Dinosaurs Present

Dinosaurs are used a lot in common society, in films, television, books and advertisements the have been quite influential in popular culture with the help of books such as ‘The Lost World’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912.  This book has influenced how dinosaurs are portrayed today and inspired director Steven Spielberg to create a film that was loosely based upon his book Jurassic park.

Dinosaurs have been included in many media forms such as television, comics, games and more modern films. The prime example of dinosaur game would be Turok, which as a franchise has included dinosaurs since 1997 and is based upon the comics written by Matthew H. Murphy, Gaylord Du Bois and Paul S. Newman. The game spawned many sequels on the Nintendo 64 the games were created by Acclaim studios. There were many games released under the Turok name before the company went under in 2004. Before Acclaim went bankrupt they released a very early test for a second Turok game for the Xbox.

 This video was uploaded on 31st January 2008 by 'Borman 18' and is the 'Acclaim' 2004 'Turok' tech demo

Propaganda Studios took over the Turok franchise and in 2008 released their version of the game, it was well received and once again started making dinosaurs scary, the creatures now look soulless and evil and are a lot faster than the player making the game a challenge but also making players think about themselves in the characters place surrounded by these dinosaurs.

After Playing the Turok game myself i can say that the team nailed the idea of being hunted as there were many points where I felt like i was being hunted by the creatures however i felt that the Dinosaurs in the game were too similar with minor modifications and they all behaved the same so even the herbivors were ferocious.

This is a screenshot from the game 'Turok' by Propaganda Studios (2008) and was taken from IGN.com

The toy franchise Lego is going to be releasing a new range of sets that are focused around dinosaurs this is showing that they recognise that dinosaurs are popular in media and have acted upon it this has been done a few times in Lego’s history they have released many different dinosaur sets over the last 15 years and this is the most recent. The below set combine both a large dinosaur and huge vehicle two things that are extremely popular among children.

This toy set 'T-Rex Hunter' is made by Lego and has been put on the market in 2011 in the United States the image was taken from toywiz.com 

Even in the toy market dinosaurs influnance was obvious, a good example of this would be the Tomy 1980’s product called Zoids these were mechanical life forms that required pilots to work to their full potential. These products also resemble the Monster Godzilla. Zoids also made a TV appearance in 2002 and was shown on the Sky network the program lasted two seasons before being taken off the air in 2004, the program was not as popular in the West as it was in Japan. Similarly this transferred into the toy sales 'The line was cancelled in mid-2004, due to poor sales. This was largely due to very poor marketing, very high prices for Zoids and the Zoids anime never showing on terrestrial UK television.' Taken from Wikipedia.

This toy 'Gojulas' was released in June 2006by the toy company 'Tomy' This image was take from static.hjl.com

Dinosaurs still play a large part in education, alot of this is done at a young age with books to help children learn with the aid of cartoon pictures with bright colours to grab their attention.

How Do Dinosaurs say goodnight by Jane Yolen Published 2000 by Blue Sky Press

Through looking at a variety of children's books I have seen that dinosaurs are still a popular to this date as a recurring feature of novels.

As stated earlier The Jurassic Park films have always proved popular in the media this quote taken from a review on the website IGN.com backs up this point; '*At face value, there's something timelessly appealing about seeing more pissed-off, socially maladjusted, skyscraping carnivores running down & gobbling-up none-too-bright people burgers by the mouthful.'

Jurassic park Spinosaurs Vs T-Rex taken from the Jurassic Park Wikia

 The BBC created a tour for the program 'Walking With Dinosaurs' Which spanned a world tour lasting from 2007 - 2010 the live show used anamatronic dinosaurs and huge stages to create accurately scaled robot dinosaurs to both educate and end entertain audiences.

Walking With Dinosaurs Live In North America image by BFO. 

The Tour has been successful world wide and has captured the imaginations of hundreds of young children and adults with the spectacular robots, puppets and the illusion of the prehistoric behemoths.

               This is a montage of some of the dinosaurs from a live show in Texas filmed by Gametavern




To link into my previous discussion about Jurassic Park the games developer Telltale Games have recently released a game adaptation set straight after the first movie. The fact that the game was developed shows that people still have a strong interest in dinosaurs, however reviews of the game have not been good as the game is like a playable film which is not what gamers want. On the website IGN the game received a rating of 5.5 "mediocre" *'Like I said, I wanted Jurassic Park to be good, but just like John Hammond's dream of a dinosaur amusement park, it doesn't pan out. I wouldn't call Jurassic Park a bad game as it works and does take us back to a time when dinosaurs (stiffly) roamed the Earth, but the story, animations and general gameplay keep it from being able to contend with most titles on the market -- and that includes other Telltale titles.'

Screenshot from Jurassic Park the game taken in 2011 by Telltale Games.

Dinosaurs are also present in 'B movies' a good example of this would be the Megashark films. The second film, Megashark verses Crocosaurus, features a giant shark fighting a recently awoken prehistoric crocodile who fight it out over a variety of different arenas. The film was released in 2010 and gained a poor review as it was badly acted and  the monsters were poorly built however this still gained it media presence as people were still talking about it online this shows that it was still in the media.

Poster for Megashark Verses Crocosaurus by Christopher Ray released in 2010

*Glen Oliver. (2001). Jurassic Park III review. Available: http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/301/301482p1.html. La

st accessed 9th Dec 2011.

*Greg Miller. (2011). Jurassic Park Review. Available: http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1212843p1.html. Last accessed 11th Dec 2011.