Mega Predators review
Hello and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. I've decided I'm going back to doing what I do best: obscure documentaries few have heard of. In this case, we once again return to the early 2000's with another Discovery Channel doc, titled Mega Predators*.
* Just note I'm not sure if its 2001 (which I've seen given elsewhere) or 2004, which I've seen elsewhere, hence why no date is given here. If anyone could clarify which is which, that would be great.
This documentary produced by one Rubin-Tarrat Productions focuses on predators of the Cenozoic and what made them deadly hunters. In many ways, Mega Predators feels like a predecessor to the much-reviled awesombro Discovery series Monsters Resurrected. The focus on carnivores and how they hunt and kill prey. The random scenes of them in the present killing people. The hyperbolic treatment of them as monstrous killers and how they would hurt us: you will find them all there in Mega Predators, hell even a few species are shared between them. But is it merely just better then the bottom of the barrel that is MR, or is Mega Predators legit good on it's own terms?
Let's begin shall we?
First up after the introduction, is Titanis, the giant terror bird of the Pliocene southern US. It's introduced in the first of the modern-set segments, where it terrorises a Black suburban woman hanging up a birdfeeder right after eating a dog it had killed. it sets the mood for the segments well: the woman's acting is cheesily over the top, and the narrator's hyperbolic speech about how dangerous it would be to humans, and the behaviour makes no sense: why is the bird abandoning it's meal to chase the woman even after she leaves?
Oddly enough, there is also a second segment in Titanis' time of the Pleistocene, where it hunts one of the small pronghorns of the Pliocene it fed on, all while Florida Museum of Natural History scientist Gina C. Gould as a talking head; it is the only creature to have two segment. I admit while it's not as ironically interesting as the previous one, it is much better to me at least, because at least it shows how Titanis hunted.
It's followed up by a segment on the goanna Megalania; strangely, the narration pronounces it with a hard a ("Lah-nee-ah" as opposed to "Lane-Ee-Ah"). First comes footage of the Australian Museum in Sydney readying a model of it for display, and one on its closest relative the Komodo Dragon. Then comes another modern segment where one Megalania ambushes some poor aussie bloke cleaning a pool. It's honestly a bit boring in my book. I do dig the rather colourful design of the Meg though. Better then the usual solid olive a la Komodo Dragons we often see in a lot of media, I prefer the colourful kind seen elsewhere and here.
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| Excuse the poor image quality here |
Speakin of meg, another Mega-suffix creature is next, none other then (Otodus) Megalodon (and rather befitting considering what opened in theatres as I was writing this). It's segment is simply in it's time and about how its huge prey of increasingly-big whales spurred on its own huge size. It's not much, but it is a more subtle and relatively calm segment that actually takes his time to explain how Meg hunted and why it is as it is.
An Entelodont is next. Specifically it's meant to be the genus Archaeotherium, though since it's the early 2000's it's referred to as its synonym Megachoerus, because like many other fossil life, classification for entelodonts at the time was ****ed up, if not less complete then compared to the 2020's.
The segment is thus about some poor redneck gets chased by one around his farm before it chooses to snack on a pig, intercut with Robert T. Bakker hanging around an animatronic. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first documentary on this blog which features him in the flesh. Also for palaeo-toy collectors, note the Tyco Megacheorus model at the start of the segment.
I admit, I'm not a fan of the entelodont segment. The way the entelodont runs cracks me up with its bouncing gait, so the segment just comes off as comical (if admittedly in an enjoyable way). Bakker is a bit better, as his energetic vocal delievery does give some fun to the segment, but the information he gives feels more surface level then anything else, and the way its intercut comes off as disjointed. One must wonder why they didn't bring up the infamous cache of camels made by Archaeotherium, just two years.
The next segment is about another Neogene hunter: the cat relative with it's own pair of sabreteeth, Barbourofelis, introduced with... a kitten playing on top of a skull of it. As a cat lover, I adore seeing such s thing, even if it has little to do with the nimravid, which they actually do remind viewers they were only relatives of. The world could always use more kitties.
The late Larry Martin explains how Barbourofelis hunted with its sabreteeth , using the rhino Teleoceras (remember them?) as it's prey of choice, but also how its small brain size as the genus evolved may have led to its extinction. It's a enjoyable segment, shedding light for audiences on a creature rarely seen in palaeomedia. There's also what comes afterward: one on extinction and how large size can be a factor in such. It's a pretty nice wrinkle of nuance to a show that otherwise wants to talk its subjects up as the ultimate badasses.
This transitions into a segment on the Short-Faced bear, where its segment is about an early indeginous dude getting mauled by one, right after one displaying one mounted specimen in the Indiana State Museum. It's honestly a bit forgetable in my book, not helped by how I know that the bear was not a carnivore as portrayed and said here, at least not primarily. The bear is also one of the worse-animated and composited ones, sticking out like a sore thumb and looking uglier then; finally, the scream the guy makes as he's dragged off sounds utterly flat it's funny. At least the first person perspective is neat.
