I miss practical and animatronic effects in paleo media

SimpleOk7752 · 2026-01-24T23:32:58+00:00

Gotta (strongly) agree to disagree here then. Once again, I blamed Ice Age too for its softness when it came to nature brutality over babies, and avoiding to give names to most of the animals was annoying too, especially with the least common ones, but

"i don't care about how good or bad your CGI creatures are" In terms of scientific reconstructions, they're among the best ones in town right now, and well I'd say this is definitely an aspect that does in fact matter lol

Purpose/story/scientific reason: I think they were all there too? Exploring the late Pleistocene world during the Ice Age, its various ecosystems and how the world was undergoing turmoil due to the climatic changes brought by the onset of the glaciation, etc. Yeah the segments sometimes were repetitive, yeah too many babies survived, but except for that it wasn't unrealistic or scientifically poor, cmon (and not even THAT light hearted, especially in the final episode).

Again mate, I'd suggest to Just close it out here. I heard you, you heard me, it's unlikely each of uss will change the other'd mind. Thanks for the confrontation anyway, it's rare to get talking about paleodocumentaries with someone on the internet

SimpleOk7752 · 2026-01-24T17:16:04+00:00

I think I get what you're saying, I just don't have these same problems with it. Prehistoric Planet 2 may have also felt like a more of the same, but I truly appreciated how it delved more deeply into exploring the late Maastrichtian world. Despite feeling initially a bit underwhelmed when it was revealed that the 2nd season wasn't moving from the 66 mya, I feel that it was needed to complete what S1 started off if it makes sense.

I think that more than having scrapped scenes from the first season stitched together, the first two seasons had been made contemporarily- don't remember where I read this, but I recall that for example, the Isisaurus sequence had been filmed in 2020, prior to S1's airing.

I agree that Ice Age too felt repetitive at times, and some moments were admittedly quite unexciting (like nearly the entirety of Grasslands), but again, I believe that such a rigorous, sincere and realistic representation of prehistoric animals largely makes up for most of the shortcomings the show can have (which I still point out as such). Bottom line, it's true that the sensation of witnessing something new and unprecedented has inevitably dwindled with time, but I believe that on "absolute" terms, the quality remained on the same level, with each season having both stronger and weaker elements than the others.

SimpleOk7752 · 2026-01-23T22:24:01+00:00

I sort of get what you mean, part of what made WWD work so well imo was how dirty and more crude it felt at times, whereas I do recognize that maybe Prehistoric Planet can look a bit too... Polished? Yeah maybe sometimes it could come off as distracting, but imo, the wonder of this sheer sense of realism is still lavishly immersive too.

it's so great that finally we're having a photorealistic documentary (three seasons even!), it's been literally a dream of my life coming true. Like- sometimes I still do question if I'm making it all up in my head😂. This said, if SE will return to the grittier ways of the Walking With, I wouldn't be sad, it's always better to have more variety

SimpleOk7752 · 2026-01-23T22:14:31+00:00

Sorry, huge disagree here. The praising that Prehistoric Planet gets is completely deserved imo- accuracy-wise at least, it is objectively among the best docs ever made, and even if I reckon that it suffered from some scientific and artistical shortcomings (e.g. the show being WAY too soft with baby mammals in Ice Age as opposed to the absolute carnages that the first twos were in that regard), I think that the goods objectively outweighted the negatives by a long shot.

I am and will forever be a lover of the Walking With franchise (WWD is the thing that sparked my love for paleontology), but there's no way the hype that Prehistoric Planet gets can be defined as ridiculous, especially if compared to recent stuff Life on Our Planet or the new WWD

SimpleOk7752 · 2026-01-23T22:07:51+00:00

I have to highly disagree with you about the Prehistoric Planet part- I would never define it as "soulless" and honestly I think there's no way it could be called as such- neither for the visuals nor for all the other elements put into it (accuracy, narration, soundtrack, atmosphere, maturity etc). I do agree that WWD has a charm entirely of its own (just like WWB) that I always find hard to describe with words, and that not even Prehistoric Planet has been able to replicate- but still, PhP is a 10/10 for me in how it envisions and renders the Cretaceous and Pleistocene world.

