Walking with Monsters

What can I say, Walking With Monsters is quite possibly the greatest documentary ever. It is thrilling, suspenseful, action-packed, entertaining, and educational.

It portrays the constant struggle of life before the dinosaurs. It has some excellent CGI and music. The way it shows the prehistoric creatures are far better than how I imagined they would be.

No scenes bored me and I was always enthralled and at the edge of my seat. If you want to see a good documentary see this one. It exceeds in everything and far surpasses Dinosaur Planet and Walking With dinosaurs.

This is a spectacular documentary not to be missed.

My Rating: 9.9/10

This documentary is a view of life on earth before the dinosaurs. The film begins with the creation of the Moon by the impact of the hypothetical planet Theia with the Earth. Starting with the Cambrian period 530 million years ago, the evolution of life on earth is documented, starting with the earliest of man's ancestors, the Haikouicthys, an orange "fish" the size of a thumbnail. The progress of the sea-dwelling creatures is charted as they evolve into being able to exist on land and ends where the documentary "Walking with Dinosaurs" picks up, at the end of the Triassic period, with the first dinosaurs walking the earth and forcing the smaller mammalian creatures into a nocturnal existence of hiding.

If you get the actual DVD, the extras include a thirty-minute documentary entitled Trilogy of Life. This documentary covers all of the Walking with series (Dinosaurs, Beasts, and Monsters). There are numerous interviews with the filmmakers and producers of the series. There is even footage of the real locations and backgrounds before the animated beasts were inserted by computer. It's funny to see the filmmakers kicking up dust and moving trees with wires "pretending" to be the dinosaurs since the dinosaurs would be inserted later. The documentary itself is presented with a great deal of detail and authority, as if the filmmakers know for a fact that this is exactly what took place, when in fact it is all quite hypothetical. However, you have to watch it understanding that its purpose is not to present an academic thesis. Instead, its purpose is to bring prehistory to life, just as if you were watching present-day animals being filmed, complete with animated prehistoric beasts occasionally bumping into an imaginary camera.

As children, my stepkids absolutely loved this documentary. This film just goes to prove that science can be made interesting, inviting the viewer to further investigate what is being presented. That is the purpose of the film, and it does succeed brilliantly.

Interesting docudrama about life on Earth before the dinosaurs. Excellent CGI and scientific information is marred by an overly simplified and sensationalized presentation. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution are condensed into about a half-dozen scenes. Information about ecology and the food web is ignored in favor of scenes of large carnivores attacking each other.

I am curious how they determined the behavior, colouration, and sounds of these creatures. The arthropods are so loud that one would think that prey would be able to hear them coming. I was also not aware that amphibians and reptiles roar like lions.

Walking with Monsters covers the period from the appearance of the first marine vertebrates to the beginning of the rise of the dinosaurs - roughly from 500 to 250 m.y.a. The film shows how animal life spread from water to land, and covers some of its earlier land-based stages. The documentary is informative and comprehensive. It covers the changes in climate, the transformation of geography and plant life, and the evolution of our ancestral creatures.

The word "monsters" implies a sensationalist flavor, but the film really features animals of all scales and types, not just the biggest and the "scariest". One of the better documentaries I've seen on the subject; highly recommended. 9/10.

I've have never seen a documentary explore the time before the dinosaurs, so I love this for trying! The only problem is that this documentary is too short, and should explore the age and evolution of reptiles more. But, it is a very good documentary to watch.