Ever wondered how those mighty creatures that ruled Earth millions of years ago became such captivating stars on our screens? The journey of dinosaurs through cinema is nothing short of extraordinary. From simple animated sketches to breathtaking CGI masterpieces, these prehistoric giants have evolved alongside technology itself, creating some of the most memorable moments in entertainment history. From the heartwarming charm of The Land Before Time to the groundbreaking realism of Jurassic Park, each era of filmmaking has reimagined dinosaurs for a new generation. Along the way, these portrayals have swung between scientific accuracy and pure fantasy, shaping how millions of people picture life in the Mesozoic. Today, documentaries like Prehistoric Planet blend cutting-edge visuals with real paleontology, bringing us closer than ever to the truth. Together, these depictions don’t just entertain—they influence our understanding of science, culture, and the creatures that continue to capture our imagination.
The Dawn of Dinosaur Cinema
One of the earliest movies featuring dinosaurs was Brute Force, released in 1914. This wasn’t just any ordinary film – it was a groundbreaking attempt to bring extinct creatures to life on the silver screen. This 30 minute long silent film chronicles the life and times of a group of cavemen as they fend off warring tribes and big lizards. By today’s standards, it looks more than a little rough around the edges; two of the dinosaurs are quite clearly a snake and crocodile with extra dangly bits glued on them.
But here’s what makes this remarkable – given it came out before the trenches of World War One had even been dug, it doesn’t look half bad, particularly at the end when we see a looming T-Rex scaled next to the cave folk. These early filmmakers understood something profound: so much of this period was dedicated to showing the fantastical things that up until that point could only be dreamed of. A decade prior you had Georges Méliès showing us the surface of the moon, and now we had the most awe inspiring monsters walking in front of our very eyes.
Animation’s First Prehistoric Star
Staying in 1914, we saw the release of Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur. An animated short that sees the titular Gertie perform tricks like a trained elephant, it’s often touted as the very first animated film. What made Gertie special wasn’t just her technical achievement, but her personality. She waddles from side to side as she walks, her chest rises and falls as she breathes, and her muscles move in a naturalistic way. It imbues her with a personality, showing how mere pencil lines can forge an emotional bond with the audience.
Until that time, dinosaurs in popular culture had been portrayed as snarling, vicious monsters who chased people around, much like the dragons who had come before them. McCay’s portrayal of a cute, somewhat bumbling, slow moving, and gentle creature helped change the public perception of what dinosaurs were. Gertie was more like a golden retriever than a dragon. This shift in perception would influence how we see dinosaurs for decades to come.
The Stop-Motion Revolution
1925’s The Lost World was the first full length film to feature model animation as the primary special effect, or stop motion animation in general. And I tell you what, they still hold up pretty well to this day. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, this film established many conventions that dinosaur movies would follow for years. The first full-length movie to feature dinosaurs is a cinema classic: The Lost World (1925). Based on the 1912 book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it tells of dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, and lived unnoticed into modern times in a far-flung corner of South America. Sculptor Marcel Delgado made dinosaur models for the film based on the work of a leading palaeoartist of the time, Charles Robert Knight.
The success of The Lost World paved the way for Willis O’Brien’s masterwork in King Kong, where dinosaurs would share the screen with cinema’s most famous giant ape. This era showed that seemingly every innovation was brought about by wanting to show cooler, more realistic dinosaurs.
The Ray Harryhausen Era
No discussion of dinosaur cinema would be complete without mentioning Ray Harryhausen, whose name became synonymous with bringing prehistoric creatures to life. Inspired by Willis O’Brien’s work on King Kong, the great Ray Harryhausen started climbing his way up the Hollywood ladder. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms was the first film with Harryhausen in charge of technical effects, and his stop-motion work on this seminal “dinosaur rampage” movie changed the course of SFX history.
One Million Years BC might be rest remembered for Raquel Welch’s fur bikini, but this campy masterpiece features some of Ray Harryhausen’s finest creature animation. Harryhausen’s approach was different – he understood that dinosaurs needed to be more than just monsters. When working on the effects for One Million Years B.C. (1966), Harryhausen famously quipped that it wasn’t scientists who paid to watch these movies; It was kids. Fascination with the subject, in horror as well as comedy, had already become associated with childhood.
The Beloved Littlefoot Generation
The film was released by Universal on November 18, 1988 to generally positive reviews from critics and was a box office success, grossing $48.4 million. Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time represented something entirely different in dinosaur cinema – a story focused on heart rather than horror. During the age of the dinosaurs, a famine forces groups of dinosaurs to look for an oasis known as the Great Valley. A “longneck” dinosaur hatches a single baby named Littlefoot.
What made this film special was its emotional depth and the care taken in its creation. The production was preceded by extensive research, including visits to natural history museums in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Skeletons, fossils, and paleoart from the turn of the century were consulted to help create a credible landscape and animals. Further research was conducted using live-action footage of quadrupedal modern animals, including elephants and giraffes. The film spawned an entire franchise and became a defining childhood experience for many.
Jurassic Park Changes Everything
The arrival of Jurassic Park to cinemas can not be understated; it is the best, most ambitious and most technically ground-breaking dinosaur film ever made. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece didn’t just entertain – it revolutionized cinema itself. Jurassic Park (1993) was groundbreaking, particularly in terms of its special effects, which included animatronic models and computer animation.
Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park –which limped into its fourth sequel via Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom–was the first film to go to some lengths to bring up-to-date scientific theories to bear on how dinosaurs behaved and moved, what they ate, and what colors they were. The film’s blend of practical effects and CGI created dinosaurs that felt truly alive, setting a new standard that filmmakers still strive to achieve today. With Jurassic Park, the dinosaur film had reached an apex. Cinema was changed forever.
The Digital Age and Modern Interpretations
Following Jurassic Park’s success, the film industry embraced digital technology with varying degrees of success. The new Chris Pratt vehicle has stirred debate in some circles because of its complete dependence on CGI, versus Jurassic Park’s skillful blend of computer and practical effects. This ongoing tension between practical and digital effects continues to shape how dinosaurs appear on screen.
Modern filmmakers have experimented with everything from fully CGI environments to hybrid approaches. A Disney animated film from the turn of the new century, “Dinosaur” was truly groundbreaking and ahead of its time when it comes to animation technology. The film combines live-action backgrounds with computer-animated dinosaurs– making for a unique setting for the adventure. The film follows Aladar, an Iguanodon raised by lemurs, as he leads a herd of dinosaurs to a safe nesting ground. These experiments showed that there were still new ways to bring prehistoric creatures to life.
Television’s Documentary Renaissance
While movies captured the fantasy, television began exploring the reality of dinosaur life through groundbreaking documentaries. Fortunately, there is an alternative opportunity to see these extinct animals in motion, in the form of television documentaries such as Planet Dinosaur (2011), Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) and When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001). These productions brought a new level of scientific accuracy to dinosaur portrayals, treating them as real animals rather than movie monsters.
Walking with Dinosaurs particularly changed how audiences viewed these creatures, presenting them as complex animals with behaviors and social structures. The success of these documentaries proved that audiences craved not just entertainment, but education about these magnificent beasts that once ruled our planet.
The Attenborough Effect
Prehistoric Planet is a nature documentary television series about dinosaurs, that premiered on Apple TV+ beginning May 23, 2022. It is produced by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, with Jon Favreau as showrunner, visual effects by The Moving Picture Company, and narration by natural historian Sir David Attenborough. This represents perhaps the pinnacle of dinosaur documentaries, combining cutting-edge technology with unparalleled storytelling.
The documentary follows dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals recreated with computer-generated imagery, living around the globe in the Late Cretaceous period 66 million years ago (Maastrichtian), just before the non-avian dinosaurs’ extinction. It set out to depict prehistoric life using current palaeontological research by including accurately feathered dinosaurs, and speculative animal behaviour. Anyone who has ever heard the glory that is his sonorous voice knows what power he commands just by speaking. At 96 years old in 2022, the nature historian, narrator, and environmental advocate doesn’t miss a beat as he brings his enthusiasm for this new, yet old, world into every single grand utterance over the show’s five episodes.
Scientific Accuracy vs. Entertainment Value
The ongoing challenge in dinosaur media has always been balancing scientific accuracy with entertainment value. Filmmakers are sometimes guilty of misrepresenting or misusing scientific facts to produce the best story. Indeed, many modern movies are largely unconcerned about the scientifically accurate visualization of dinosaurs. Before the dinosaur ‘renaissance’, filmmakers’ visions were often ahead of current scientific views, particularly in terms of reconstructions of dinosaur behaviour.
However, this relationship has evolved significantly. Since human beings were not around to actually witness and document the appearance and activities of dinosaurs, series like these need to utilize a certain amount of “discretionary imagination.” And that’s OK, because unless we someday discover a way to grow living dinosaurs from DNA (as in Jurassic Park), we’ll simply have to rely on fossilized skeletons to help us form a reasonable picture of what dinosaurs must have looked like 66 million years ago. And as Attenborough explains, Prehistoric Planet leverages what Paleontologists have learned about dinosaurs thus far.
The Cultural Impact and Future Evolution
Dinosaurs fit perfectly into the role of movie monsters: many were enormous, or had distinctive characteristics such as spikes, horns, claws and big teeth. The fact that they aren’t found in the modern world (except for birds) excites the imagination, and films represent some of the few opportunities to see them as they may have looked when they were alive. It’s not surprising that the history of movies featuring dinosaurs goes back more than 100 years.
Today’s dinosaur media reflects our changing understanding of these creatures. Case in point, in the 1993 film, Jurassic Park, Velociraptors looked much different than the ones portrayed in this 2022 series. These Velociraptors have broad tails and feathers! What I like about Prehistoric Planet is that we get to see these extinct creatures behaving like genuine animals, and not terrible monsters. This evolution in portrayal shows how far we’ve come from those early days of rubber suits and painted lizards.
Conclusion: The Eternal Fascination
From Gertie’s gentle waddle in 1914 to the photorealistic T. rex families of Prehistoric Planet, dinosaurs have consistently captured our imagination in ways that few other subjects can match. People love dinosaurs – some a little too much – and our dinomania has always been reflected on the big screen. As this video of their evolution demonstrates, movie dinosaurs have come in many forms over the past hundred years, created by puppetry, stop motion, animatronics, and CGI.
The journey from Land Before Time’s heartfelt animation to Prehistoric Planet’s scientific precision represents more than just technological advancement – it reflects our growing understanding and appreciation of these incredible creatures that once ruled our world. Whether they’re making us laugh, cry, or hide behind our seats, dinosaurs continue to evolve on screen just as they once did in life. What new discoveries and technologies will shape their next cinematic incarnation?
