Part Two: The "Long Neck" Dinosaurs: A Complete Cinematic History

Dinosaurs in Film: The Long Neck 

 

For part two, we'll look at two different ages defined by two different sauropods.

 

The Age of Apatosaurus (1960’s-1980’s)

 

Pop culture has been very slow with catching up to current scientific theories and evidence when it comes to prehistoric life forms. Even today there is still a big gap to close, and sometimes it’s just about artists wanting to have the freedom to create their own fictional dinosaurs instead of adhering to reality, but I think sometimes it’s this warped understanding of the truth that gets perpetuated by creators looking at previous cinematic examples instead of at bones in a museum for inspiration. The Apatosaurus (not Brontosaurus) was becoming more understood by paleontologists, but not by moviegoers.

Dinosaurus! (1960) added to the confusion by featuring a frozen T. rex and frozen Brontosaurus dredged up from the bottom of the ocean in modern day. Both of them come back to life, and Rex is described as being Bronto’s arch nemesis. I know they weren’t going for factual accuracy here (they come back to life Frankenstein-style with bolts of lightning), but Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus lived in the Jurassic period, millions of years before the first T. rex evolved in the Cretaceous. This Bronto also has a taste for bananas, and bananas didn’t evolve in the Jurassic period either, so they must have been a newfound delicacy for him.

Meanwhile, over on the small screen, a cartoon dinosaur was becoming a household name, and would debut in cinemas a few years later, further cementing the long neck as one of the most recognizable dinosaurs of all. The Man Called Flintstone (1966) was made as a feature-length finale to the TV sitcom The Flintstones. This ahistorical world mixed cavemen and dinosaurs together. Fred Flintstone uses a long neck like a piece of earth-moving equipment when he’s at work, and the Flintstone’s family pet, Dino, is recognized as being a prosauropod. In real life the prosauropods were the precursors to the Jurassic sauropods (Apatosaurus and their kin), but in the show Dino is identified as a fictional species of Snorkasaurus, and acts more like a dog than a prosauropod.

That same year, Brontosaurus made a cameo in another ahistorical film, One Million Years B.C. (1966). I know I called this the Apatosaurus age and it’s been dominated by Brontosaurus thus far, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the long neck identification started to change. Like I said, Hollywood was slow to catch up. The Land That Time Forgot (1974) showed a different species of sauropod, the Diplodocus. What makes this one different? Well, it has a much longer neck and tail, but that’s about it. The most unique example from this age wasn’t a Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus or Diplodocus, but rather one of Godzilla’s strangest enemies. Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) introduces the sea monster Titanosaurus, which has the same name as a species of sauropod, but that’s pretty much where the similarities between them end. Titanosaurus has fins, walks on two legs, and swims, making it more like a Spinosaurus than the long neck Titan Lizard.

Another Brontosaurus cameo occurs in Planet of Dinosaurs (1977). Then, its biggest role since Dinosaurus came in the Disney family film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985), but this Bronto was unlike any before it. The creature was realized mainly through robotic and puppet effects, which were bold for the time, and somewhat charming, but also flawed. The titular Baby is cute, but the massive adults are a bit clunky. Many kids were traumatized by this film, which was less family friendly than expected. An adult Brontosaurus is gunned down in a bloody execution scene, and Baby is told to mind its own business while the two lead characters have sex in the middle of the jungle. The African cryptid Mokele-mbembe is said to be some kind of sauropod dinosaur that lives in the jungle to this day, which formed the basis for this story, and makes it a pretty unique movie dinosaur.

Finally, we arrive at the big debut of Apatosaurus…sort of. Baby was kind of traumatizing for kids, but so was The Land Before Time (1988), an animated adventure about six infant dinos trying to find their families. At least this one was clearly meant for kids, and only traumatized them emotionally, when the main infant, a “long neck” named Little Foot, sits with his dying mother in the rainy darkness. This is where that name LOOOOONG NECK was popularized. They never explicitly say what species any of the dinosaurs are, but by this time people other than paleontologists and science nerds were finally catching on to the whole Brontosaurus-is-actually-Apatosaurus thing. So, as far as I’m concerned, Little Foot and his mother/grandparents are the first big Apatosaurus movie stars…even if their designs are still basically the same as the out-of-date-depictions of Brontosaurus.  

