Walking with Monsters (2005) Review

Walking With Prehistoric Life Marathon (Part 5)

Walking with Monsters (2005) Review 

Finally, we’ve reached the end of the Walking with Prehistoric Life marathon, with this conclusive series officially rounding out the “Trilogy of Life” that began with Walking with Dinosaurs and continued with Walking with Beasts. Walking with Monsters looks at life before dinosaurs, going as far back as the initial formation of planet earth and scanning through the evolutionary processes that led to the age of reptiles, with focus on how early life forms developed characteristics that would be passed down to future species. 

As a kid, I was beyond excited for another Walking With… adventure, and it didn’t let me down, except in one regard: instead of having six half-hour episodes devoted to one time and place like Walking with Beasts and Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Monsters has only three episodes, which skip through multiple periods in one episode, with an inconsistent amount of time spent in each place. I think there were a couple reasons for this. For one, a lot of fossil evidence about the earliest life on earth is scarce, making it harder to accurately recreate environments and populate them with creatures that all lived in the same place. Second, there were probably budget concerns, because while Walking with Dinosaurs and subsequent series were huge successes, they were also expensive, with Guinness World Records calling Walking with Dinosaurs the most expensive documentary series per minute to produce. Also, the Sea Monsters special previously incorporated multiple eras within three half-hour episodes, so maybe they just wanted to continue with that model. Whatever the case, I wished there had been more. 

Walking with Monsters is a prequel in the sense that it was made after telling the middle chapter (Mesozoic era) and final chapter (Cenozoic) in the history of life on earth. The Paleozoic era was the true beginning, but it wasn’t done quite the justice in the way Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts did to their respective eras. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a disservice, but in comparison to the other Walking With… entries, this last one doesn’t quite live up, though it’s still far from being a bad docudrama. 

Episode one begins literally at the beginning, with another planet crashing into earth, forming the moon and setting the conditions right for life to flourish. In the first segment, life is still simple and entirely ocean-based, with the bizarre Anomalocaris as the top predator. The second segment follows a school of ancient fish called Cephalaspis migrating to a spawning ground, with sea scorpions hunting them. The third segment shows the amphibious Hynerpeton trying to win a mate and avoid being eaten by the giant fish Hyneria, which can crawl onto land. Episode two follows several creatures in a dense jungle during the Carboniferious period, then the sail-back Dimetrodon in the early Permian period. Episode three skips to the end of the Permain period, right before a mass extinction wipes out nearly all life on earth. The series ends in the early Triassic, after life has recovered somewhat, but the mammal-like reptiles are about to be usurped by the dinosaurs.

By this point, it’s been established that the Walking With… franchise takes some liberties with scientific facts in order to tell more dramatic stories, but it’s taken significantly further in Walking with Monsters. I won’t get into all the boring details, but they stretch some things pretty far, as well as dramatize some highly unlikely behavior, to the point of taking even casual viewers out of the experience. One small example is when a large four-legged amphibian encounters the giant millipede Arthropleura and somehow pushes the massive arthropod onto a pointed stump, impaling and killing it. It plays out in a completely unrealistic manner. Another example is how the baby Dimetrodon flee from the cannibalistic parents and roll in dung to deter them from chowing down. This speculation, while not outside the realm of very general possibility, is largely unfounded given the fossil evidence.

The animators got really ambitious with the visual effects this time around, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always pay off. There are many more close-up cgi shots in places that probably would have used animatronics had the series been made earlier in the digital effects era, and while some shots are good, many are not. There are numerous creatures that just don’t look real. In one instance, a cgi giant spider attacks a puppet Petrolacosaurus, and the contrast is terrible. There’s still a decent effort made to use practical effects, but not all of them are that good. Easily the worst is the Lystrosaurus and chasmatosaur in the final segment. When the chasmatosaur attacks the Lystrosaurus in the river, the camera lingers on them too long, and they lack much articulation. Their unblinking eyes and stiff movements have always bothered me. 

In Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts, all of the sound effects were original and fitting to each creature, but in Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters, there were some stock sound effects and roars used, though pretty few. Walking with Monsters re-uses a few creature sounds as well, and while it’s a minor complaint, it still shatters the illusion that these are real creatures when you can recognize the sound from a totally different creature in a whole other program.  

I don’t want to focus solely on the negatives, though, because I actually still really enjoy this series. The segments in the Permian desert with the predatory gorgonopsid and giant herbivore Scutosaurus is my favourite, depicting a harsh world on the brink of extinction. The visual effects are all quite convincing, and the desperation of the creatures makes for some good drama. I also really like the realization of the Dimetrodon in the second half of the second episode. The music throughout, too, is great once again. Of all the Walking With… main title themes, this one is hands down my favourite. It’s so epic, it raised the hairs on my neck the first time I heard it. 

To make Monsters a little more unique and fresh, a few new elements were included. At the end of each segment, a specific creature is shown in an evolutionary process, morphing its body shape until it ends up as a new species, which brings us into the next segment. It’s a cool idea and the effect is very good. Each segment also begins with quick stats, with information such as oxygen content (because it often varied early in earth’s history) and hazards, such as large predators or extreme weather. There’s also another new technique where the camera takes viewers inside certain creatures, to see how their bodies work, and these are created with excellent practical effects. I actually really like all these new additions, but they don’t really make up for the areas where the show is lacking. 

While Walking with Monsters wasn’t quite the epic, perfect completion of the “Trilogy of Life” and conclusion to the Walking With… franchise that it could have been, it’s still a very informative, entertaining, and well-realized series, with plenty of never-before-seen creatures and exciting dramatizations of a bygone age. 

That wraps up my Walking with Prehistoric Life marathon of reviews! Hopefully you found it interesting reading about these programs and choose to watch some or all of them. All are available on DVD, and some are on streaming services, as well.

Walking with Cavemen (2003) Review

  Walking With Prehistoric Life Marathon (Part 4)

 

Walking with Cavemen (2003) Review

Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts set the bar pretty high, so when I saw Walking with Cavemen, I had pretty high expectations, which it didn’t even come close to meeting. Despite being branded as part of the Walking With… franchise, none of the same creators worked on it, and while it’s not a bad series per say, it's more flawed than what came before. 

Several species of hominids (early upright apes) are portrayed, beginning with Australopithecus afarensis, which was already extensively shown in Walking with Beasts. This time, all hominids are depicted by human actors in suits and prosthetics, which varies in levels of believability and quality. I appreciate that they tried to do all of it in camera as much as possible, but for the more ancient species, it’s hard to accept as realistic. Afarensis is the depiction that suffers the most, because in reality the species was much shorter, smaller, and less upright than modern humans. When compared to how they looked and behaved in Beasts, it really feels inferior, even if the practical effects are generally more appealing than the cgi. 

As the series progresses, though, it gets better. The second episode shows three different species—the gorilla-like boisei, chimpanzee-like rudolfensis, and opportunistic habilis—with the reveal of which ones will go extinct and which one will eventually evolve into Homo sapiens kept a mystery until the end. It’s a clever way to make people keep watching, even if it does seem pretty obvious long before the reveal. It’s not until the next time period that the show really picks up, with Homo ergaster given the focus, in the first truly early-human-like depiction that works perfectly. Next we get briefer glimpses at Homo erectus and the gigantic Gigantopithecus in Asia, as well as heidelbergensis in Britain, with this part of the series being the fastest-paced, before getting a full look at Neanderthals to bring the series to a close.   

The narration isn’t done by Kenneth Branagh, but is still good, and the music fits the program extremely well, with a theme I find as memorable as any of the others from the Walking With… franchise. The cinematography and direction is where you can really tell this program wasn’t by the same team behind the other programs; there are odd shot choices and it’s more stylized, but not often in a beneficial way. The special effects are decent, though never as spectacular as Dinosaurs or Beasts. It’s not a criticism, though, because the series is focused primarily on hominids, instead of several different creatures, or an entire ecosystem. Still, there are brief moments when creatures from Beasts appear, rendered again in cgi, and the shots look as good as they did in Beasts, with the same models used for the Megaloceras and Mammoth, among others. 

