Today's Top-10: Dinosaur Movies

Wrote another Top-10 list (sort of) for MovieScene:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/151798/historisch_tiental_dinosaurusfilms

I started this one as an intended 'companion piece' to my review for WWD 3D, before I had the actual displeasure of suffering that abysmal flick. Nevertheless, it now serves as a reminder to those who contemplate visiting that film in theaters, as well as to those that already have wasted 87 minutes of thier lives watching it, that there's plenty of good dinosaur movies in existence too. Why torture yourself with bland talking dinosaurs on the big screen if you can re-experience true tearjerking emotion in an all too similar plot at home with The Land Before Time? Why bother with talking dinosaurs at all, instead of seeing them fight cavemen and scantily clad ladies in Harryhausen's classic One Million Years B.C.? Or why not enjoy a movie that takes dinosaurs seriously while still delivering a solid suspenseful cinematic performance in that greatest of all dinosaur movies, Jurassic Park? Walking with Dinosaurs 3D may have been a true dud, but dinosaurs have survived bigger extinction events and will also recuperate from this severe blow to their image. And we still have Jurassic World to look forward to.

Incidentally, there was some editorial controversy about this particular Top-10 list of mine, as it didn't wholly fit the parameters. A true 'Top' list would rank these films from worst (10) to best (1) instead of in chronological order as I have done here, in an attempt to illustrate the evolution of the views of dinosaurs in cinema, as well as the techniques necessary to bring them to new life. It would have been jarring to read these ten expositionary pieces in another order, so I decided against that. Also, I think there's something inherently arrogant and egocentric about Top-10, since everybody is bound to have another opinion as to which one is best and which one is worst. So on MS, this article isn't called a 'Top-10', but a 'historical group of ten': who knows, it might inspire similar pieces from mine own hand or those of my fellow writers on the site and start a new category of article. Or it might prove to be soon an extinct form of arranging ten movies, because it was solely done for my personal convenience.