestrial herding animals that aren't sauropods end up with the best co-operation when under attack? Is it because the adults are so big, they're willing to risk it even for someone else's kid? Or are they simply tighter-knit than most herds?
While we're here, I noticed something on a page towards the back of the book: of that group of mammoths, none of them have quite the same tusks.
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Post by zoograph on Oct 19, 2023 20:30:14 GMT 5
Oh wow, Maiacetus in the book? Now I'm REALLY excited lol. Archaic whales "in-between" Ambulocetus and Basilosaurus were always one of my most anticipated mammals that I desperately wanted to be shown in paleomedia.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 19, 2023 23:06:07 GMT 5
If we are going to have to expect less talking heads and more modern animal footage, I fully expect the Maiacetus to be compared to seals. Too obvious to miss.
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Post by Exalt on Oct 19, 2023 23:11:01 GMT 5
Can we discuss how Maiacetus differs Ambulocetus?
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Post by Exalt on Oct 20, 2023 6:59:40 GMT 5
Impressions from a guy who saw an advance screening of episode 6.
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Post by Exalt on Oct 20, 2023 15:50:10 GMT 5
Curiously, a review from The Telegraph dropped where the reviewer complains that there was too much cg, and that it takes the dinosaurs too long to appear.
In a broken clock moment, they complained about title similarity.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 20, 2023 18:21:51 GMT 5
5 more days and I can make sense of that without any pesky spoilers! The excitement is becoming a little too much to bear......but at least all will be out at once!
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Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 20, 2023 20:33:33 GMT 5
Goodbye, all talking heads and minimal-VFX concerns! I want to celebrate.   |
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Post by Exalt on Oct 21, 2023 1:21:57 GMT 5
Impressions of the advance screening of episode six. Minimal spoilers.
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Post by zoograph on Oct 21, 2023 19:33:49 GMT 5
Okay, since it's only 4 days until the premiere, I think I’ll share my thoughts about this upcoming prehistory show.
First of all, I don’t really like Morgan Freeman as a narrator. Yeah, Attenborough can be worse and sounds like demented 95-years old grandpa, but Freeman’s narration is duller. It’s as if he’s not really interested in reading his script. Not to say he does swallow letters sometimes (e.g. “Arthropleura, large{s}t millipede”).
Graphics are inconsistent to say the least, with many models ranging from really bad (hadrosaurs) to really good (Lystrosaurus). I think it is still a little bit too early to judge, so I’ll return to this point in 4 days.
Soundtrack… haven’t heard it yet. Not really interested in it outside of given context.
Structure seems to be Trilogy of Life one, which is interesting. How much segments will we have and how many animals will we see in them? This show has 8 episodes, while Walking With trilogy had 15 (twice as big if you haven’t noticed). ToL skipped Ordovician (thankfully showcased in Sea Monsters), Early Jurassic, Paleocene and Miocene (again, thank you Marven for showing us Megalodon); but here we already have a confirmation of two of these skipped periods (through orthoconid and Phorusrhacos). Wouldn’t this harm structure, leading to a lot of time-hops with short PP-like segments of one or two species’ interaction? Honestly, I would’ve preferred more ecological approach compared to presumed evolutionary.
Okay, let’s review episode summaries:
“The Rules of Life” – recap? Introduction? Either way I’m not that interested. Modern animals may be used here as well, to introduce us to some biological concepts. Otherwise likely a talking heads' episode.
“The First Frontier” – likely Precambrian+Cambrian+Ordovician. I’m highly intrigued about former stuff, because even though we saw some bacteria in trailers that will probably represent earliest evolution, there are still very interesting events that I would like for them to showcase, like Snowball Earth or Precambrian multicellular life (not only Vendobionta, but Francevillians and others as well). Cambrian segment sucked in WWM, mainly due to a lack of characters (brainless Anomalocaris that attacked each other for no real reason, Haikouichthys which appear way too late and irrelevant trilobites) and it being too short, so I hope this show will give us a better look at its magnificent fauna. Oh, and orthocones are cool.
“Invaders of the Land” – likely Silurian+Devonian+Carboniferous+maybe a little bit of Permian? For the first two, I hope there will be less vertebrate bias, and we not only will get first tetrapods, but invertebrates as well (good part is that you can probably use real-life scorpions, springtails and millipedes in this segment, meaning it likely won’t be that expensive). Then we will have an obligatory Carboniferous fauna, which I actually like.
“In Cold Blood” – likely (Late) Permian+Triassic+maybe other Mesozoic? Damn, this might be a banger. Triassic animals are one of the best animals to ever live on this planet, and I hope they’ll show as much of them as possible. Didn’t speak about Permian mainly because I’m not sure the episode it will be in, but I hope it will be good as well.