 

The Age of Brachiosaurus (1990’s-2000’s)

 

We have arrived at the Dinosaur Renaissance. The time of every long neck in a movie being a Brontosaurus was finally over. A number of new species had been identified since the initial discovery of the Thunder Lizard, and this idea that none of them were restricted to swamps was finally understood. Steven Spielberg was inspired by the realistic depiction of the Brontosaurus in Journey to the Beginning of Time, but his dinosaur movie featured a different long neck. Brachiosaurus made its big-screen debut in Jurassic Park (1993), but this wasn’t just another cinematic sauropod. This wasn’t even just another dinosaur…the first time audiences saw the Brachiosaurus stride across that field and feed on the tops of those trees, it was like the first time anyone had actually seen a dinosaur.

Brachiosaurus didn’t have the bendy neck of past Brontosauruses or the floppy, dragging tail. Usually the Bronto was depicted with an S-shaped neck snaking up from a horizontal or arched spine, but the difference with the Brach was its front legs were longer than its back legs, giving it a higher posture. Its neck stretched straight up like a giraffe, and when it reared up on its back legs, it became the tallest living creature ever seen. The cgi to bring it to life looks a teeny bit questionable in a couple of those closer shots, but the wide shots of it still look as real today as they did the day the movie came out. It’s more than just the sheer awe of seeing such a big animal look so real. The way Spielberg directed the scene, building up to the reveal, welcoming us to Jurassic Park in the most spectacular way possible, makes the Brachiosaurus intro one of the best moments in the entire history of cinema.

Not long after the biggest dinosaur in Hollywood appeared, one of the smallest came along: another Brachiosaurus in Prehysteria! (1993), accompanied by four other miniature prehistoric friends. This little Brach named Paula (after pop singer Paula Abdul) was brought to life through a combination of stop motion and puppetry. I like her design, but even though she came back for two sequels, she isn’t nearly as impressive or as memorable as some of the previous long necks—not even compared to Little Foot, who continued to lead the charge for every Land Before Time sequel. Dino returned for The Flintstones (1994), a live-action adaptation of the TV show, so now there was a bonanza of different long necks in movies. Fun bonus fact: Apatosaurus was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary When Dinosaurs Roamed America, and the narrator declares “This is Dino, from The Flinstones, in the flesh, all thirty tons.” The narrator? John Goodman, who played live-action Fred Flintstone!

This age may be defined by Brachiosaurus, but the diversity of long necks continued as the Dinosaur Renaissance kept building, mainly thanks to the success of Jurassic Park. The sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), didn’t bring back Brachiosaurus, surprisingly, but there were so many other dinosaurs to include that I guess they just didn’t have room. They did manage to give a Mamenchisaurus a brief appearance, with a motorcyclist riding right between its pillar-like legs. In the actual Jurassic period, Mamenchisaurus was like the Diplodocus of China, and to my knowledge, it has been in no other film except the second Jurassic Park. Despite playing such a large and memorable part in the 1925 original Lost World, a sauropod wasn’t included in a remake until The Lost World (1998), and it’s nowhere near as impressive. Dino returned in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000), and Brachiosaurus returned briefly in Jurassic Park III (2001), although with a slightly different design. I prefer the simpler look and colour scheme from the original.

The last big role for the Brach in this age was in Dinosaur (2000): Disney’s first dino-pic since Baby and technically their 39^th animated feature, even though it used computer generated imagery mixed with real-world locations. An elderly Brachiosaurus by the name of Baylene is friends with an equally old Styracosaurus named Eema and her pet ankylosaur Url, and she is the second-best long neck of this modern age, behind only Jurassic Park’s Brach. She’s soft-spoken (oh yeah, the dinosaurs talk in this movie—just imagine Jurassic Park and Land Before Time were tossed in a blender), with a posh British accent and careful demeanor, but able to use her devastating amount of strength when she needs to. The cgi is excellent, and despite having human-like eyes and expressions, she still looks and moves like a real creature.  

We’ll finish off this extensive long neck movie history in part three!