Discovery’s ‘Dinosaur Revolution’ is dino might

Tweet

The prehistoric TV blockbuster of the fall is just around the corner — but it’s not the one you keep hearing about.

Discovery channel’s “Dinosaur Revolution,” a four-hour event airing over two weekends beginning Sept. 4, combines state-of-the-art science, terrific CGI and imaginative storytelling that might even make viewers forget Discovery’s previously awesome effort in this field, “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

If you’ve been looking forward to the Sept. 26 premiere of Fox’s mega-million-dollar dino drama “Terra Nova,” from “Jurassic Park” producer Steven Spielberg — well, sorry, but the animated raptors, allosauruses and T. rexes featured on “Dinosaur Revolution” are more realistic, engaging and emotionally complex than the humans on “Terra Nova.”

Three years in the making, “Dinosaur Revolution” has been every bit the production “Terra Nova” was, just on a cable budget. But “Dinosaur Revolution” is dino-mite; by comparison “Terra Nova” seems dino-meh.

“Revolution” is a factual program written like a dramedy, with ultra-lifelike dinos acting out little vignettes, each about seven minutes long, storyboarded by leading graphic comic artists. And unlike your typical nature film, the narrator shuts up while the scenes play out. None of that mind-numbing recitation of facts about the Cenozoic era and what critters were ascending and which were declining.

“What we’re doing here has never done before,” said the executive producer on “Dinosaur Revolution,” Erik Nelson. “And as we were doing it we said, ‘Wow, no wonder no one’s ever done this before.’ ”

Discovery’s “next ultimate dinosaur show” was mired in production perdition from the moment Nelson won the bidding war for it. A movie guy who produced “Grizzly Man” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” for legendary director Werner Herzog, Nelson wasn’t finding what he wanted among movie people. (Eventually Herzog would be roped into this project, as we’ll explain later.)

One day Nelson came across a series of comic books called “Age of Reptiles.” To his amazement, the artist, Ricardo Delgado, had managed to create spellbinding narratives, with pages of reptile-on-reptile action that had an emotional kick to them — and not one word of text anywhere.

Nelson was awestruck. “A totally immersive experience,” he said — just what he wanted to see on TV.

Delgado came on board and helped identify other creatives, including David Krentz, who had worked on Disney’s “Dinosaur” and wound up creating most of the models used here.

Last year I visited Nelson’s small studio in L.A. and met with Krentz and Delgado. Nelson phoned in from Canada, where work on the project was going on in at least three cities. At the time, everyone was rushing to get the six hours of “Revolution” ready for early 2011 release. But that was before the focus groups and the “geek chorus” and the Portugal shoot and the seemingly endless rewrites. In the end, only four of the six hours will air in 2011.

“This scene is somewhere between the Serengeti and the old West,” Krentz said.

We were about to screen an early completed scene from the show’s second hour. Officially its title is “Watering Hole,” but in the summer of 2010 it had a different name inside the shop: “Deadwood.”

The hour’s setting is west Portugal in the pre-Jurassic era, about 150 million years ago. The area is a large island given to droughts, making any kind of water reservoir akin to a gold rush. Our hero (more like antihero) is an annoying allosaurus that gets knocked around plenty during the series of reptilian battles that ensue. If “Walking With Dinosaurs” had Big Al, this allosaurus is definitely Little Al.

“That’s Clint Eastwood,” said Krentz as we watched a much larger critter come to Little Al’s defense. As happens throughout “Dinosaur Revolution,” surprising twists and turns keep the viewer engaged and guessing.

In fact, when rough cuts were shown to audiences earlier this year, they loved the stories, Nelson said. There was really only one problem.

“They kept asking, ‘Is this science? Is this factual?’ ” Nelson said.

Seems they had done too good of a job of storytelling. Discovery had retained a science adviser throughout: Thomas Holtz, a University of Maryland geologist. Now the decision was made to put Holtz and some of his archaeological colleagues in front of the camera, as a “geek chorus” making clear to audiences that everything they’re seeing is rooted in actual scientific discoveries.

Discovery also sent a crew to Portugal to film the big dig that had uncovered so many fossils piled on top of one another. The variety of species found so close together, and all dating to the same period, gave rise to the idea of the watering hole.

Eventually, too, the producers would have to give up their dream of a totally narrator-free program, though the announcer’s role is to give a clarifying remark every minute or so, like, “Torvosaurus has not yet learned the rules of the watering hole.”

But hey, you want narration? How about the unmistakable accent that only Werner Herzog can provide?

The next iteration of “Dinosaur Revolution,” Nelson said, is a feature-film-length mashup of the TV series, done by Herzog, narrated by Herzog and released to the kind of movie theater that reveres Herzog. (Discovery, which would have to bless the project, isn’t confirming.) The two plan to have it on screens well ahead of Fox’s big-screen adaptation of “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

“It’ll be the first art house kids dino ‘Fantasia,’ ” Nelson said.