Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are there no good dinosaur films?

briannazigler.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 485 posts

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#61

Post by WorldMaker »

Apocryphon wrote: post #25
WorldMaker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a teacher get in trouble for discussing plate tectonics in the 1990s, in a public school. Turns out it still upsets a lot of religious groups and also was tied to some peculiar schools of climate change denialists in the 90s. I still don't entirely know how denying plate tectonics was useful for climate change denial that decade, I just remember how weird it was for the teacher to suggest to forget a whole scie…

That is wild, did they believe in this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diluvium

On the religious side, I know several megachurches in my city got directly infected by Ken Ham [1] himself. (A person to which I have negative respect, including his massive wastes of state tax incentives that affect my own tax dollars.) One of his schticks was the the "Earth is only 6000 years old because the bible says so". I spent a lot of time in High School (private, years after the public school incident above) rolling my eyes through arguments using another of his schticks used to "combat" things like tectonic theory, the simplistic argument fallacy "Were you there?" I still have so much hate for that anti-science tactic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ham

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#62

Post by throaway5454 »

masfuerte wrote: post #14
throaway5454 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brachiosaurus I think. Brontosaurus was originally thought to be a separate species from Apatosaurus but later revealed to be the same.

Weirdly this is about the fifth time I've read this in the last couple of months and it's out-of-date. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are divorced and living as separate species again.

The rare double gotcha fact

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#63

Post by Detrytus »

optimalsolver wrote: post #57
mpalmer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to most modern scripts. Writers/studios have largely decided people don't care about detailed, reasoned-out worlds with unspoken "show-don't-tell" internal logic. Are they wrong? I shudder to consider. Shows like Better Call Saul and Andor are the most recent high-profile counter-examples. So detailed and lived-in, because the writers wanted to ask interesting questions: How does the Empire do what it do…

Lord of the Rings doesn't dwell on the day-to-day details of how the various kingdoms functioned, and yet it's still a great story.

I disagree. It does not dwell on economy, or technology, but at least we have pretty good overview of social fabric and power structures: how kings get to power, how they make decisions, how they raise armies, how they deal with allies, etc.

Another thing: Bret Devereaux has some very detailed analysis on his blog ([1],[2]) of various LOTR battles/war campaings and it seems that Tolkien was meticulous about getting details of the warfare right, like how far and how fast can army move, what the commander can and cannot know at given time, and how medieval style battles are actually won/lost (including the impact of morale). Compare that with the mess that are two last seasons of Game of Thrones...

[1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...

[2] https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helm...

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#64

Post by tzs »

dylan604 wrote: post #19
zdragnar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pictures of the planets bit makes sense, as even with a telescope (through which we've seen the plants for a very long time) there's not really enough light for early film techniques to capture well. I do identify a bit with the dinosaur example, and to use another: plate tectonics wasn't a formalized and accepted theory until late in the 1960's. It spread to schools quickly, but by that point my parents had alre…

plate tectonics is a good one. I definitely remember my mom telling me as a kid how South America and Africa look like they fit together, and my dad talking about Pangea being the name when the pieces were fit together. it wasn't until much later that I realized that my parents were not taught this in school, but my dad just kept up with current events much more. It is weird to think that something is so new that eve…

Is the coastlines of South America and Africa looking like they fit together actually because of plate tectonics, or is it just a coincidence?

The shape we see for the coastlines of South America and Africa is affected by sea level. Depending on when you happened to look over the last say 140 million years sea level would have varied from around 135 meters below current sea level to around 75 meters above current sea level. That is a range of 210 meters.

Surely over that range both costs would change quite a bit, and I can't think of any mechanism that would make those changes complimentary in a way to keep the two coasts looking like they fit together.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#66

Post by dylan604 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #61
Apocryphon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is wild, did they believe in this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diluvium

On the religious side, I know several megachurches in my city got directly infected by Ken Ham [1] himself. (A person to which I have negative respect, including his massive wastes of state tax incentives that affect my own tax dollars.) One of his schticks was the the "Earth is only 6000 years old because the bible says so". I spent a lot of time in High School (private, years after the public school incident above)…

> "Were you there?"

Was he there when the Red Sea parted, or is he only using one source for evidence? Noah's Ark? Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's salt pillar wife? No, then it's not proven. Even back then, that was my equally lame retort, but it tended to make someone take a pause when they (if) they realized the limb they were standing one wasn't very strong

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#67

Post by dylan604 »

tzs wrote: post #64
dylan604 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plate tectonics is a good one. I definitely remember my mom telling me as a kid how South America and Africa look like they fit together, and my dad talking about Pangea being the name when the pieces were fit together. it wasn't until much later that I realized that my parents were not taught this in school, but my dad just kept up with current events much more. It is weird to think that something is so new that eve…

Is the coastlines of South America and Africa looking like they fit together actually because of plate tectonics, or is it just a coincidence? The shape we see for the coastlines of South America and Africa is affected by sea level. Depending on when you happened to look over the last say 140 million years sea level would have varied from around 135 meters below current sea level to around 75 meters above current sea…

are you playing devil's advocate? perhaps you're just not familiar with Pangea? here's a video to show plate movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#68

Post by nicce »

conductr wrote: post #22

My son is a dinosaur enthusiast to say the least. At some point, well into his accumulation of Dino facts we read an old book I had as a kid (mid 80s) and the book says all kinds of weird stuff I forget but abruptly ends with “they went extinct and we may never know how” and my son (age 4 at the time) is at a loss for words, “it was a asteroid dad, what dummy wrote this book?” For weeks he’d randomly look at me, “hey…

I thought that it still isn’t really known? Is is one common theory, but we have just probabilities to play with.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#69

Post by deadbabe »

OJFord wrote: post #40

Because there's only one story to tell, for adults, and it's the Jurassic Park (et al.) story. You can't tell a period story for adults, with dinosaurs birthed normally and no modern science, because then it's not a 'talkie', and we're about a century past it being possible to have the budget for a state of the art dinosaur-prop film with no dialogue.

How about a World War 2 flick where Nazis breed dinosaurs to fight in the war?

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#70

Post by ryandrake »

OJFord wrote: post #40

Because there's only one story to tell, for adults, and it's the Jurassic Park (et al.) story. You can't tell a period story for adults, with dinosaurs birthed normally and no modern science, because then it's not a 'talkie', and we're about a century past it being possible to have the budget for a state of the art dinosaur-prop film with no dialogue.

We just had an animated movie about animals[1] with zero dialog win an Oscar.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)

Post reply on HN