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Dinotopia
40 Plays1 year ago
A discussion about the book and television miniseries Dinotopia. Topics include: making maquettes of dinosaur themed buildings, questions like how long can a miniseries possibly go for and more...
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Transcript
Introduction to Letters and Legends
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Letters and Legends. I'm your host, Trevor Maloof. This show is about history, literature, mythology, and everything in between. In this episode, I spoke with Andy Hughes about Dinotopia by James Gurney. Here's our discussion.
Exploring Dinotopia: Books and Adaptations
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome. We're going to have a great conversation with Andy Hughes about Dinotopia, the book series, and the movie and TV series. So welcome, Andy. Breathe deep, Trevor.
00:00:29
Speaker
yes i will breathe you didn't say you're supposed to say seek peace that's the that in both books that's it that's throughout the franchise is that in is that in the uh the first book yep that's in the first book that's in the miniseries they include that in the uh you you almost you scared me with that so i have to say oh i'm sorry it was a little it was a little scary when i do it
00:00:56
Speaker
It's supposed to be peaceful. It was alarming. It was an alarming seeking of peace. I mean, I think Dinotopia would be a little frightening at first. Okay.
Vastness and Creation of Dinotopia
00:01:10
Speaker
I don't know where to begin with this because there's so much. There's so much. This could easily go for like four hours. We could talk the length of the miniseries about this. That's true.
00:01:25
Speaker
I know you had you had planned that breathe deep you had been waiting I had been I was I was hoping you would just say seek peace You know, we could redo it if you want. No, it's fine Awkwardness is part of the okay. Okay
00:01:43
Speaker
So I'm going to try and get this going as quickly as I can so we can have some fun. Let's see. So the first thing I would say is it all starts with the man, James Gurney, who wrote and designed the entire story. Hold on. I need to, I have so many sweaters on, hold on.
00:02:17
Speaker
Every time I read a Dinotopia book, I put on a sweater. Oh my God. I'm struggling with how serious to make, well not serious, but how, what tone to strike.
Dinotopia's Appeal and Art Style
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean we can start with that We can be we can be a reverend about it But I will just say that like i'm totally dino pilled at this point like yeah got me into this and i've been like Ordering the books through the library. I saw the whole miniseries, which is Uh an effort you gotta you really gotta know I give you a lot of credit and I had to say that
00:02:57
Speaker
If you had said that to me when I was nine years old or maybe 15 when I got back into it because of those, I would have said seek peace, but I mean, I was not at all expecting that. You know, and I said it, I knew it was a gamble, but I wanted to take the plunge because I can't even remember what it is. Breathe deep.
00:03:22
Speaker
It's, well, it depends on your class, actually. So it's breathe deep, sneak piece is the main one. But depending on which guild you join, because if you're in the skybacks, you say breathe deep, fly high.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that. Fly high. Fly high. I think if they, I don't know if they'd go to the other ones. It's like they have a little bit of Top Gun. Thrown in to Dinotopia. Yes, I think the pterodactyl scenes were definitely, if there was like a Top Gun spin-off, but it was all on pterodactyls, I think that would do even more money than Maverick did. I think that would be a smash hit.
00:04:05
Speaker
Um, okay. So I'm going to say, first off, Dinotopia, let's do the elevator pitch. Dinotopia is a family book, meaning it has a lot of paintings. Yes. And instead of just like a little bit of writing, it has real text on the side. So an adult could read it and enjoy it and read it with their
00:04:35
Speaker
children that so gurney described it as a family book and it's about uh was it a 80 100 pages maybe long yeah it's like between 100 and 200 i was really surprised but yeah it's like 180 or 150 oh it's more yeah it's like 150 and um it's it's it's set horizontally every book yes that are in the gurney that are actually pure gurne
00:05:05
Speaker
100% Gurn. Yeah, 100% Gurn. There's four of them, I think? Four or five? Four or five. We could look it up. Of Gurney produced material. Yes. Which is a fair amount when you see how beautifully rendered. Oh my god. The attention that you have to give.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, these books are gorgeous. There's four, so I'm checking on the website. So there's four of the illustrated books, and they're kind of like halfway between, because they're not full graphic novels, but they're more elaborate than picture books. Because like you said, there's a lot of text, and it's kind of more at like a middle school reading level. I was surprised. It's definitely more advanced than I remembered it being, because I remember seeing this, I think, in elementary school.
