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!

The "Long Neck" Dinosaurs: A Complete Cinematic History (Part 1)

Dinosaurs in Film: The Long Neck

 

When it comes to meat-eating dinosaurs, there’s a typical image that people can easily picture in their minds: jaws lined with sharp teeth, clawed hands and feet, and usually two-legged. With plant-eating dinosaurs, though, there is a greater variety, so these often get designated a nickname based on their most obvious feature. One group is known in the paleontological community as the sauropods (meaning lizard foot), but a common nickname is the “long neck” dinosaurs. These creatures put giraffes to shame, with necks that stretched so high into the air some could have poked their heads through the open window of the fourth floor on a building without even standing on their tiptoes. Actually, that’s a bad analogy; sauropods didn’t really have toes, their feet were more like elephants, but unlike elephants they had long tails to balance their weight. The long neck dinosaurs have always made for the largest and most impressive museum displays. They quickly captured the public’s eye, and made their debut in Hollywood.

Because I’m covering more than one species of dinosaur this time, I’m going to designate the eras as ages, based on the most current species at the time, which means we begin with the one that has caused more confusion between the scientific community and general populous than any other dinosaur.

 

The Age of Brontosaurus (1910’s-1950’s)

 

When I was a little kid—we’re talking five-year-old-dinosaur-obsessed-Clayton here—I heard the name Brontosaurus and knew exactly what it meant: a long neck sauropod with a small, rounded head (the name itself means “Thunder Lizard” because it would have sounded like thunder when they walked). When I got a bit older, I discovered through documentaries and books that Brontosaurus was, in fact, not a real dinosaur. I felt like I had learned a secret no other kid knew. It seemed early paleontologists had made a mistake: they put a Camarasaurus skull on the body of Apatosaurus (they later discovered Apatosaurus actually had a longer skull like Diplodocus, and Camarasaurus had a different body type), so the species was rightfully relabeled Apatosaurus and this mythical Brontosaurus had its name and likeness retired. In my youth and teen years, if I ever saw the name Brontosaurus in an outdated textbook or film, I turned my nose up, smirked, snorted, and guffawed at their inaccuracy. I’m going to come back to this Brontosaurus issue later because it’s a whole thing, but for now, let’s get into the early Hollywood representations of what was back then accepted as a valid species of long neck.  

The first dinosaur to appear in a motion picture was a Brontosaurus. Before T. rex or Triceratops or Stegosaurus, the Thunder Lizard had the honour of being the true first of its kind, the original cinematic dinosaur, in Gertie the Dinosaur (1914): a silent, black-and-white piece of animation that plays for twelve minutes. The animation—and, by extension, Gertie’s design—is simple but charming. Gertie’s antics include throwing an elephant in a lake and uprooting an entire stump then eating it, roots and all. Animator Winsor McCay would pretend to interact with Gertie when it was played in theaters as part of his act, and while it wasn’t the first short animated film of its kind, it is one of the earliest examples, and a unique debut for the first Hollywood dino. Brontosaurus wouldn’t return in animated form until Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939), which was a Merrie Melodies theatrical short about a caveman hunting down Daffy. The caveman’s hunting dog (dinosaur) is Fido, a long neck with a particularly twisty neck, reminiscent of another animated pet we’ll get to soon. A less cartoony cartoon version was featured in Fantasia (1940), in the segment The Rite of Spring. A whole herd of them would raise their long, serpentine necks to spot the oncoming Tyrannosaurus long before the other herbivores, but they were as doomed to reach extinction by the end as all the other species.

As for its live-action debut, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918) showed a Bronto foraging in the jungle, but it isn’t a very memorable role. The title card indicates the creature “must have been at least one hundred feet long” but fossil evidence indicated it would’ve been closer to seventy feet when full-grown, although may have been able to grow larger. Ghost of Slumber Mountain was like a test film for Willis O’Brien, who made Brontosaurus into a dynamic and even vicious creature for its next role.

The Lost World (1925) was the movie that really made the long neck a star. This creature is bigger than any other on the plateau, and gives a wicked snarl when it sees a hungry Allosaurus sneaking up to attack. The Bronto puts up a good fight, too, biting the carnivore on its throat, and even though the creature falls off a cliff, it survives the fall, and is incapacitated in a mud pit. The explorers take it back with them to London to prove they really did find a prehistoric world in the heart of the Amazon, but to no one’s surprise, the Brontosaurus escapes and rampages through London before breaking Tower Bridge and plunging into the Thames River. It’s an impressive effects display for 1925, with the full-size Bronto created using stop motion and portions of the London streets recreated in miniature. There are multiple stand-out moments, like when the Bronto sweeps its long tail across the street, knocking several people over, and when it destroys part of a large building. Who would have guessed a creature that seemed to clearly be understood as a lumbering herbivore right from the first fossils being described would also turn out to be one of the first main dinosaur antagonists in a movie?

Willis O’Brien wasn’t done with making Brontosaurus a brutal beast. The influence of The Lost World is very evident in the story of King Kong (1933), with a mysterious isolated place inhabited by prehistoric creatures, a team of explorers bringing back one of the creatures to civilization (this time a giant ape instead of a dino), and the displaced creature going on a rampage. The stop motion effects, though, are even better; O’Brien had refined and improved his techniques, which made the Brontosaurus that emerged from the swamp on Skull Island even scarier than the one that attacked London. It feels like a classic horror movie moment the first time it rears its head out of the water amid the fog and gloom. Seconds later, the beast flips over the raft the explorers are crossing the swamp with, throws several men around like rag dolls, and then chases the rest of them out of the swamp! One guy has the not-so-bright idea to climb a tree to escape. The Brontosaurus easily reaches up into the high branches and snatches him in its jaws, and the man’s screams make the conclusion to this scene as hilarious as it is horrific.

In previous dinosaur cinematic histories, we’ve established Hollywood producers really didn’t care that much about scientific accuracy when it came to early dinos in movies. I can understand how someone might forget which big meat-eater had two fingers and which one had three, T. rex or Allosaurus, but a Brontosaurus that eats people? It’s pure movie monster fiction. O’Brien took what he started in Lost World making the Bronto out to be more of a villain than it really was and pushed it even further. This man-eater sunk to a watery grave in the sequel, Son of Kong (1933), and so disappeared the most bloodthirsty long neck that would ever star in a film. By the time the next Bronto appeared in a movie (Unknown Island (1948)) it had been made clear to viewers that this massive creature most often lived in swamps or lakes eating marsh plants, because its enormous weight was more easily supported in the water. That was just a theory, and not a bad one for the time. After all, how could something so big move around on land for very long? Well, it seems life, uh, found a way, because paleontologists would later discover they were more than capable of traversing the Mesozoic landscape.

Though its early depictions would later be seen as inaccurate and a bit lamentable, Brontosaurus was a movie star and nothing could change that. It appeared again in Lost Continent (1951), but this stop motion model lacked the expression and detail of the earlier Willis O’Brien models. The last entry in this age of Brontosaurus was Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), which took a different approach than previous films. The long neck here wasn’t a monster, it was shown as if it were a real animal, peacefully eating from a tree, watching the humans go by in their boat, then taking a dip in the river. Brontosaurus didn’t quite come back around full circle by the end of this age (since the first time we saw it, it was a literal cartoon character) but it did go back to being a peaceful creature, instead of maintaining that monstrous persona upheld by O’Brien.

In the next part, we’ll look at how the long neck dinosaurs diversified as Hollywood moved out of the black-and-white era, out soon!