|
|
Post by Supercommunist on Oct 25, 2023 21:24:43 GMT 5
Weeeellll… spoilers for ep 1 From watching the first episode, unfortunately our hopes of it not being a "mammal superiority over terror birds"-kind of thing were unwarranted. The terror bird went down and was killed by the Smilodon ridiculously easily and quickly, especially considering it looked to have a rather significant size advantage. I get that they were sort of going for a "big cat brings down large ratite" sort of thing, but applying that analogy here is frankly ridiculous, and there was barely any struggle. In general I think modern paleo documentaries suffer a bit from the "large prey dies way too easily"-syndrome, thinking also of the T. rex/Edmontosaurus and Nanuqsaurus/Pachyrhinosaurus hunting scenes in PP. I’ll grant you that a sabre-tooth should be able to kill more quickly than a pantherine, due to its sabres, but it being able to fully control its adversary this quickly and with this little struggle, in order to bring its teeth to bear within few seconds, is not very realistic. Yeah just saw that clip. The documentary flat out claimed sabretooths were part of the reason terror birds went extinct. Worse, there reasoning was mammalian cunning but all they did was ambush the TB which is one the most basic hunting skills in nature. |
|
|
|
Post by Supercommunist on Oct 25, 2023 21:57:11 GMT 5
I am skipping through some footage to see if its worth sitting down and watching the whole thing. Good news: There is an Erythrosuchus. Bad news: Lystro slander. The notion that lystros are these totally oblivious animals that were decimated by giant predators that apparently just popped into existence is ridiculous. Erythrosuchus would have had smaller ancestors and one would assume that they would have hunted and ingrained a fear response in in its descendent's prey. |
|
|
|
Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 25, 2023 22:05:43 GMT 5
I will be saying much much much much much much more when I see all 8 episodes. But - especially considering theropod 's excellent advice to appreciate this beyond any expectations to be a straight up Trilogy of Life reboot - I am very much enjoying the formatting, which IMO sells the point of Life On Our Planet greatly and in full perspective.  Edit: 11 pages and 14 comments extra before the documentary came out! Totally beats just the barely 7 pages which Infinity Blade noted how long this thread was getting pre-release lmao - and since it's now out, I'll double my shameless credit-taking to 220%.  |
|
|
|
Post by Supercommunist on Oct 25, 2023 22:28:45 GMT 5
I pretty sick of documentaries deliberately obscuring the cameraview when a kill is about to be made. If you worried about the age rating just make it a bloodless kill. Don't block the view with grass and bull crap.
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 25, 2023 22:52:56 GMT 5
Weeeellll… spoilers for ep 1 From watching the first episode, unfortunately our hopes of it not being a "mammal superiority over terror birds"-kind of thing were unwarranted. The terror bird went down and was killed by the Smilodon ridiculously easily and quickly, especially considering it looked to have a rather significant size advantage. I get that they were sort of going for a "big cat brings down large ratite" sort of thing, but applying that analogy here is frankly ridiculous, and there was barely any struggle. In general I think modern paleo documentaries suffer a bit from the "large prey dies way too easily"-syndrome, thinking also of the T. rex/Edmontosaurus and Nanuqsaurus/Pachyrhinosaurus hunting scenes in PP. I’ll grant you that a sabre-tooth should be able to kill more quickly than a pantherine, due to its sabres, but it being able to fully control its adversary this quickly and with this little struggle, in order to bring its teeth to bear within few seconds, is not very realistic. This is what we get for giving the benefit of the doubt. I knew to trust my gut on this one.
I actually got spoiled the terror bird’s death early on. When I saw it was going to fight another terror bird first, I was hoping maybe it would be severely injured in that fight, and then killed by the sabertooths in its weakened state (because let’s face it, Titanis was a lot bigger than Smilodon gracilis). At least then it would be justified. Nope. This literal apex predator of a bird is treated like any other prey item. *sigh…f*ckin’ A. Anyway, I am trying to power through the whole thing anyway. Right now I’m on episode 3. |
|
|
|
Post by Exalt on Oct 25, 2023 23:16:16 GMT 5
Well, how is it otherwise?
|
|
|
|
Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 25, 2023 23:43:55 GMT 5
Well, how is it otherwise? All things considered it seems to be alright/okay. It does at least get some things right. |
|
|
|
Post by Supercommunist on Oct 25, 2023 23:51:56 GMT 5
I think I am going to ahead and give it a score of meh.
|
|
|
|
Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 25, 2023 23:59:24 GMT 5
As it turns out the 'Megalania' footage was actually precisely what it looked like at first glance. It's Komodo dragon footage.
