Before the Dinosaurs: Walking with Monsters Reviews

Very easily the weakest of the series, dating back to the time before the dinosaurs, due to one simple fact: it feels the most speculative in both the narratives about the creatures presented and the general looks of many of these beasts. But the production values can’t be argued with. The leap in animation presented here gives us a full range of creatures that move more fluidly; possess more weight and dynamic range of emotions and actions. These animations are beautiful to behold, but also leave the sneaking suspicion that many of their behavioral patterns and actions are simply the animators trying to fill the screen with some kind of business to prevent static images and show how far they’ve come since the early days of Dinosaurs.

Another problem is that so much ground is covered in only three episodes. Millions of years roll by in the blink of an eye. A creature will be placed into a still frame and slowly we trace its animated mutations and evolutions through millions of years before the creators arbitrarily decide where to stop for the next segment or episode. So narratively this series feels only half-formed. There’s more than enough material here to fill out a further three episodes (or even more).