Tyrannosaurus Sex review (NSFW, obvs)
Hoo boy, where do I even begin with 2010's Tyrannosaurus Sex? This documentary is pretty much only known for one thing: being about dinosauur sex and mentioning penises a lot, even discussing the size of it. You probably saw this clip below as a kid and snickered your ass off as the repeated mention of penises and sex. In the greater scheme of things, the infamous reputation probably stems from how as with most of recent human history, it was deemed by the ruling classes taboo to discuss such topicsto gain control of them for themselves and so was pushed into unacceptability territory, which ended up backfiring through the forbiden fruit effect, meaning were were better off of humaity just accepted it from the start.... but that's beyond the scope of this blog post.
Anyway, for the longest time Tyrannosaurus Sex was lost media, with the sole upload getting taken down thanks to that darn copyright, and only being uploaded to good ol' Internet Archive recently last month; in the time in between it was relegated to our memories and nostalgia-based rumours and dirty jokes. With it back online for all to see, how does this documentary hold up after all these years?
Surprisingly well, it seems. Let's start off with the positives in Tyrannosaurus *** - and boy, there is a lot of it.
First off, one can't help but love just how serious the documentary takes itself. There is nary a peurile joke in the documentary, save the occasional awkward pause from narrator Michael Caroll. Tyrannosaurus Sex doesn't mince the details, going into detail from everything from sperm to courtship displays and how biology and evolution inform them and vice versa, all tied together by how dinosaurs couldn't have lasted so long if they didn't do it right. For instance, the documentary uses the Auca Mahaco site in Argentina and how eggs are preserved in clusters like crocodiles rather then organised like most birds' to suggest sauropods had a penis more like the former then the latter. The talking heads (consisting of Greg Erickson, Kristi Currie-Rogers, Kenneth Carpenter, and Mark Norell) also have plenty of warts and all nuance, admitting there's a lot that's uncertain about it, and have a degree of awkwardness and humour to them I enjoy. I especially like a bit where Erickson busts the infamous myth that sauropods couldn't mate on land and instead in lakes, something a surprising and infurating amounts of people still believe in (looking at you, Brian J. Ford and your sex lakes- look that up at your own risk).
The behaviour of the dinosaurs, mostly mating and courtship is pretty good: no real awesomebro moments that stand out outside of a T. rex fight and one by the Stegosaurus, with the latter even seeing one young male back off and concede a female instead of fight. You even have things like females initially rejecting the mates' courtship advances rather then falling for it immediately. This is all the more notable when you consider this was coming out in the Awesomebro period of palaeo-documentaries when aggresive behaviour and violent fighting was the norm to emphasise, coming between the infamous Clash of the Dinosaurs the same year and Monsters Ressurected the last year.
The interpretive visuals for TS have a greenish, computer tint and style that's also quite to my liking.
Even the music by Stuart Kollmorgan ain't bad, being percussion-heavy and distinct from others I've heard.
Finally, the title itself is a stroke of genius. It's not just a generic "Dinosaur or Prehistoric whatever" title that can be downright forgettable, but a pun that conveys everything you need about the documentary while sticking in your head.
Now for the negatives of the documentary, and admittedly there's quite a bit even in an otherwise pretty good documentary.
The CG, done by Lux Visual Effects... isn't very good, especially for other Discovery Channel documntaries. The dinosaurs move too fluidly with little bulk or weight to them, and so don't come off as believable.
All of the dinosaurs' designs (though not colours) are also quite lacking in both design and accuracy. The tyrannosaurus for instance are literally just the lipless and pronated hand kind, just with feathers sprinkled on in the half-hearted way usually reserved for raptors in pop culture.
Meanwhile, the Stegosaurus, while still having a nice complimentary colour scheme and patterns, is of the Pre-Sophie kind, with short necks and front legs, rather then relatively long ones.
Meanwhile, the stegosaurus graphic has a weird fleshy, rounded snout like certain mammals' and lacks a beak entirely. I have no idea why they went with it as it looks inconsistent with the relatively accurate heads above.
Even the best dinosaur out of the three in my opinion, referred to as "Titanosaurs" within the documentary but clearly Alamosaurus, still have elephant feet, and keep their necks out horizontally rather then upright or diagonally, since then-recent studies of the neck vertebrae supposedly disproved such position, when now we know . It doesn't help the males' white-spotted colour scheme, while a nice sexually dimorphic touch on its own, clearly borrows much from the ones from 2006's Prehistoric Park, for better or worse.
Did I mention there are only three species in the entire special? Not counting a basal archosaur that appears statically early on, it's just Rexy, Stego, and the Alamosaurus. Granted, there is the issue of time constraints with in a roughly-45 minute work, but it couldn't have hurt to slot in a smaller dinosaur, like a dromaeosaur. Hell, if it were 10 years later. they could have included the little ceratopsian Psittacosaurus, given that the famous Senckenberg specimen actually has a preserved cloaca and glands, which have also revealed much about the nitty gritty of dinosaur mating.
Also, this is more a personal complaint, but I honestly don't think the traditional mounting depiction here checks out, with non-avian dinosaurs instead having incredibly huge penises that could be slotted in while the males were standing beside females while remaining on all fours. It's not just me: others have speculated as such, from Darren Naish as he showed in All Yesterdays, to artist Transapient.
To be honest, I feel like with how oneshot TS is, I feel like there could be more to it. Personally, I would make it part of a larger miniseries about the grosser aspects of dinosaurs, such as coprolites, naturally titled Turd Rex, about how analysing coprolites can tell us much about diets how dinosaurs expelled waste with only one hole instead of two, through the cloaca.
- Accuracy - 7/10
- Aging - 7/10
- Interviews - 9/10
- Presentation - 6/10
- Behaviour - 8/10
- Visuals - 6/10
- Music - 8/10
- Storytelling - 8/10
- Rewatchability - 9/10
 |
| One last Money Shot for the road |
Overall, once you get past the the rather vulgar premise, Tyrannosaurus Sex is a solid, underrated documentary, that has a surprsing amount of nuance to it, educating audiences on a topic rarely discussed, and generally does everything it needs to do well well. It's an 8/10 in my book, and whether just for the novelty or a serious look at reproductive biology, Tyrannosaurus Rex is worth going out to watch.
See Also/Sources
- Bell, P. R.; Pittman, M.; Kaye, T. G.; Hendrickx, H. (2020). "A crocodylian-style cloaca in a non-avialan dinosaur". bioRxiv 10.1101/2020.10.11.335398.
- The Most Underrated Palaeo-Documentary of all time! (may be NSFW)
Comments
Post a Comment