That doesn't mean there will be no Megalania in episodes 7 or 8, but that was not a Megalania in the trailer.
|
|
|
|
Post by theropod on Oct 26, 2023 1:48:46 GMT 5
Ep2 comments:
> The Anomalocaris is certainly more accurate, but somehow looks less convincing (effects-wise) than the WWM-version imo
> I am fairly disappointed that we get to see so few Cambrian animals. Trilobites and Anomalocaris, and that’s supposed to be it? No Opabinia? No Hallucigenia? No Wiwaxia? No worms, no other stem-arthropods, no basal chordates? Nothing? That is quite a missed opportunity, they could have done a lot more with that segment.
> Orthocerids are mostly shown as being vertically oriented, which is nice. However they also show one free-swimming in a horizontal orientation at one point, which is less nice
> Cameroceras should more properly be called Endoceras, something the original WWM did right, though it was apparently done wrong in the background to Sea Monsters (although the actual genus name was never actually mentioned on screen, it always being referred to simply as an "orthocone"
> Arandaspis is portrayed as a sort of ancestor to all vertebrates here, which is ridiculous. Pteraspidomorphs of course represent a basal side branch in the evolution of gnathostomes, and are by no means direct ancestors of any extant clade. It’s a bit sad that we seem to have not advanced one bit with regard to accurately describing phylogeny since Walking with Monsters aired, which already had the same problem of seemingly not trusting its audiences to understand the differences between ancestors and sister taxa. If anything, this would be a really valuable point to address in a documentary at some point, and I honestly don’t believe it’s too complex for a general audience to grasp. If you’re worried, just show us a freakin’ cladogram, pretty sure that could be done in a similarly simplistic style to the timeline without breaking the immersion (and might indeed enhance the narrative, as it would give the audience a visually intuitive understanding of how the different animals they are shown are related).
> Dunkleosteus is claimed to be 9 m long, which is quite oversized. On the plus-side, the model they are showing actually looks pretty accurate, with appropriately stocky proportions, and they also don’t really show it interacting with much except a few ammonoids, so nothing in the actual scene is actually affected by it being oversized by a factor of 2.
> Sharks are claimed to have evolved over 400 Ma ago. Would it be too much to ask for a single documentary to not purport this "all paleozoic chondrichthyans are automatically sharks"-myth? Crown-group elasmobranchs don’t even appear in the fossil record until the Mesozoic for crying out loud!
> In the end of the episode, after explaining that the end-Devonian mass extinction happened (they are sort of omitting the rather relevant point that there were actually two mass extinctions) and correctly noting that it wiped out placoderms (which were succeeded by the "dynasty" of what they call "sharks", and what I would call "stem-chondrichthyans and holocephalans"), they give a sort of preview of the next episode, showing us a terrestrial forest implied to be a Devonian one. Problem is, it is very visibly just a modern forest. Nothing about it screams "Devonian", even though most of the plants in a late Devonian forest should look quite distinct from modern trees. If they didn’t want to go through the trouble of creating an authentic Devonian forest just for this scene, fine (though in light of the next episode, it sure would have been worth it), but the presentation seems a bit disingenuous.
Overall verdict:
I found myself quite liking the whole "dynasties" narrative, which is definitely compelling, albeit a little sensationalist and oversimplified at times. I also quite liked the way they blend modern-day footage and extinct ecosystems, but they could stand to give a bit more focus to the latter, considering they are supposed to be this documentary’s main selling point. In fact so far this is mainly an extant nature doc with some evolutionary narrative and a few scenes with extinct animals strewn in. I quite like the execution so far in terms of the style, it makes for quite an enjoyable watch, but if I had only seen the trailer, I’d be quite disappointed now.
PS: Like Supercommunist, I was also very pleasantly surprised to see the brief Erythrosuchus appearance in the last episode. That’s an animal I’ve always wanted to see portrayed, yet somehow never had overly high hopes of actually getting to see. This does make me curious for the next few episodes.