00:06:00
Speaker
But I was a little surprised by how deep it was and how involved. So I can see what he meant by family. The author James Gurney of the original illustrated books, as a family thing, trying to appeal to everybody. It's like your parents could sit there and read this with you and both enjoy it.
00:06:21
Speaker
I think that there are other books that would fall into this like the Gnome books. Oh, yeah, they then became the David the Gnome TV series. Right, right, right. Originally, these Gnome books. And those would be a family book. And there were, you know, a handful of these. But it's does it doesn't fit the standard model.
00:06:47
Speaker
No. And the Gnome book, it's interesting you bring that up. Because if I remember, I didn't own that, but I remember seeing that. And that was also kind of like a guidebook. And that's what the first Dinotopia book is, like the notes
World-Building in Dinotopia
00:07:00
Speaker
of the main character. So it's more like a guidebook than a story. So it's kind of, it fits in the same thing where like the drawings are supposed to be like sketches they took. Yes.
00:07:16
Speaker
There's also, I've had some Robin Hood books, some mythology books, King Arthur, other things that are longer than the standard children's book. That's maybe 30 pages with a single sentence on each page. And I've had some of those books as well. So Robin Hood mythology, and this is fitting into that. It's like, it feels like it's mythology.
00:07:44
Speaker
Well, this, the first book, I believe, came out in 1992. And I feel like there is something about this era, like this, because I think the style, it's watercolor painting, but it's photo realistic.
00:07:59
Speaker
And like he would actually take photos of people and use them for reference. So that I do remember lots of books in similar style, like this sort of thing. And especially when you combine like this very sort of like lifelike portrayal of a person riding around on a dinosaur with like a saddle and rain on them. It's it's very striking, you know, no matter what age you are. Well,
00:08:30
Speaker
Yes, I think some of it's watercolor, but there are oil paintings in there. Oil paintings, okay. I mean, there's definitely a mix. Yeah. And some of it he purposefully keeps. I don't know if it was just because of just sheer not wanting to go insane with the amount of paintings that he had to make, but some of the images are more abstract.
00:08:57
Speaker
or the faces are abstract and aren't detailed, but other ones are very detailed. Right. So I think it's a little bit of wanting to give that sketchbook feel like someone was had a sketchbook and was making drawings. Right.
Imagination and Influence of Dinotopia
00:09:14
Speaker
And I think it's the other thing, too, of not wanting to go insane because he has to make a hundred paintings of dinosaurs, dinosaurs and like beautifully rendered
00:09:27
Speaker
images of a Aztec slash Venetian city with waterfalls. I mean, it came out at the perfect time for me. Yeah, because I was six years old, and I probably got it only a few years later when it came out. And I was like, could read nothing but Dinotopia. It was just like, I everything about this. And my nose is stuck in this book for hours. And I remember going to my with my
00:09:56
Speaker
grandmother, I was staying going to stay with her for a week or something. And as much as I liked hanging out with her, I was like thinking, I don't know what I'm going to do here for an activity. But I had my Dinotopia books. I would read them. So I just got to the point where I memorized it.
00:10:20
Speaker
And that's so funny too, because they're not like, so there was a, we're talking about the original books, which are, like we said, these almost like coffee tables, book sized tomes, but then there's also, there's like the, there were novels that were like paperback, like young adult novel spinoffs and stuff. But if you were going to her house and you had this full size, which is maybe walking around with like a satchel full of these books. Well, I had two. Yeah, I had, I had two.
