afortiorama Review of Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs (1999)

15 years on and it still is the best

[10/10 · 23 February 2015]

I've just watched again this series in DVD, because I had a sudden need of dinosaurs and to my amazement 15 years later it's still the best documentary about them. Anything that came later is a pale copy. Not only it still looks good, even seen on a more modern TV, but the specific animals stories and their struggle to survives, the recreation of the environment with mentions to other animals and plants, the narration and the music all make this documentary still epic. When the Allosaurus faces the Stegosaurus when the Liopleurodon snatches the big scavenger from the beach, the community of little dinosaurs in the Arctic forest, the tyrannosaurus careful mother, the Ornithocheirus really sad story of last effort and death plus others are all great stories. Some of the science and hypothesis behind have changed in the meantime, but not that much and considering how long things linger in school books I think this is still educational on top of being awfully entertaining. If nothing else it makes you want to know more about those eras, for example I hadn't realised that modern fish was already there when the dinosaurs appeared and that there were other types of reptiles before them. Doesn't it make you want to know more?