When I think back on this series, one of the main things I can’t help but be reminded of are all the unintentionally hilarious moments. In the Australopithecus segment, a battle for dominance between two males prompts one of the males to take a baby from Lucy, the main character of the episode (named after the famous fossil), and he runs off holding it by one dangling leg. The baby is clearly rubber, and jiggles about as the male runs. Earlier in the episode, the troop’s alpha male is killed by a crocodile, but the violence is kept mostly off-screen. Both moments just come off as funny instead of shocking, and this happens many other times, perhaps because it’s clearly actors in suits. 

I can’t name every little funny moment, but here are a few more. Homo habilis and rudolfensis fight over the remains of a carcass, then after the habilis win, an African lion pounces on one of them, grabbing him by the throat and running off, the limp carcass flailing as it does so. Again, supposed to be shocking, but looks hilarious. A Homo erectus picks up a tarantula and eats it, but it oozes this unrealistic green slime for some reason. One hilarious thing that happens intentionally is with the Neanderthals, when one of them starts choking on some meat. It’s explained earlier that they can recover from serious trauma. Another Neanderthal goes up behind the one that’s choking and whacks him on the back as hard as she can, making him spit out the meat. Then, all the other Neanderthals just laugh. It’s silly, but it’s supposed to be. 

Walking with Cavemen is a smaller-scale series with less-convincing production values than previous Walking With… installments and isn’t as re-watchable or as consistent throughout, but it’s still mostly well-paced, engaging, and some of the recreations are quite well done. Overall, I’d say it’s just barely worthy of being included as part of the franchise, even if it’s technically more of a spin-off.

The "Walking with..." Specials Review

Walking With Prehistoric Life Marathon (Part 3)

The Ballad of Big Al (2000) Review

Walking with Dinosaurs spawned several additional episodes, with the first special taking viewers back to the Jurassic period for a closer look at the top predator Allosaurus in an hour-long episode devoted to the life and death of a particular individual nicknamed Big Al: a real-life allosaur fossil which showed how hard his life was by the number of injuries present on the bones. The Ballad of Big Al was more than just a Walking with Dinosaurs special, it was a full-fledged chronicle delivering everything there was to love about the series before it in one great helping. 

I saw the American re-edit on Discovery Channel, called Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special, combining footage from a separate documentary about the research put into the show. This made it feel a little less like Walking with Dinosaurs and more like another dinosaur show that had been on Discovery, When Dinosaurs Roamed America. Later I saw the original BBC broadcast on DVD, and with the exception of a few moments removed due to runtime, found it’s mostly the same, and plays more like a typical Walking with Dinosaurs episode. 

The program starts with a ghost of Big Al roaming the halls of the museum of the Rockies, where the actual skeleton is kept, then we go back in time to see Al hatch from his egg, and the story jumps ahead incrementally, showing him mature and encounter many other dinosaurs in his environment—most of which were previously seen in the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, but some are new or shown more extensively, like the Apatosaurus and Othnelia—as well as show how Al sustains many of his injuries, before succumbing to them and dying in a river bed. The dinosaurs all look as great as they did before, but a couple of the designs were tweaked. If I’m being nitpicky, I prefer the look of Allosaurus in Walking with Dinosaurs, but it’s nice to see more of them in action.

The Ballad of Big Al is as good as any of the Walking with Dinosaurs episodes, if not better in several ways, such as the cinematography, storytelling, and music. The sequence with Al and some other Allosaurus ganging up on a sick Diplodocus is a thrilling action scene, and another scene where a larger female Allosaurus attacks Al is brutal and harrowing. You come to feel bad for Al, without them anthropomorphizing him too much, and when he dies at the end, it’s actually sad. This episode may actually exceed the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs for me, and that is one of my favourites. Also worth checking out is the documentary Big Al Uncovered, which explores the science behind bringing Al back to life. 