00:10:49
Speaker
the one that the main one and then the world beneath, which we're going to discuss. Oh, yes. So I had I had a fair mass 300 pages of material. Yeah. And I started, you know, it's the cliche thing that they say about books versus video games or movies or something, which is
00:11:10
Speaker
your imagination is run wild. So I could look at Waterfall City and think like, well, what would I be doing on Waterfall City if there's this like, we haven't actually got into any of this. But let's just say that some of the locations I would put myself into. Yeah. And the cliche is right. You know, it really does build your imagination. And
00:11:37
Speaker
you know, I really kind of just wasn't thinking about it later. But then they made this miniseries. So we're just going to lay out what kind of what we're going to look at today is the original book and the author, his second book, the sequel, we're not going to look at the other books.
00:11:54
Speaker
Uh, we'll touch on some of the media because by the way, I did get some of the other media and was not impressed. Oh my God. Can't wait to hear that. I never got like a sky backs, um, you know, handle or something, but yeah. And we could talk to some of the politics too, of, of the use of dinosaur physic, physicality in the world. Right.
00:12:21
Speaker
And then we're going to touch on utopianism. And then we're going to talk about the miniseries. So we're going to try and get this all in. To kick it all off, why don't you explain to me, Andy, a little bit about both. Why don't you just say you're kind of general right out of the gate. I threw this at you.
00:12:46
Speaker
And then you're saying, oh, I'm going with it now. So you take that. And then why don't you go into James Gurney? Sure. So I'll give you sort of my brief history, which isn't much. And then I'll do a little background. I definitely remember these books. I remember it being a series and a franchise that was around. And I remember seeing the mini series.
00:13:11
Speaker
And the only, I didn't tell you this before, the only scene I remember from the miniseries when it was actually on, seeing this on TV, was the one where they're in the school and they have to pass an essay test, because they have essay tests in Dinotopia, and he, David, the sort of the mischievous bad boy brother, sorry, Carl, the mischievous bad boy brother, his essay is just the lyrics from Bohemian Rhapsody.
00:13:37
Speaker
And they all think that that's really deep and wise. And David, the main character's like, you just took that from Bohemian Rhapsody. And for whatever reason, I don't even think I got that reference. But I remember that happening. And I think like, because the dinosaur teacher is like, listen to this. Is this the real life? Is it a fantasy? And then everyone's like, oh, how wise. And like my mom or somebody was like chuckling. I was like, ah.
00:14:01
Speaker
So that was the one scene from the miniseries I remembered. Let's get through the bio so we can get straight to the series. I mean the whole thing is fun.
00:14:14
Speaker
So James Gurney, I'm cribbing this from a few different places. There's a bio on his official website. He was born in 1958. His dad was a mechanical engineer. He has other people in his family who are engineers or I think he said he had an uncle who worked on film and I think color, like coloring for color correction or something.
00:14:36
Speaker
And he grew up and majored in archaeology in college, and he got a job working as an archaeological illustrator, which Trevor and I were talking about before. That's a job to tell people you have. But he did that for National Geographic, so he would actually draw fossils.
00:14:57
Speaker
and dinosaurs. And he said that that was like a dream job for him. And when he was first coming up with this idea, he was doing paintings that were inspired by Niagara Falls. There's a video on his YouTube channel where he talks about another waterfall that I think is in Seattle. I don't know which one.
00:15:19
Speaker
But there's a few different waterfalls, also Venice, and that became Waterfall City, which was the first painting that would eventually go on to be Dinotopia, which got him into thinking about, you know, a society based on dinosaurs because he loved dinosaurs ever since he was a kid and he loved coming up with different worlds. So all of that came together into the painting that would spark a series of paintings.
00:15:44
Speaker
And Dinosaur Parade is another painting which is in, I think that's the cover of the first Dinotopia book. It's the one where you have, I want to say like Renaissance era people or clothing and people are riding these dinosaurs.