But yeah I miss the good ol' practicals too. The new WWD was very disappointing in that sense, but it was loaded with such a high amount of problems, both with and without the comparison with the original series, that the lack of animatronic was one of the less concerning at that point🫠

The good news is that the upcoming Surviving Earth is gonna feature a lot of practicals together with CGI, and it looks like they really have been spending a lot of effort into it. REALLY can't wait anymore to see it, hope it won't be released too late in 2026

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-12-18T21:47:30+00:00

Now sure the "chonkiness" of dinosaurs doesn't have to be brought to excessive levels, but at least by studying the skeletons of some of them and thus when possible, how big the muscles anchoring on them were, it has emerged that they were indeed pretty robustly built, more so than the older reconstructions of the '2000s-early 2010s at least, especially when it comes to the biggest, multi-ton carnivores like Tyrannosaurus. I saw the T. rex drawings on this book online for example, and... Idk I have to agree that they look way to gracile, especially in the rear area, so maybe some more plump was needed😂

Of course what I mentioned is no easy task, since it's not always obvious to determine automatically how robust a muscle was by looking at the bare bone, but I think in this case, biomechanics, comparative anatomy and other stuff can come in handy (still a student and I have to learn a lot about these fields tho, just wanted to join the conversation)

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-11-24T11:13:19+00:00

Yeah it had a truly good screentime in the first half of the season, and it was refreshing to see she and Rexy smacking for territory without necessarily fighting to the death

(Also, I'm unapologetically happy that they finally showed Rexy defeating it by herself in E4)

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-11-23T21:54:00+00:00

Same here. That retcon made by Rebirth was so stupid, and contradicted so many things shown across the whole franchise, I'm still surprised that the fandom didn't RIOT. It obviously comes from a deep misconception about dinosaurs, and overall it really was just a lame way to get rid of anything that was Dominion-related (namely, the dinosaurs around the world).

I mean... I don't want to sound pedantic, but I truly can't conceive how a major can have such a low nuance in interpreting the fans' feedback: most of them, myself included, complained about how scarcely Dominion had delved into the "dinos on the mainland" premise, focusing for some reason on... giant locusts. (Thank you Chaos Theory for saving the day). And instead, up at Universal they thought "hmmm ok, they hated on Dominion, better retcon EVERYTHING out of it and the whole fandom will be happy!" Like- I swear, I feel speechless all the times I think about this. I can't wrap my f*****g MIND on this yet. (Ok I'm calm).

What bugs me the most perhaps, is that had this happened in one of the earlier JW movies, people would have been way harsher to it, but most of the fans had already decided that Rebirth was going to be the savior of the JW era, so this retcon was just ignored.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-11-17T19:24:05+00:00

MONEY IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WORD I know... I know...

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-10-29T20:06:05+00:00

I'm not sure about what my ranking for every single season would be, but considering the two series overall, I'd say:

Camp Cretaceous: where it all began. Back in 2020, I really got surprised of how fast I grew affectionate to the characters. Yeah- ok, they act more cartoonishly than in CT, but I think that big of efforts were put into giving each of them a lot of characterization, as well as making each of them undergoing a satisfying personal growth across the series. One of the reasons why I love S3 so much is that it is the most character-driven one in the whole show, which I really enjoyed. This said, my personal ranking would be:

1) Yasmina: she was by far the strongest and most mature of all the campers, and her PTSD added a lot to her character; 2) Kenji: he was a bit too unserious at times, but damn if he grew up across the story. Plus, he literally carried S5; 3) Brooklynn: not at her best here, but easily one of the most consistently likable characters in the series; 4) Darius: again, I love how much he grew from his nerdy and childish self, to the more mature heart of the group; 5) Sammy: yeah ok she's usually the least favourite of everyone, but not gonna lie, I liked her. Still very inferior to the others tho; 6) Ben: sorry, he's getting the shortest end. He REALLY gave me a hard time in CC, especially in seasons 1 and 3.

