Walking with Beasts (2001) Review

Walking With Prehistoric Life Marathon (Part 2)

Walking with Beasts (2001) Review

After the huge success of Walking with Dinosaurs, the creators embarked on the next chapter in the history of life, Walking with Beasts (or, as I knew it in its North American release, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts) which explores the age of mammals over the course of six episodes, from not long after the extinction of the dinosaurs 49 million years ago, to the ice age 30,000 years ago, when modern humans were first appearing. Everyone knows about dinosaurs and everyone knows about ice age cavemen and mammoths and sabre tooth cats, but everything in between was (and still is) a real grey area for many people. When I first saw Walking with Beasts as a kid, I loved it every bit as much as I loved Walking with Dinosaurs, and still do. 

“New Dawn” depicts a frightening world where the first whales are hairy, amphibious, four-legged ambush predators and the giant flightless bird Gastornis is the top predator, feeding on tiny ancestors of horses. “Whale Killer” follows an ancient toothed whale, Basilosaurus, on a journey through the mangrove swamps in search of prey, which brings her close to many other creatures, such as the hippo-like Moeritherium. “Land of Giants” follows the infancy of an indricothere, a rhino relative which was the largest land mammal of all-time, living amongst strange creatures like the vicious pig Entelodon and knuckle-walking herbivore Chalicotherium. “Next of Kin” shows a troop of Australopithecus, one of the earliest upright apes, and “Sabre Tooth” is pretty self-explanatory, but also shows other South American mammals like the giant ground sloth and giant armadillo. “Mammoth Journey” follows the migration of a herd of mammoths across Ice Age Europe, with cave lions and Neanderthals hunting them. 

In many ways, Beasts trumps what was done in Walking with Dinosaurs. The storytelling is even better, with every episode featuring creatures that actually become memorable characters. The most notable for me is the clan of Australopithecus, the Basilosaurus, and the sabre tooth cats. Blue, an orphan Australopithecus who has trouble fitting in with the others, evokes great sympathy, and when members of his clan are killed along the way, you actually feel bad. The Basilosaurus is desperate for food because she’s pregnant, and the lengths she goes to in order to feed make for an episode that constantly ramps up the thrills. “Sabre Tooth”—easily my favourite episode of all—has a mature male named Half Tooth (he has one broken sabre) lose his territory to two rival brothers, then fight to get it back. Something about the setting, the creatures, and the way the story plays out feels almost mythical. 

Like Walking with Dinosaurs, there isn’t any one episode that has a dip in quality. Even the final episode wraps things up in a satisfying way. The series ends in a museum in the modern day, with the best final moments of all the Walking With… installments. We get one last impactful line from Kenneth Branagh: “No species lasts forever.” Then it zooms out from the museum to eventually show all of planet earth in one uninterrupted shot, accompanied by epic music. It’s truly awesome.

The technical aspects is where Beasts pales somewhat in comparison to Dinosaurs. The visual effects are way less consistent, because instead of just animating scaly dinosaurs, now there are animals with fur, feathers, and leathery hides. The Australopithecus and Mammoths in particular often look quite poor in close-ups when rendered in cgi, but it’s never so bad that it takes you right out of what’s going on. Much of the cgi is still quite good, especially in the “Land of Giants” and “Sabre Tooth” episodes. The massive indricothere in “Land of Giants” is like the equivalent of Diplodocus, both in size and cgi quality.  

Pretty much every other technical aspect is a home run. The practical effects are excellent and more sophisticated, the environments are all unique and eye-catching, and the music is bombastic, from the main theme with its intense chanting to the “Sabre Tooth” music which uses actual sword sound effects within the soundtrack, but there are also many poignant tracks, especially in “Next of Kin”. It has more of a range than the score for Walking with Dinosaurs, which is quite the feat considering how great that soundtrack was. 

Walking with Beasts uses the same techniques that worked so well before in Walking with Dinosaurs to bring even more exotic and fascinating prehistoric creatures to life. There’s greater variety in the species, and the stories make a greater effort to individualize creatures, but it’s a little less immersive overall, and less consistent in terms of realism, though not overly so.