Artistic Techniques in Dinotopia
00:16:01
Speaker
There's somebody on a triceratops and then you have like flower girls spreading flowers. It looks
00:16:08
Speaker
like this bizarre but like really fitting like there's something about it that just that fits even though it's very odd like you know that it doesn't make sense but you're also like oh if i saw this hanging in somebody's dining room i would just sort of accept it like that's that's part of the fun the funny thing about dinotope is that it takes itself seriously but there's something kind of whimsical and almost like
00:16:33
Speaker
like parodic about it. There's a painting in one of the books I was reading the other night next to my girlfriend and there's a painting of a boy sitting by a stream and there's just the triceratops behind him. And I was jokingly like, what if I got that and we framed it and like put it in our room? Because it just looks like a painting that like somebody in our world made of like of life. So there's just something funny about the
00:16:59
Speaker
I mean, I have a, I have a painting. When I was probably in fifth grade or something, my other grandmother, so there's some strange grandmother, Dinotopia connection, but my other grandmother got me gave me a large print of what you're describing that famous painting. And is it the with the kind of dinosaur arc to triumph?
00:17:27
Speaker
Yes. It's like the dinosaur celebration. And it's sort of like it has the strange mixture of civilizations and there's like the flowers that one would imagine that Caesar would
00:17:42
Speaker
be given if he was returning even though there would be no arched triumph at that time nor dinosaurs but for that matter but the funny story is that my my mom thought this would be a nice gift to sort of spruce this up so she got it framed in a really nice frame
00:18:06
Speaker
And I have had this print ever since. And I've taken it around. I had it everywhere. And it kind of was in storage. And it's back up again. I have this print of Dinotopia. And I think there was just something funny about when I put it up.
00:18:28
Speaker
And people would look at it. Oh, this is interesting. What is this? It's a dinosaur walking under a Renaissance. You know, in a photo realistic Renaissance painting. Yeah, it's like your mind is is going a million places, but I have a theory about what is going on. Do you want me to share with you now? My theory is that
00:18:55
Speaker
This is what your mind is jumbling. And your mind is jumbled when it goes into a museum. And that your mind recapitulates all that it sees into a general concept of the past.
00:19:13
Speaker
So you see the ancient, what we sometimes call primordial, but I think that believe that's like even before the formation of life, or, again, I'm not an expert
Educational Value and Cultural Impact
00:19:25
Speaker
with these things, but let's just say prehistory, the deep past is something people talk of use instead, like dinosaurs, early mammals,
00:19:40
Speaker
etc. There's all that, but then you have the civilizations, Aztecs, Rome, and then you have more modern, or newer, let's say, or closer to our time. Yeah, with the Okta triumph, that's a Napoleonic era, he kind of stops at a certain point. But even then he's incorporating into 19th century, because as we'll get into the characters are from the 19th century. So I think this is like if you went to a very robust
00:20:10
Speaker
collection at a museum and you saw all these different things dinosaurs and so on and all these other civilizations and you saw and egypt and so on you went home and you had a dream this would be your dream that is that that's that's really interesting that you bring that up yeah especially when we get into it later it is sort of like night at the museum it's just sort of like everything comes alive at the same time you have like dinosaurs and
00:20:42
Speaker
But I will say just real quick, because I'm also looking at the bio. I think it doesn't actually say here that he drew dinosaurs from National Geographic, so I'll revise that. It said that he did reconstructions of ancient civilizations. So that's what he was doing. But I think he did say in the video that he was fascinated by dinosaurs and may have been drawing them for his own amusement. I mean, he did everything. I think one of his first
00:21:06
Speaker
you know, Elizabethan nobles.
00:21:11
Speaker
Strong's from Nat Geo is like a Coast Guard rescue or something like that. So you can look that up. So he was interested in action. Yes. Well, action and also architecture, like these different buildings and things. There's so much detail. There's actual maps in these books that look like they're from National Geographic.
00:21:38
Speaker
kind of doubled over. Like it looks like it's from a textbook or an encyclopedia and it'll be like a map as if Dinotopia is a real country. And it'll show you like the roads, the cities, the different
00:21:50
Speaker
geographical area. He put a lot of effort into this. And again, similar to Severin and Redwall, it feels like nobody really, maybe it's just us, but nobody really talks about Dinotopia anymore. If we're supposed to care about the Avatar movies, I don't understand why Dinotopia can't be. There's so much in just the first book of this that could just easily justify several series. Well.