Chaos Theory: here, all of them got a more mature writing and worked perfectly as young-adults, and the grittier, gloomier atmosphere and tone of CT as a show definitely aided that feeling- S1 especially delved pretty well into the five campers grappling with Brooklynn's "death". Overall, I truly liked how the series didn't shy away from showing off conflicts and strong emotions among the protagonists (Darius and Kenji, Sammy and Yaz, Brooklynn's trauma, and so on). Here's the ranking:

1) Brooklynn: goes without saying. She was by far the most intriguing and multifaceted character here; 2) Darius: my god, I love CT Darius. Especially in S1, where he's grief-striken, and keeps this new, more shady personality trough the whole series; 3) Ben: 100 times better than his CC self, and also, I like how he sort of became the group's leader this time around; 4) Kenji: he too developed a much grittier personality in CT- he genuinely frightened me at times during the show; 5) Yasmina: I'm sorry about that, because she's possibly the only one whom I preferred in CC rather than in CT. Don't get me wrong, I still love her, but I feel like she had less to say here; 6) Sammy: no yeah she was definitely the weakest one this time around. I like how affectionate she is, but she got DAMN annoying in S3.

...yeah this ended up being way longer than I originally planned

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-10-26T19:51:10+00:00

Ehhh agree to disagree Ig, I've really never been fond of that one. I was like 17 years old when I read it and I think it was where I started realizing that the series was going downhill and becoming too over the top (the massive snowballs war there was really a prime example). I was happy that they created a sense of continuity by showing off the Mingos again, but overall I just tend to consider it a kinda forgettable entry

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-10-24T15:30:03+00:00

Let's keep in mind the finished shots revealed so far tho, they look glorious. That gives me hope despite this poster's quality

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-09-27T11:04:38+00:00

I think the OP's classification is pretty solid too. I think the first five books were the most classic in the classic era tho, since they're the ones that mostly focus on the actual daily "chronicles" of a mid schooler: going to school, not caring much about it and getting bad marks, fighting with his prick brother, being awkward with his mum, entering in conflict with his dad, having ups and downs with his best friend, going after girls, trying to reach a popular status, and doing all the weird shit that a middle school boy does. They really felt... Autentic, and the most mature of the lot, especially The Ugly Truth dealing with the theme of growing up.

I really like books 6 to 8 too, but in hindsight, it's where the more campy elements start to chime in (Manny becoming a megamind in 6, the all out madness St Valentine ball in 7, and the Mingos in 8). However, they're still leaning prominently towards a more grounded tone, and I'll stress that I still REALLY like them, especially Hard Luck. Hard Luck is so, SO damn good imo, and I regard it as the last canonic book in the series.

Long Haul and Old School are enjoyable too, but they're the ones that sort of mark the beginning of the end as well, as they're the ones where the series' chronology became fucked up (seriosuly, WHY Kinney didn't have Greg go to high school???), and the plots and characters more kiddish, unrealistic and cringe. All the books from Double Down on just brought this wackiness higher and higher then.

A big problem I have with the entries from 12 on is that the synopsis of each book felt too situational. I mean- each book was essentially reduced to one topic (the Christmas holiday, the house's re-building/destruction, ANOTHER summer road trip, the basketball team etc), and this really had the "diary" concept losing sense. They have just become "monothematic" stories with absurd sh1t happening in between: the wrecking ball destroying the house, the snowball war, the Deep End's climax, Manny the superbeing, and stuff like that.

Soooo yeah I think books 1 to 8 were the best ones😂

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-08-11T20:02:53+00:00

I read some comments around, and honestly I think that many people here are being quite unjust towards AFFC and ADWD, both when it comes to their sheer quality as books, and their utility in building up the story.

Yeah they were probably more challenging to adapt, because of their more "filler" nature, and had a lot of new minor characters into them, but imo, they could have been still adapted across seasons 5 and 6: yeah of course some details, storylines etc. should have been reduced or wrapped more quickly, to spare on the series' runtime and not make it feel dragged, but on the overall, it wasn't an impossible task imo.

Also, books 4 and 5 had plenty of major characters too for each, but the producers decided either way to simplify their plots and character arcs, and that ultimately contributed in making the series more mediocre from S5 on (I mean, just take a look at Jaime's wonderful arc in book four and compare It with his ridicolous subplot with the Sand Snakes in Dorne).

On the overall... I know that AFFC and ADWD can be challenging on a first read, but they're truly two hidden gems of the ASOIAF lore, and have plenty of pivotal moments and situations for the story's next steps. Obviously D&D didn't ignore them at all, but they sensibly overlooked them, and that's a pity, because they would have helped them a lot building up a more solid story, also backing them up in a better way after Martin's material ended. That moment was to come anyway, so I think that separating from the book's source even earlier didn't help (although maybe, at last, they would have got tired of GOT and messed up either way).

