Introduction : Remember Dinosaurs? They’re Different Now.

(Note: this blog is not for profit. All art and copyrighted material belongs to their respective owners.) Hi, my name is not important, you can just call me the Dinosaur Guy. Nah, that’s stupid. I’ll think of something eventually. Hey, remember dinosaurs? Those big, thundering reptiles that roared and hissed and killed everything in their path and were dumb and slow and covered in scales?

  Yeah, these guys! Weren’t they fun?! 😀 Well, if you stopped keeping up with dinosaurs after you grew out of those Dino-Rider toys in the 80’s or if all you know about dinosaurs is from Jurassic Park, here’s a shocker for you.

 

We think they looked a little different now.

But that’s beside the point. What was it that got us into dinosaurs in the first place? Well, like I said before, toys like Dino-Riders and movies like Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs have been ingrained in the public’s conscience since the late 19^th century; the idea that these incomprehensible beasts once roamed our very planet caught the imagination of scientists, enthusiasts, and of course, Hollywood. Movies, TV shows, cartoons, and games have shaped the public’s perception on how these creatures looked and behaved. Whether it was for the better of the worst depends on who you’re asking. Personally, I think it’s a mixed bag. For one, Hollywood has misrepresented scientific fact for the sake of exciting entertainment. On the other hand, because popular culture has made these creatures so popular, it has inspired people at a young age to learn more about these amazing creatures and take an interest in science as a whole. In this series, I will look at how dinosaurs are represented in popular media, whether it be film, television, literature, games, art, toys, or wherever these creatures show their ugly heads. I’ll take a look a look at both the good and the bad; the movies that push the public’s perception of dinosaurs forward and the ones that want to keep dinosaur knowledge in the Stone Age.

This can be both depending on who you’re asking.

Now, for the most part, I will only judge these works based on the knowledge available to them at the time. Although I will make comparisons to how we see these creatures today, I won’t deduct points for the dinosaurs in King Kong (1933) looking like this… …when we now think it looked like this:

That doesn’t look very scary! More like a 40 ft turkey!

I will rate the work on a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of accuracy (accurate for the time, mind you). If I rated them based on today’s standards, great pieces like Walking With Dinosaurs would end up with rather low scores because Science Marches On (am I on TV Tropes?), even though such programs did much to get away from the older (dare I say dinosaurian?) depictions of these animals. However, I will deduct if the work really should have known better.

Really? You are an educational show from the 2010’s that has the other raptors feathered, but you still have the audacity to do THIS?!!

So let’s have some fun!