00:22:19
Speaker
I mean, that's an interesting question about these, the hierarchy of media, where the feature film is kind of put at this high level.
00:22:34
Speaker
And the television miniseries is not, and that's because it's lower budget and et cetera.
Adapting Dinotopia Across Media
00:22:41
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if we mentioned before, but we are going to be talking about the miniseries of Diatopia, which is how long? It's four hours, I think. 250 minutes. Okay, so it's over.
00:22:54
Speaker
It's over four hours. When you see that number, I mean, it's almost like looking at Everest. You know, you're just like, it's there. I have to watch it. I'm going to do this. This is the Mallory of Dinotopia. And that's actually another thing that I liked the mixture of this as a kid, which was it's the interest in another world, another something. And of course, it's I'm not, you know, able to go to
00:23:22
Speaker
It's like a companion piece to the museum. Right, but there's this, yeah, there's this element of fantasy because it's like everything mixed in. Well, and I also, I've always been into time travel. That was my thing. So like around the same time. Yeah. I was in like middle school, even elementary school, like this idea of like going to different times, meeting people from different eras, anything time travel themed then.
00:23:46
Speaker
And to this day will usually get me interested. So if I had known that about this series, I think it would have been. And also if I had known like how in depth it was, I think I would have been a lot more into it because I never actually owned the books. But if I had them and if I sat down and read them like that, I would have probably gotten way into them. Yeah. You wonder if this was someone that if my parents are like, oh,
00:24:13
Speaker
Oh yeah, this is how we're going to go with this when they saw it. Or if it was more like, you will be getting me this book because this is the book for me. Or I took it out of the public library and I was like, I need this 24 hours a day. I need to be able to wake up and look at Dinotopia. I need to go to bed and look at this. So we need to be getting this book. So I don't know.
00:24:39
Speaker
how that went down, but certainly the world beneath was a continuance. Oh my God. And he waited such, I mean, this guy had dino, dino burnout because he didn't make another one until like 2000. And I don't know, I'd have to look this journey, Journey to Shandara, Journey to Shandara, Shandara is the fourth book. Yes. And that came out in 2007, I think.
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah. And then the third one came out in 1999. And it's been out a while, so much so that there's been a reissue, which is the one I have. But 1999, so there was a there was a little while there. I was kind of I was kind of not into the dino dinosaur, a dino topia thing at that age.
00:25:33
Speaker
And the mini series, I think is 2000, if I remember correctly. 2002. And so I had to kind of, you know, bite my lip and go, okay, well, I waited for you a long time, Dinotopia. I was a little kid and you didn't come out the movie. I know. Instead, I had a Michael Crichton kind of was the Dino property.
00:25:59
Speaker
Well, and let's quickly touch on that, because the first Dinotopia book came out in 1992, and Jurassic Park came out in 1993, right? Yeah. It feels like, and I said this before, Dinotopia is kind of like the anti-Jurassic Park. So even though it predates it, it's sort of like dinosaurs aren't scary. We live with dinosaurs. It's sort of demystifying them and making them
00:26:25
Speaker
still wondrous but just like part of life and humans can live alongside them which obviously did not happen in real life but this idea that you know maybe we can I guess you could say empathy to dinosaurs or just like getting to know them more and think of them as creatures instead of something scary and I didn't see Jurassic Park as a kid so I don't have the same uh
00:26:47
Speaker
like attachment to it a lot of people i think millennials especially love that movie and i don't have anything again i enjoy it but i didn't grow up as a jurassic park kid i think like i maybe thought it was too scary um yeah i did watch it i think it was in college and i was like all right this is okay like it's it's fine but it's not like my favorite movie ever
00:27:09
Speaker
And I think Dinotopia kind of scratches that. I don't want to say you're either a Dinotopia person or Jurassic Park person. I think you can you can love both. Oh, no, I think I think I can have my salad and my ice cream. Yes. Because to me, a Jurassic Park is ice cream. It's like pure, ridiculous.