The final creature featured is the kiwi raptor the Poukai Eagle, more commonly referred to as the Haast's Eagle. The segment deals more in how it hunted its main prey, the Moa, and how the arrival of humanity to New Zealand during the Holocene caused its extinction, but not before possibly hunting humans right back, as demonstrated in the screengrab below.
I do like the panning footage of fossils and ancient Maori art in the segment, by the way.
Mega Predators ends with a final fanciful modern-day segment of a some poor shmuck getting chased around by the creatures featured, like Archeotherium, Megalania, and Titanis. And by the way, there is a T. rex in this, as the token non-avian dinosaur, appearing right at the start and the very end. It's not a half bad design, I admit, and going back to beginin, I do like how it's segment directly next to whenever Titanis appears, a nice nod to the bird=dinosaur connection.
So what do I think of Mega Predators?
I gotta give credit to the doc for eschewing (non-avian) dinosaurs and other Mesozoic species besides T. rex at the beguning and end of the special in favour of solely cenozoic taxa. There have been and would be way too many mesozoic-centric works, and the Cenozoic before the Ice Age has plenty of interesting fauna on its own that deserve their own works.
But otherwise, can tell there's a bit of the anti-intellectual nonsense and more specifically the awesomebro crap Discovery would go into as the 21st century goes on, such as decribing creatures as killers who'd gladly menace us humans and ahowing many doing exactly that, an early example of Awesomebro era documentaries, and a transitiona shift from the more down to earth palaeodocs of the early 2000's like When Dinosaurs Roamed America or Before We Ruled the Earth (which I haven't seen) to the awesomebro-era like Monsters and Clash of the Dinosaurs later in the decade. Maybe it was done to get the attention of the attention of american audiences, who otherwise weren't interested in the subject or the techinal meat.
My honest thoughts on the modern-day segments? While I admit they're entertaining on their own, I do feel they're cheesy, and barely demonstrate how its subjects would actually hunt pret. Maybe the production didn't have the budget for scenes in the creatures' time or their prey items, outside of the proghorn and whale.
The information meanwhile is pretty decent even for the time, though there are some slip ups here and there and some info has gotten outdated. For instance, Titanis is mentioned as living 1.5 million years ago, when it actually died out 1.8 million years ago. Let me know if you think there are even more egrigious in it.
The CGI for the animals, is on the mid side. None are detailed or move well, instead being downright cartoonish and low-quality, with the Titanis for example moving more like a baby flamingo or the entelodont looking like a Fallout creature.
The designs meanwhile range from pretty good to butt-ugly. The worst of them has to be the enteleodont, which is shrinkwrapped to the point of its cheeks pointing out. This is unlikely, especially as Bakker mentions it having huge jaw muscles that would bury the outline of them. On the flipside, I do like the Titanis' colours, and the Barbourofelis is also well done.
The narration by Johnathan Boothe is pretty good... voice-wise, soft and athouritive. As for the script itself (by Theodore Thomas, who also directed MP), it's a mixed bag, divided between informative stuff, particularly in the talking head portions, and corny awesomebro nonsense. I do feel however, it does better then Monsters Ressurected's in that it skews away from mere dressed up entertainment to to actual informativeness.
The music by the group Cottrell-Magnum Music is nice by the way, having a feeling of incoming rapidly danger, complete with horror strings at times.
If I were in charge, I would instead replace the modern day segments with simply just creatures in their time, with the entelodont gorging on its Poebrotherium cache or the Megalania eating a marsupial. Oh, and the Short-faced bear is absent here, as its not a predator proper, and Mega Predators would instead gain a new segment on another creature with the gone time. Ah, perhaps the giant Miocene crocodilian Purrusaurus, or the Eocene sea snake Pterosphenus.
- Accuracy - 5/10
- Aging - 6/10
- Presentation - 6/10
- Species Selection - 8/10
- Visuals - 5/10
- Music - 6/10
- Writing - 7/10
- Species - 8/10
- Rewatchability - 7/10
Mega Predators isn't too shabby when it comes to Discovery Channel palaeodocs, making the most of an underused body of creatures and is all around quite entertaining, and back to my original question is indeed much better, though with a few slip ups here and there in what's shown, and isn't exactly the best of Discovery's golden age. I give it 7/10, and recommend you do watch, albiet at the tail end or middle of whatever marathon you run.
Thank you for reading. Now that it will be September soon, I'm just letting you know that I may be going to post-secondary in that month, so I may not be posting as much at Mesozoic Mind soon. But still, I will continue on with a new chapter in my own life. Goodbye for now.
See Also/Sources
- Palaeo-Documentary Trope Discussion: Prehistory In the Modern Day, where I first brought up Mega Predators.
- Sundell, K. (1999). "Taphonomy of a Poebrotherium Kill Site: An Archeotherium Meat Cache". Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology. 19 79A
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