Provisional non-spoiler review: I’d have to agree with the "meh"-verdict so far. On the one hand, it is nice to watch, has stunning visuals (although I think the animation lacks a bit behind that of Prehistoric Planet, it is still top notch compared to pretty much everything else, plus the extant animal footage is truly stunning as well). But there are also some issues I have with it, some accuracy-wise, others pertaining to stylistic and narrative choices and the format of the show, and some a mixture of both. It is definitely a lot better than the vast majority of paleo-themed documentaries out there, and certainly worth watching, but it also isn’t what we initially hoped it would be. |
|
|
|
Post by theropod on Oct 26, 2023 2:02:18 GMT 5
As it turns out the 'Megalania' footage was actually precisely what it looked like at first glance. It's Komodo dragon footage. That doesn't mean there will be no Megalania in episodes 7 or 8, but that was not a Megalania in the trailer. Yes, unfortunately. A premature assumption from thinking everything we were shown was supposed to be set in the geologic past. |
|
|
|
Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 26, 2023 2:19:51 GMT 5
I will say this as a spoiler to my final opinion: LOOP is making me enjoy a bit more the value of modern animal footage - whether or not we get 'cheated' out of the Megalania footage we wanted.
It goes beyond just liking the format. You will all hear more when I watch it all.
|
|
|
|
Post by theropod on Oct 26, 2023 4:09:23 GMT 5
thoughts on ep 3
> they claim lignin cell walls are the major innovation that came after moss. I am not a paleobotanist, but it would seem to me that they skipped an essential step here, and went straight from mosses to woody plants, esp. trees. The major innovation to talk about here would more properly be called "vascular tissue" (as well as, secondarily, roots, branching axes, and later foliage), allowing plants to grow in height at all, before jumping straight to the lignin allowing the formation of proper woody tissues and even larger sizes. A shame, because I quite liked the way the plant segment started, but cutting it short like this gives off the vibe of them wanting to get it over and done with as quickly as possible in order to get back to the animals. Which is itself a shame, because it’s so unnecessary; addressing the evolution of very early vascular plants would have provided a perfect backdrop for showing us some of the absolute earliest terrestrial animals.
> Next we jump straight to the Carboniferous and Arthropleura. While it’s nice to have a segment set in Romer’s gap, I sure hope we will jump back from here again and look at the Devonian, and not just skip it. I am also rather disappointed we didn’t get so see any truly early terrestrial arthropods before being shown the flashy carboniferous ones. The Arthropleura itself looks great, though we already knew to expect that.
> "The fern forest is vast" feels like a bit of a misrepresentation of what Carboniferous forests are actually famous for, which is giant lycopsids, not ferns. I admit that finding a location to shoot a fern forest today is a lot easier than recreating a Lepidodendron forest, but Walking with Monsters did a better job here at showing us a forest actually typical for the Carboniferous. That being said this on its own isn’t a major issue, it’s not as if there were no ferns in the Carboniferous, and it’s also not as if all Carboniferous forests were the same. Just know that the forest shown is not at all the kind of floral assemblage the Carboniferous is known for.
> We sure don’t seem to be going back to the Devonian, because the next segment is the Late Carboniferous. In fact it looks like we are going to be introduced to tetrapod terrestrialization in the Carboniferous. Next to that, WWM had it’s vertebrate evolution take place in quite a timely fashion.
> It’s nice that they acknowledge how "others had done this step before them", showing us the Anthracosaurus eating the baby Rhizodus, but it would have made much more sense to not create a danger of making it look like "the age of Amphibians" began in the Carboniferous in the first place. For a whole episode entitled "Invaders of the Land", we sure aren’t shown a lot of the time period in which most of this "Invasion" took place, the Devonian, both in terms of plant and animal evolution. In terms of evolution, it’s one more situation where they would have imo benefited from showing a phylogenetic tree of some sort; Anthracosaurus is an embolomere, making it more closely related to you and me than to actual Amphibians (i.e. Lissamphibia).
> More worryingly, in this segment we are again shown a forest. It gets points for at least being a swamp forest, but it gets major point deductions for clearly being a Holocene one. Again, I get that it’s really hard to recreate these ecosystems accurately, but if WWM managed to do it, they sure could have tried a little harder than just showing us a modern Louisiana swamp and expecting it to suspend our disbelief about Carboniferous swamp forests sporting what clearly looks to be Taxodium instead of Lepidodendron.
> We’re then shown footage of a poison dart frog carrying its tadpoles on its back. I watched another nature doc just today that showed footage of what I’m pretty sure was the exact same species of poison dart frog doing exactly the same thing. Talk about coincidences. Nothing else in particular to say here, except that it was quite aptly utilized to demonstrate amphibians’ continued ties to water.
> I really like the Scutosaurus and Inostrancevia models shown here, probably my favourite ones so far. A shame we don’t get to enjoy them for very long though.