00:27:30
Speaker
um ridiculousness it's it's just complete uh escapism i mean yes dinotopia is but the adrenaline rush of of it is so absurd i don't this is not about jurassic park though but we should just say like
00:27:46
Speaker
That that took over. Yeah. And you kind of wonder, like, what if what if Steven Spielberg had said instead, I think he liked the thing about basically man tinkering with with nature. And I want to be like, well, man's tick and tinkers with. I mean, we've been doing it for a long time. So, I mean, I don't know if this movie is going to, you know, it's like just from pure filmmaking storytelling, Dina Topia would have been better.
00:28:16
Speaker
Well, yeah. And I kind of feel like when you have a movie like Jurassic Park or something, it's like you make this thing that's supposed to be a cautionary tale and then people see it. They're like, whoa, that'd be awesome. Let's do that. They're like, no, the whole point of the movie is we shouldn't make Jurassic Park. It's like, oh, no, too late. Clone to dinosaur. We've already made it.
00:28:34
Speaker
So it feels like it gets a little lost because you put so much effort into making the dinosaurs look cool that the whole point of, you know, we should. Well, yeah, it's an interesting point because they in the film, they do they do do it. Right. Yeah. And and then it's like then within the meta of it, they have to then make another movie to make money as a movie studio. So then they have to figure out a way to continue the fact that there are dinosaurs instead of
00:29:05
Speaker
saying oh this was a bad idea it's kind of weird right leading to one of my favorite lines in all of movie here we go they go to whatever his name is Richard Attenborough and he says
00:29:24
Speaker
to me I feel like they should just cut back to that line every single sequel try this how about this delivery there's another island there's another island there's another island
00:29:45
Speaker
there is another island there is another we could just be auditioning for well charlton nelson there is another island oh that's kirk captain there is a dinosaur yeah you could just say we did that whole movie it finished and then then they went movie you know 10
00:30:07
Speaker
There's another island. At the end of each movie they should just cut back to him going. There's another island. There's a chain of, there's an archipelago of Jurassic Park islands and they form the shape of a T-Rex.
00:30:24
Speaker
There's a series of islands governed by one large island, but if you visit all of them, you get a free pass. You must buy your movie tickets in advance for the next five movies, which will feature this acapella go.
00:30:40
Speaker
Oh my god, Jurassic Archipelago. They could they could do that like with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Island Universe. I think my one my main issue with it with a Frankenstein story is it's kind of a one shot deal. You have you have the idea and you tried to make the point
00:30:57
Speaker
And now it's just, oh, we need to have another movie with dinosaurs. And I was like, OK, make another movie with dinosaurs. That's fine. It's like King Kong. Make another King Kong. But there's just the one King Kong story. Right. You could remake it. But something like Dinotopia, you know, to make an even grander statement, it is like a Star Wars, where there's a whole world there that could be explored
00:31:27
Speaker
in a bunch of, a lot of dimensions, not that I loved some of those directions they went to when Disney took over the franchise, but there's a lot they can do with it.
00:31:39
Speaker
Well, it's almost like when I was reading Dinotopia, which I think it's called Dinotopia Land, A Land Apart From Time. That's the first book. It reminded me, I'm getting back into D&D and it's reminded me of a campaign setting a little bit where it's like, here is this city. If you choose to be a Skybacks rider, you'll get 1D6 proficiency and fly, you know, like it lays out all the different areas and you're like, oh, I could go here. I could go here.
00:32:09
Speaker
Like because it is more of a guidebook or a travelogue than a novel. Mm-hmm Yeah, and there's even elements of the film Lost Horizon Yes, well to be fair I have not seen but I know I mean I just happened you can't see every movie ever made but I do know I mean I do want to see it and
00:32:34
Speaker
I guarantee if somebody gave you a copy of the first Dinotopia book or a copy of Lost Horizon and was like, choose, I think nine out of 10 people would choose Dinotopia. Right. It doesn't mean, well, as we said, in 300 in the trailer or something, it says like, we will send so many arrows towards you, you know, our arrows will blot out the sun. And in the trailer,
00:33:02
Speaker
I don't know the actor. Leonidas, who's the actor. Oh, Gerard Butler. Gerard Butler. I should have remembered. Okay. Gerard Butler says, then we will fight in the shade. That's what he says. Yes, it is. I know that we used to say that what he should have said was, then we will surely die.
