I’m still waiting on the definitive dinosaur movie that will make me trully happy. Yeah sure, Jurassic Park is cool and all, but there’s too much 90s blockbuster silliness for me to really love it. Peter Jackson’s King Kong actually did a lot for me with its incredible V-rex fight, but that’s a small portion of a much larger and more problematic movie. I’m excited that dinosaurs have some kind of presence in Malick’s Tree of Life, but I know that will be fleeting. There are other contenders, but none of them quite match up to my perfect vision: two hours of just dinosaurs –no fucking time-traveling humans or anything– living their lives: fighting, eating, traveling, being curious about their environment, maybe a little fuckin’… Not a nature documentary- there would be conflict, traditional storytelling and a protagadino, but no Hollywood nonsense. Imagine the first 20 minutes of Wall-E, featuring titanic creatures of incalculable destructive capability…
Well, Barry Sonnenfeld is teaming up with Grant Morrison to make a dinosaur movie, and though it probably won’t match my perfect vision, I have to say that it sounds like the closest Hollywood might ever get. Called Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens, it’s unfortunately hopping on this big alien bandwagon that’s going on right now, but it is apparently about an extraterrestrial invasion of the earth during the time of the dinosaurs. The reptiles turn out to be more intelligent than we’ve always given them credit for, and they fight back. I’m actually a little worried that PBF comic strip up there might be need a spoiler tag. Is there any way this thing doesn‘t end with the coming of asteroids that defeat the aliens, at the cost of ending the age of dinosaurs?
Morrison will be writing a graphic novel and the screenplay, while Sonnenfeld will hop into the director’s chair (if Men In Black III doesn’t get him run out of town). The graphic novel will hit later this year, and be developed as a film simultaneously.
I can’t imagine they won’t find some way of mixing humans into the story, even if they’re anachronistic primitives or something. Regardless, intelligent dinosaurs sounds like my kind of party, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed this turns into something amazing and fun. A lot of the reaction I’ve seen already has been cynical and shitty, but I’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s totally the Sonnenfeld part of the equation. Because really, anyone trying to stop a big-budget dinosaur movie can go straight to hell.
If you need some more dinosaur love, reread (or read for the first time, you lucky schmoe) the first Cockblocked entry, about a Tim Burton-directed dino flick that could have been…
Also look back tomorrow when I post the podcast I was a part of over the weekend- I actually managed to slip in some dinosaur talk there as well.
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