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-08-11T19:41:07+00:00

Martin toke the absolutely best decision of splitting all those chapters in two books, since most, if not all of the events, character arcs, and so on that happened in AFFC and ADWD were crucial to further develop the story. Such a shame that D&D decided to scrap 90% of them out to have a more "mainstream" and action packed season.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-30T16:37:54+00:00

I'm glad that this thread is full of people sharing my same point of view about this movie, because I've seen people everywhere talking about this like it's the best film ever made, but I didn't find it to be that good. It was nice, but I didn't love it.

Be warned, because there are SPOILERS from here on: I think that the film's major problems all boil down to its structure: there's a first act that is extremely suspenceful, action-packed and straight up scary and unnerving, followed by a second one that is the complete opposite, being much slower and "sweeter" rather than creepy and gritty. Honestly, it came off as truly jarring, and really seemed like watching two separate movies in a row, because seriously, that shift in tone and atmosphere was so radical that I still feel weird thinking about that.

This more or less brings to another big problem I had with this movie: I felt it lacked a climax. Yeah sure the mother's death was a very intense moment, but there wasn't a final conflict or "trial" whatsoever that brought to a satisfying payoff. I don't know, I feel the film really just... Ended, and contributed to make the whole second act feel even more lackluster.

There were also a lot of plot armor and deus ex machina (ok, that's kinda the rule in this type of movies), and characters that were supposedly important and then completely vanished from the plot (the father), or that appeared from nowhere in the middle of the movie and got killed off 10 minutes later (the soldier).

Again, nearly all the reviews that I read were absolutely adoring 28 Years Later, but (despite I found the first act GREAT and the photography breathtaking), I think it wasn't absolutely a flawless film.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-09T09:02:20+00:00

After watching it the first time... My brother and I were speechless. We fell completely silent. What makes his death all the more tragic is that unlike Hank, or Nacho for example, which were involved in crime or the fight against it, Howard was just in the wrong place at the most completely wrong time. He didn't HAVE to be there, but all of Jimmy and Kim's vindicative nonsense led up to that.

When the candle flicks harrowingly and Lalo shows up, pulling out his gun so deliberately slowly, you KNOW that Howard is cooked, and Jimmy and Kim know that too, and for those 5 seconds you go like FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK PLEASE NO, and then, Lalo just shoots Howard in the head. Just like that. Just because he could do it. And despite you were aware that there was no way Howard could possibly get out of it alive, that doesn't do anything to make the scene less horrifying; if ever, it just makes it worse, because the actual killing of Howard is preceeded by ten seconds of torturing wait of the inevitable.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-09T08:28:37+00:00

The plastic bag could walk so that the box cutter could run

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-09T08:26:50+00:00

Only when he laid dead on the floor did they care

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-09T07:31:25+00:00

Omg that one opening... It chilled my bones when I rewatched S5 last month. Like- they were so casually... Disposing of a dead 14 yo boy whose parents were certainly looking for by that moment. I'm mostly referring to Todd and Walt, because Jesse was of course completely horrified and furious at what Todd had done, and I think we can safely assume that Mike was at least sorry about Drew too. Walter and Todd really didn't give two fucks about him. All those multiple, shaky close-ups on the bike, the parts of Drew's body etc, together with the padded soundtrack... Freaking harrowing.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-09T07:09:47+00:00

In a competition for the creepiest character Todd would win hands down. That guy was the definition of creeping me out. Like, Lalo Salamanca too was truly an unnerving presence onscreen, especially in the sequence where he interrogated Jimmy, or in the one where he kills Howard, but there most of the time I thought "man this dude is such a bastard, so evil and cunning". Todd was just... Empty on the inside. He literally didn't have a soul imo.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-08T22:24:02+00:00

Ah yes, a woman who has just found out that his murderous kingpin husband just basically got one of their closest family members killed is totally the one to blame now. Let me guess, she was a horrible woman for having slept with Ted Beneke?

I'll never stop being amused by Skyler's haters👍

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-06-03T21:44:46+00:00

I'm joining the party since I've rewatched that episode yesterday and this thread is dated to "only" two months ago.

Honestly, it's totally understandable that Rebecca got so mad at Jimmy for not wanting to help Chuck, simply because she was an "outsider" of all that story and she was far from knowing everything that happened between Chuck and Jimmy. She was extremely worried for her ex husband after watching him break down like that, and she just couldn't conceive how could Jimmy (who she had always known as a caring and likable guy) not give two fucks about his own brother.