“In the Shadow of Giants” – oh wow, Mesozoic non-dinosaurs. Ever since Prehistoric Planet, I desperately wanted for creators to show all this huge biodiversity we had during The Age of Dinosaurs – 4 lissamphibian groups (plus Koolasuchus, but it was featured in WWD thankfully), an uncountable number of reptiles (including birds), a lot of unfamiliar mammals (like multituberculates, who only recently got a screentime through Adalatherium) etc. By far this is one of my most anticipated episodes.
“Out of the Ashes” – Mesozoic dinosaurs (especially the ones in Maastrichtian) plus Paleocene mammals, I guess? This one is more interesting than you may think, because summary implies that we will see an aftermath of K-Pg, which is rarely done in documentaries. As for Paleocene, I wish it would show that the survivors of the impact event are NOT the same animals that live today (which can be achieved by showing multituberculates, dyrosaurids, or maybe even Paleocene ammonites if they are real).
“Inheriting the Earth” – likely the rest of Paleogene+Neogene. As I said earlier, I am happy that they chose protocetids to showcase cetacean evolution, which makes the show stand out in comparison to WWB. Honestly, I can’t even predict anything else, aside from already shown Miocene South America, mainly because there are way too many interesting regions in the Cenozoic. Though metatherians and some relics would’ve been nice.
“Age of Ice and Fire” – ugh, this one is predictable. Pleistocene. The only thing I wish was in that episode is Australia (maybe Madagascar but I’m not sure about it), just to show its great fauna that WWB never managed to accomplish. It seems like at least some of modern fauna will be here to act as their predecessors, which is okay.
So, what do I think about it so far? Interesting. Very, very interesting. But will it be able to be good? Let’s see… in 4 days.
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Post by Exalt on Oct 21, 2023 19:41:36 GMT 5
One thing I will add: Adasaur, who saw the episode 6 advance screening, says that there is some non-linear storytelling, at least, in that episode. He also said that the episode, after the KPG segment, is actually more about birds. |
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Post by zoograph on Oct 21, 2023 19:52:42 GMT 5
One thing I will add: Adasaur, who saw the episode 6 advance screening, says that there is some non-linear storytelling, at least, in that episode. He also said that the episode, after the KPG segment, is actually more about birds. Hmm, non-linear storytelling may work if executed in a good way. Regarding the spoiler stuff, that's still interesting, especially with the fact that birds are indeed the last survivors of dinosaur group, but to what extent will the birds be featured? While we often speak about the change in Paleogene-Neogene mammal groups, birds had somewhat similar shift, with arboreal zygodactilids, messelasterids and mousebirds being replaced by passerines, or lithornithids and presbyornithids by Gruiformes and Anseriformes etc. Will these archaic birds be featured or even mentioned? Did Adasaur say anything about it? |
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Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 21, 2023 20:12:56 GMT 5
zoograph I didn't bother to read the rest of your comment to be on the safe side (will read and comment about spoilers when I see all episodes), but I do at least partly agree with your Morgan Freeman/David Attenborough comparison - they are some of the more similar narrators so it's easy to compare narration to narration. Personally I would put both at 7/10 for narration (my 10/10 reference point being narrators like Kenneth Branagh and Nigel Marven). My problem with Attenborough's narration is that I'm finding myself agree more and more with the cotton ball-y comment from the Redditor I was quoting in the Prehistoric Planet thread (which may or may not refer to the same thing as your 'demented 95 year old grandpa' statement? Is the cotton ball effect what you meant?), and it's most obvious when Attenborough is trying to pronounce dinosaur names. Not to mention his English accent is not really helping things either. I think English is an accent that really suffers from the cotton ball effect. Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman's voice does have a noticeable grandiosity to it that is somewhat akin to Branagh's (such grandiosity is very apparent at the end of the teaser when he says 'this is the story of life on our planet'). My problem is definitely the same as yours - it sounded more like he was too exhausted to say the full words as opposed to too uninterested in doing so, but the Arthropleura clip is a great example of the blips in his narration that sound exhausted to me and disinterested to you. It does make me legitimately curious what's the matter here. What's happening with Attenborough's narration needs no explanation for why it's happening, but it certainly isn't obvious with Freeman. 
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Post by Exalt on Oct 21, 2023 20:15:26 GMT 5
One thing I will add: Adasaur, who saw the episode 6 advance screening, says that there is some non-linear storytelling, at least, in that episode. He also said that the episode, after the KPG segment, is actually more about birds. Hmm, non-linear storytelling may work if executed in a good way. Regarding the spoiler stuff, that's still interesting, especially with the fact that birds are indeed the last survivors of dinosaur group, but to what extent will the birds be featured? While we often speak about the change in Paleogene-Neogene mammal groups, birds had somewhat similar shift, with arboreal zygodactilids, messelasterids and mousebirds being replaced by passerines, or lithornithids and presbyornithids by Gruiformes and Anseriformes etc. Will these archaic birds be featured or even mentioned? Did Adasaur say anything about it? I don't feel like I can properly answer this, you'll have to read his thread and/or watch/listen to the video and get the impression for yourself, sorry. |
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