00:33:23
Speaker
Then we will die instantly. Our arrows will blot out the sun. The sun. Then we will get perforated within seconds. I mean, it doesn't sound quite as...
00:33:34
Speaker
No, but I think what we were getting at is that we will survive in the shade is kind of like you had no time to cut. He's like, I just had the couple seconds to think of a response for come back. Yeah, he's on the way to the, you know, to the stairwell and he's like, Oh, I should have thought he's like Spartan George Costanza. Yeah, I should have said that. I could have said it. So we're really going to get into this.
00:33:59
Speaker
We're really going to get into Dinotope. We talked about pretty much everything except Dinotope. All right, we're going to do this. There's not much more to say about James Gurney as pertains to our discussion, correct? He's just a cool guy, really good artist, has a background in archaeology. I will say one last thing. He's still on YouTube. Like today, he just posted a video the other day. He's posting lots of art stuff. Well, maybe we'll go. We could get him on if he doesn't find it. We shouldn't post this first. No.
00:34:30
Speaker
Then we'll get him. We'll chat with him. Then he'll hear what we have to say. I would be honored. He seems like a really cool dude, but yeah. So that's James Gurney. Moving on to the original. You talked about the painting. Was the painting kind of like a one-off, like the pilot version of Dinotopia? Was it that kind of a thing?
00:34:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think just based on again, I just watched he has some videos about Dinotopia on his channel, and I watched a couple of them for this. And I think that the waterfall painting and the parade painting, the seeds of it, and then out of that, he was able to craft the whole book.
00:35:11
Speaker
Okay, see, that's kind of like the they don't do this anymore, as far as I know, but the original Walt Disney films that were animated were done with storyboards and artists renderings, they had no screenplay. Yeah, they would just draw and draw and draw. And then from there, they would have a little bit of dialogue that they would write, they hardly have any dialogue, you notice that when you see animated, right, a Disney movie, they're mainly these images.
00:35:34
Speaker
And so in the same way, it feels like, oh, he made these original renderings from his own mind and imagination. And then from there he could leap. Yeah.
00:35:48
Speaker
and go goes into and I'll just briefly say you can learn about both if you get the second or third editions or whatever of these books. They have photos and descriptions of how he made the paintings and you can like you said he has a blog he talks about it he wrote books about
00:36:05
Speaker
art and drawing and painting. And like you said, he has the YouTube and he describes making maquettes, which is, I think, a version of a model. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So model the differences. I think a maquette, all maquettes are models, but not all models are maquettes or something like that. The maquette is used to create your painting because you can be very talented and you still aren't going to know what it looks like at 13 degrees over a temple. Right.
00:36:36
Speaker
So you build it out of, he just uses like old railroad models and other things and he builds these amazing models, maquettes, and then he gets exactly what he needs. He takes a photo of it and then he can paint that. Yeah. And that's why it looks so photorealistic. The main thing I would get to as a kid is
00:36:55
Speaker
How does it look so real? How did he do that? How is he such a genius? Now with the internet, you know, but at the time you just had to feel like, I don't know the secret. I was thinking that even as an adult reading this, I was like, how are you able to do such? Because some of the close-up paintings of the different characters, like the way he captures the expressions,
00:37:20
Speaker
You can tell there's something behind it, like a very clear reference. It's close to the reference point. And I also read one of his influences was Norman Rockwell growing up. And if you know that, that kind of makes sense, because in terms of the figures and the faces, there is sort of a, again, kind of a melding of styles going on here. Well, in Norman, he loved drawing a T-Rex.
00:37:46
Speaker
Well, yes, there was that famous picture, that series about the different constitutional rights, where he has the T-Rex, the right to assemble, the Velociraptors assembling for Thanksgiving dinner. The T-Rex is on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That was the end of Planet of the Apes 7. Return of the reptile.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah. And the dinosaur thing, I never quite got what he was doing there in terms of how he did it. But I guess because so many artists have created renderings of dinosaurs, he probably was able to get these different pictures that people have done, create a maquette and then go from there. But I'm not totally sure. Kind of like a Ray Harryhausen stop motion creature.