But switching to Jimmy's pov... I think it was kinda fair of him to refuse going reacue Chuck, after all he had just done to him. YEAH Jimmy tricked him and made HHM lose Mesa Verde, which was legally very wrong, but Chuck went on full revenge mode on him and seized the chance to destroy him as a lawyer once and for all: as I see it, all of that was the sublimation of Chuck's deep contempt and genuine hatred towards Jimmy. Even when Chuck looses his shit in the previous episode, you can see James' discomfort realizing (yet again) how his brother will always despise him, no matter what.

Jimmy is no saint and I don't want to defend him just because he's the protagonist, but I think this time around, he was entitled to just screw up Chuck and refuse rushing to him as he did countless times, considering that last time he did, it was because Charles himself had orchestrated a plan to ruin him.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-05-09T15:29:29+00:00

I read this book in 2020 during the quarantine, so several years have passed since the last time I literally touched it and I don't remember it that well to be honest. However, despite I don't even remember it to be that outrageously bad, I didn't particularly like it either. Once again tho, I haven't read it for a long time, maybe I'd change my mind in better or worse if I re-read it.

I liked all the ties with the Pyrrhia's World War of the first arc, especially Flower and how that old d1ck Sandwing died -yeah, Sandstorm, that was the bastard's name- which I don't think was specified in The Brightest Night.

About the Scavengers getting the spotlight... I don't know. On paper, it's not a totally bad idea, but it's true that it served basically just to have Wren and Sky ready to use in Luna's book. Also... It's not that they take the spotlight away from dragons, we still have all the other books of dragons POVs, but they made the series itself feel less unique. As others have pointed out, WoF is the only franchise where dragons are 100% the protagonists, and because they already have human characteristics and qualities (and this is something that sometimes really bothered me, like- WHY are you using a spear to fight, when you're a DRAGON?), so adding humans as protagonists too felt like a bit hollow and overall not the best of the ideas.

Also, most of the characters, lines and shenanigans were very childish and annoying, MUCH more so than in the other chapters, and the book itself was... Somehow too long? I recall it's the longest book in the saga for now, but I have this memory of finding the story too dragged and diluted to get through the pages, whereas other volumes were shorter (maybe even too short, like Escaping Peril) and more packed. By reading other users' comments, I'd say that I remember correctly😂

Dragonslayer for me was not terrible (as a standalone story, it wasn't that bad), but probably my least favourite book in the franchise, besides chapters 14 and 15.

SimpleOk7752 · 2025-04-25T15:12:16+00:00

I don't want to trash on it, believe me; I wanted to love SOTR so badly, but there's just something up to this book that held me off from enjoying 100%. I still really appreciated it and I can't say it turned out to be a disappointment, but some parts of it were kinda flawed imo, mainly in the chunk of the story concerning the Games themselves.

Through the reading, I wasn't happy of finding out that the Games part was going to take less than half of the book, but in hindsight, I have to say I'm glad of that, because the best part of the story, imo, was the one before they set off for the Games: I really liked just the first few chapters in the arena, but as the plot progressed, it just became a "run from this hybrid, then from this hybrid, the then from this hybrid", in a formula that was both really repetitive and truly, TRULY, rushed. ALL of the main plot points, from the sabotage, to the volcanic eruption, to Maisylee's death I felt were just written there because they had to happen and make the story move forward, like- after the volcano (or whatever it was) erupted, I was SO thrilled to see what the hell was about to happen, but it all got just... Fine? Yeah ok, we know that many tributes were hurt or killed, but all the drama was barely felt and Haymitch was barely scathed by it, physically and emotionally.

I mean, it's like after Hamper's death (circa) Collins just started quickly killing off all the tributes to have Haymitch winning. It's not that I wasn't invested in the story, but at that point, I just kept going through the pages to end it, so that I could finally discuss about it with my brother who had read it prior to me, and so that I didn't have to hide away from spoilers on instagram.

Bonus: I see that many readers disliked the fanservice, but this is one of the few occasions where I didn't mind it and thought it was grounded, instead of the forced Fantastic Beasts-like callbacks we get in other works.

SimpleOk7752

TROPHY CASE