Sea Monsters Review/Gushing
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| Oh, I'm gonna love this |
Hello, and welcome back to Aquatober here at Mesozoic Mind. Last time we looked at Sea Rex, a documentary for IMAX theatres in museums. Now we're gonna take a look at... basically the exact same thing. Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure. Released by National Geographic in 2007, this film is undoubtedly a familiar source of nostalgia, whether its the film, its video game, or the series of videos Nat Geo uploaded.
The film chronicles life in the Western Interior Seaway of Late Cretaceous North America through the perspective of a female Dolichorhynchops; I believe many have taken to calling her Doly for short and henceforth I shall too. She encounters may other denizens of the sea, including the giant sea lizard the Tylosaurus. The film also has a framing device of scientists uncovering Doly's skeleton.
The film to put it in one word, is breathtaking. The visuals are all excellent and top-notch. The animal designs are bright, vivid, and amazing. The story is simplistic but deep. The cinematography is rich. The music is wonderfully atmospheric and memorable. Liev Schreiber's narration is soothing and great. Lets all go into them on by one.
In terms of visuals, they are all great. All of the animals move with the weight you'd expect, and are fluid as you can get. Even almost 15 years later, the film still holds up in this regards. The textures are all well-detailed, whether scales, skin, or scars.
The designs are all very good and top-notch. Even in the more simpler ones, like the cretoxyrhina and styxosaurus, they are still nice too look at. The Dolies in particular seem to be inspired by Little blue penguins in their blue grey colour schemes. Even the background fish like Caproberyx and Enchodus and ammonites are this!
The story is fairly simplistic, where its just following Doly on her group's migration following prey with occasional break to highlighting fossil finds humans have made, in particular the studies of the Sternberg palaeontologist clan, who made many significant finds of Mesozoic marine life. Nevertheless, this means its fairly easy to read and understand for both casual viewers not interested in the subject, young viewers, and palaeo-nerds alike.
On this note, I'm gonna note that this is one of the few prehistory documentaries National Geographic has made with an actual narrative. Unlike BBC and Discovery Chanel, National Geographic has never really done otherwise narrative works more then once, just conventional talking head-centred docs intercut with field work, science, or palaeo-reconstructions with CG. I'm not sure if its down to budget issues, management preferences, or some mix of the above.
The cinematography of the film is very lush and beautiful. You know when people say that every frame of this is a painting? This certainly applies! While the film's colour palate is admittedly limited by being underwater and thus having a blue tint, the layout of each shot and camera movement is well done. it also makes good use of 3D, with high depth of field and creature swimming towards and from behind the frame; naturally the long necked plesiosaur Styxosaurus provide some easy 3D. One of my favourite is that of a feeding ball between them and the dolies, or a Platecarpus (another genus of mosasaur) swimming by the camera like an eel. Even the terrestrial and helicopter shots out of water are great and wide. It is clearly a film made for the big screen, specifically Imax ones, but even when on the small screen and in downgraded quality it still shines. Major props to underwater cinematographer Bob Cranston!
The film's score, by Richard Evans and David Rhodes and even Peter Gabriel, is amazing. Unlike most documentaries, the score of it very unique-sounding compared to other ones. While sadly only two tracks have been officially released, just listen to them!
Other tracks I love are when a Tylosaurus show up, the above mentioned feeding ball, and the ending.
The doc is narrated by Liev Scrieber, who gives a soft, soothing voice. There is emotion and gravitas to it only the likes of Kenneth Branagh or John Goodman have in things like these.
Now would be as good a time to compare and contrast it with Sea Rex. While on the surface (har har) both are about cretaceous marine reptiles, both go in radically different directions. SR, released years after SM, is more about mesozoic marine reptiles overall and the the scientific study of them and has humans onscreen narrating, while SM primarily focuses on one region and time (Late Cretaceous North America) and limits the human side to a few barely connected segments. Funnily enough, both have Julian Johnson-Mortimer as the guy designing the creatures, so make that of what you will.
As much as I could go on and on about how great this film is, its not without its flaws, even if they're minor. I admit the dig scenes could have been better integrated into the story better by being based off explicitly actual finds, just like the Sternberg parts are (like of course the Xipacthinus with a fish in it by George Sternberg).
Science and time have also marched in in some regards. The biggest one is that like in Sea Rex, the plesiosaurs and mosasaurs need tail flukes as evidenced by fossil imprints of soft tissue on rocks. There is also the mosasaurs being way too thin: they need to be a bit chubbier to keep themselves warm in the sea. You also have the token non-avian dinosaur in the film is Gorgosaurus of the Campanian 76-5 million years, 7-8 million after the 82 million-year setting of the film, among a few other anachronisms.
There's also a few moments where the CG falters, like when rocks blown up fly at the camera like a bad DTV movie effect.
But don't let these small wrinkles distract you. Sea Monsters is an incredible and excellent documentary, one I cannot think of how to improve it in any way beyond making it longer and haing more of everything in it. No matter what reason, I suggest you take a look at it, now! You can thank me later!
See ya later! Goodbye for now and happy spooky season!
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