> "A Gorgonopsid". Are they seriously going the same route as WWM here and refusing to just give us a genus name for the Gorgonopsid that is clearly meant to be Inostrancevia? Come on! Why not at least do it to some other animal this time
> I can’t help noticing that the trees shown here are very clearly just modern-day pines. Pines may be old, but not that old. I get that it would have been hard to show us authentic Upper Permian Gymnosperms (that often had small, scale-like leaves, looking more similar to junipers or Araucaria than to pines, but they could have tried a little harder than just going to a totally ordinary pine forest. I am slowly beginning to see a bit of a pattern here with them showing us plant assemblages that may look vaguely ancient, but in fact have little to do with the ecosystems that are supposed to be representing. Hopefully this issue will be mitigated once we get to the Mesozoic.
> They do a nice job illustrating the apocalyptic dimensions of the siberian volcanic province, but I must confess that I’d have preferred seeing more animated animals rather than lava.
> For a moment when they went on about "toxic concoction of noxious gases", I was worried they were going to ignore the climate change issue here. Luckly this was an unfounded worry.
> Yay, at least they have Lystrosaurus actually doing the thing it is most famous for and surviving the P/T-event. More than can be said for WWM.
I must confess that I may have gotten spoiled in terms of accuracy by watching Prehistoric Planet for two years. Maybe my expectations have gotten too high; what’s certain is that this isn’t a LOOP-problem, and that no other documentary stands any chance of meeting them either. By any reasonable standard, LOOP is a lot better both accuracy- and presentation-wise than the vast majority of paleo-documentaries I have watched.
But I also feel it’s justified to have higher standards for a 2023 documentary than for a 1999 one. Documentaries should learn from previous ones, and we shouldn’t be moving backwards in terms of accuracy (though seeing how this one had Spielberg involved, it could have gone a lot worse). I must also acknowledge that these new accuracy standards are certainly a more ambitious goal to strive for in a series with a scope covering all of earth’s history, and all the complexities it brings with it, than for a show like PP that is entirely set in a single geological stage and has no complex evolutionary processes to explain. So I give points for having an ambitious goal, but succeeding at that goal would undoubtedly have been even better, and I think content-wise, they could have gone with a little more input from scientists here.
What I also have to say is that just being "better than most documentaries" was never really a point of contention, in fact I’d argue it was more or less a foregone conclusion. So I think the more pertinent question to evaluate here is rather whether LOOP is (as we had hoped) both a worthy successor to the Trilogy of Life, and a modern documentary upholding similar accuracy standards to Prehistoric Planet, which I know are impossibly high standards. At the moment I’d say it is a mixed bag. It is certainly very enjoyable to watch, and has quite a bit going for it educationally, but it also has its share of problems, and falls short of the shows it is being compared to in both regards, in my opinion. It neither has the long, uninterrupted stories entirely set in prehistory that WW had, nor does it quite live up to PP standards in terms of accuracy. Some of the information presented is also a bit misleading, deliberately confusing or omitting very important subject matter (like skipping the entire early terrestrialization of arthropods and vascular plants in the Devonian), and there is this irritating theme of showing us the wrong plant communities for the time they are supposed to be set in. This makes me question some of their decisions regarding the plot, as well as whether they paid proper attention to the experts when planning the show. Nonetheless, it is a redeeming quality that they still do a good job at still tying it all together into their greater overaching narrative, which I think is quite strong and appropriately epic.
|
|
|
|
Post by dinosauria101 on Oct 26, 2023 4:52:15 GMT 5
Not something I'm complaining about. As you may have inferred from my bald cypress callout in the WWM review, I like seeing my modern day Southeast US interest make a cameo in one of my others. Just another quirk of entertainment-watching vs entertainment+accuracy, but it's the little things that count. |
|
|
|
Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 26, 2023 7:22:15 GMT 5
I've finally finished every single episode. Overall, the series does a fairly good enough job at broad strokes. It covers the evolutionary history of life on Earth. In that sense it succeeds at its purpose. However, this should not be mistaken to mean that it is somehow "[far] superior" to other highly lauded paleontology documentaries (as I've heard people on Twitter say which, frankly, just comes off as contrarianism for the sake of it). Anyone who does at least decent research on the history of life on Earth should be capable of presenting the broad-stroke, general story in at least a serviceable manner. LOOP succeeds at what it does, and does so in a rather engaging way with nice modern life segments and pretty good CGI (comparisons to PhP aside). But it doesn't really do so in a way that's anything new (nor are the narratives anything we haven't seen before).
So in sum, yeah, I agree with theropod that it's much better than lots of things that came before it, but it's not quite what it could have been.
|
|
