Before 'Jurassic Park' and 'Prehistoric Planet,' Christopher Reeve guided us into the prehistoric world.
Have the dino-nerds in your life come for Jurassic World Dominion yet? You know the type – that insufferable know-it-all who never stops to ask if you want the low-down on current paleontological developments, or why it makes Colin Trevorrow’s latest film so offensive. They’re just ready to list its many faults before it even hits theaters. “You know T.
The technique made for a damn fine short. “Prehistoric Beast” is an intense ride, slowly and beautifully building to a fierce climax. The animation is superb, retaining all the practical elements of past stop-motion dinosaur battles from the likes of Ray Harryhausen while injecting a fresh dynamism. And the dinosaurs move and act like real animals more than movie monsters. These days, Monoclonius is considered a dubious genus, and T. rex was probably a lot heftier than Tippett made him.
Among the fascinated were Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg. Though neither Prehistoric Beast nor Dinosaur! directly inspired them in the creation of Jurassic Park, when it came time for the dinosaurs to come to life in Spielberg’s adaptation of Crichton’s novel, the director turned to Tippett. The experience on the CBS documentary and his own short left Tippett a seasoned animator and an expert on dinosaur movement, at least as it was understood at the time.