Chased by Dinosaurs (2002/2003) Review and Sea Monsters (2003) Review

Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts intended to give the illusion that the footage was actual documentation of real prehistoric animals in their natural habitat, and occasionally, something would happen to remind viewers of this, whether it was the T. rex roaring at the camera and covering the lens in saliva, or the Indricothere knocking over a cameraman. Chased by Dinosaurs took it to the next level, by having real-life zoologist Nigel Marvin host the program, telling the audience about the creatures, environment, and even interacting with the camera crew following him on his adventure. This change in presentation may have alienated some fans of the more realistic approach utilized in previous programs, and that’s understandable. As a kid, I loved Chased by Dinosaurs, and even taking nostalgia out of the question, still find it very enjoyable. 

Chased by Dinosaurs is actually the name of the DVD which collects all the Nigel Marvin episodes together, but they were broadcast differently, with the first two being The Giant Claw and Land of Giants, both subtitled A Walking with Dinosaurs Special, and Sea Monsters being a separate three-episode miniseries called a Walking with Dinosaurs Trilogy. 

The first, The Giant Claw, follows Nigel’s quest to locate Therizinosaurus, a Mongolian dinosaur with massive claws on its hands, which makes him think it must be a predator. Along the way, he encounters other species, like the pack-hunting Velociraptor, the fast-running Mononychus, and Tarbosaurus, the T. rex of Asia. It’s a fun, well-paced episode, though the mystery surrounding Therizinosaurus’ status as a carnivore is a little flimsy, even for younger viewers. 

Land of Giants takes Nigel to Cretaceous-era South America where a migrating herd of long-neck Argentinosaurus are stalked by the largest South American predator ever, Giganotosaurus. This is probably my favourite Chased by Dinosaurs installment, just because I love all the creatures that are featured, and the events that transpire are played serious, even though the premise of Nigel tracking dinosaurs with 21^st century technology is a bit silly. There are exciting scenes, moments of tension, and even sadness: everything to love about the best Walking with Dinosaurs episodes. 

Sea Monsters has Nigel and his crew exploring the seven deadliest seas in prehistory, jumping all around in time, going back as far as the Ordovician period when there was no life on land yet and giant sea scorpions and orthocones ruled the depths, as well as up to only a few million years ago, when the biggest predatory shark that ever lived, Megalodon, hunted ancient whales. The episodes are half an hour each, with episodes one and two covering three seas, both ending on cliff hangers, and the final episode covering the top two deadliest seas, in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

It’s a fun concept, and the underwater photography is even more ambitious than in the “Cruel Sea” episode of Walking with Dinosaurs and “Whale Killer” episode of Walking with Beasts. There are some questionable gimmicks, like when Nigel uses a “smell suit” to deter deadly Liopleurodon in the Jurassic sea, but a lot of it is pretty fun and inventive, such as a round metal cage used so the ancient fish Dunkleosteus can’t bite it. In terms of Nigel’s interactions with the animals, which are brought to life using the same special effects techniques as always, Sea Monsters has the most convincing interactions of all, as well as some of the most suspenseful scenes in the entire franchise. 

Overall, Chased by Dinosaurs and Sea Monsters are fun and informative programs, and actually follow in the steps of previous Walking With… series pretty well. The music, visual effects, and landscapes are all up to par with everything that came before, if not better, and it doesn’t hold back in any way despite having a more family-friendly premise. How much you like or dislike Nigel Marvin’s commentary will influence your overall enjoyment, and the concept of him travelling back in time is decidedly less realistic than previous approaches, but he does a good job making viewers believe he really is walking with these prehistoric creatures. Another mini-series, Prehistoric Park, utilized Nigel Marvin the same way, and had him actually bring creatures back to a 21^st century wildlife preserve, but it’s not part of the Walking With… series, and doesn’t quite achieve the same level of quality. That’s a review for another day.