Walking With Dinosaurs

"For the first time in movie history, audiences will truly see and feel what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS is the ultimate immersive, big screen adventure for families. Meet dinosaurs more real than you've ever seen as you take off on a thrilling prehistoric adventure, where Patchi, an underdog dinosaur, triumphs against all odds to become a hero for the ages."

unfortunately this is being slayed by the critics: 28 RT rating / 58 (audience rating)

Fox enacted the voice over treatment at the last minute to kid-ify it, and gathering from the reviews it's pretty dumb and painful for anyone over the age of 10

one would hope that the eventual home video release would contain a secondary 'music only' audio option.

They played a preview for this in front of Anchorman 2 and halfway through the trailer it became an advertisement for seeing it in the theater versus home viewing. It was weird. I've seen ads like that before but not for a theatrical release. It's like the studio knows the movie sucks so they're trying to trick as many people into buying premium 3D tickets for the family before the word of mouth kills any chance of home video viewing.

Hasn't this been around for years?

I've seen that for a lot of major releases, mostly action movies with loud noises. It's still pretty stupid since the studio is eventually like "Don't forget to buy this on iTunes and watch it on your phone!"

Yeah, something similar with the same name, but made more like a documentary, was on the Discovery Channel years ago. Judging from a preview I saw on TV, the FX didn't look like they'd improved much since then. This must be really low budget.

I was on board until I watched the trailer and heard the voice overs and fart jokes...

yes it was called Dinosaur

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Just as with Disney's Dinosaur, it seems interesting at first - then they open their mouths.

well in this case, they don't actually open their mouths, they somehow communicate telekinectically.

I think you mean telepathically. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects with your mind.

I read that the original plan was to have no voices at all and just tell the story silently. Makes sense considering no lip movement.

oops...


correct, Fox in their infinite wisdom dumbed it down for kids. Initial first trailers (and I'd assume the intended first cut of the film) had no dialogue.

~

from wiki (so take this truth with a pinch of salt)

"In the film, actors provide voiceovers for the main creatures. Director Barry Cook said the original plan was for the film to be without dialogue or narration. He said, "I think originally, we were looking at a film that could stand alone as a virtual silent movie... You can turn the soundtrack off and still get involved with the story and feel the emotions of the characters. In its final version, the movie has a narration and goes inside the heads of the animals, so you can hear what they're thinking." The film's character designer David Krentz said, "Although the production veered away from being very realistic, the animation still plays independently. The powers that be decided to add narration and voice-over to reach a wider audience and the characters became slightly anthropomorphized to make them more attractive to younger kids." Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte responded to The Scotsman's prompt about the "danger of anthropomorphising" the dinosaurs, "The voiceovers are a bit of a compromise; the dinosaurs' lips aren't moving, they are not smiling and having human-like facial expressions or anything like that... They are only anthropomorphised to a small degree and that is necessary for a film like this."

Surely there isn't any child who can understand a film without dialogue! It's not like picture books are used to teach children to read!

You know, if they release the Blu-ray with an alternate audio track of the "silent" version I may consider buying it.

Ditto. Why they felt the need to dumb it down to that level is beyond me.

I thought this was a remake of the great fun documentary by BBC.

When I saw the commercial and realized how corny it was I wished a meteor would come down and wipe it all away.

What I was hoping for: a pseudo-documentary in the style of the TV series

What I got: a remake of Dinosaur

Also, somebody should let Hollywood know that it's possible to make a dinosaur movie without it being about their "end of days".

When I first heard about this, that was what I initially assumed it was.

Based on the lack of lip movement I've seen in the commercials, I figured this was just a dinosaur take on Garfield with some random caveman playing Jon Arbuckle.

Don't worry, The Land Before Time series beat that horse to death.

And made me cry every damn time.

guess the producers will be hoping the box office intake in the foreign markets will make up for the rather lacking $7,300,000 weekend gross here in the States.

holy mother of god - it may be redundant to say this, but yes, the voice overs dialogue for the dinosaurs, (and one bird) is shit-tastic.

the animation and 3D though:

so the bluray extras were recently announced and it looks like Fox relented and maybe releasing the first dialogue free version on the 3D bluray editon (only):

Cretaceous Cut (the movie in its "natural" version)