00:38:39
Speaker
that would be sitting on his desk, I would think something like that. I bet, yeah, there seems to be some overlap there too of like models and animation. Do you want to get into, let's just do maybe like a quick reader's digest of the first book? Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:55
Speaker
So, which I have in front of me. So before we even get to the story proper, so the premise of the first book is that it's the journal and the notes discovered of Arthur Denison, the fictional explorer character. But there's an author page at the beginning where he's James Gurney. He has a drawing of himself taking a book out of, I guess, his library, or a library. He looks like he's in a college library. And he has this line.
00:39:25
Speaker
I was tracking down some information about the spice trade in China where my eye fell upon a curious old leather-bound sketchbook. And he talks about how he's in a university. I believe it's the Berkshire Athenaeum.
00:39:38
Speaker
Oh, okay. So that is that is a real library that he's in. Yeah, I believe it's in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And there are a few asset names. It kind of is just a fancy term for a library with but it's a library. Wait, that's in Massachusetts. It's in Pittsfield, we could go. We gotta go.
00:40:03
Speaker
And also, when you're a kid, yeah, you know, I get I get that this is kind of this is all made up. But there's just a part of you that's like, this is real. This happens. Yeah. You found this. Anyway, let's keep going. So like, if you were to present this to a child with no context, there's so many drawings. And like I said, like these maps that look real, that they you could fool a kid, you could have a kid just be like, yeah, Dina topia. It's a country. I mean, I look
00:40:31
Speaker
If you believe in quantum mechanics, and again, I'm not a scientist with a multi-dimensional world and a multiverse and things like that, your mind doesn't have to leap very far to say, this could be real. I don't know.
00:40:47
Speaker
It's a tribute to him that because of the quality of the art and the depth of the world building in this, even as an adult, my brain just completely steamrolls past the many reasons why this doesn't make any sense and just goes straight to like, no, this is a real place.
00:41:06
Speaker
He's able to leap you over to suspension of disbelief. We talk about it a lot casually, but it's not always easy. A bad movie or something, you're immediately like, I don't believe any of this. But I think it's to his credit that I don't care that humans and dinosaurs didn't live at the same time. I still enjoy it.
00:41:25
Speaker
Well, it's like the soft sell basically. It's like someone's selling you laundry detergent like, hey, you having a bad day? Yeah, I am kind of having a bad day. You ever think about having like your clothes are kind of dirtier than I thought? Yeah, you know, how about buy laundry detergent? Oh, good. I mean, that's what's going on. Like, hey, you like dinosaurs? Yeah, I do. You like, what do you think, adventures? Sure. How about people living with dinosaurs? All right. Okay, I'm in.
00:41:52
Speaker
That's great. I mean, that's really all you had to say is a society where human and dinosaur work side by side.
00:41:59
Speaker
It's a kid's dream because think about when you're watching Jurassic, let's just call it JP. When you're watching JP, it's about, you know, there's a little bit of, there's some passive dinosaurs in there. For the most part, you're afraid of the dinosaur and it's chasing after you. But what do you do when you are a little kid with your dinosaur models, your little guys? You're playing with them.
00:42:27
Speaker
Right. Well, there's a lot about how kids identify with dinosaurs the same way kids identify with monsters and trucks and all these, because there's something so kind of innocent about them, but also powerful. So it's like you get to be like a big lizard who gets to have simple things, gets to eat and destroy stuff.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, but anyways, we can, but we can also go into because in a way, because dino trophy isn't quite that though, because it's a little more mature, because I think this is maybe one of the issues with that the franchise has had is that it's not really for it does fulfill on that level, but it's not really for small kids. It's like, I don't think small kids would really care about the many different dino senate hearings that are in the No, no, no, it's that
00:43:15
Speaker
in my mind it's that you've moved from that phase but someone said you know what you're not quite done with dinosaurs right i know you think you're a little bit older now but dinosaurs don't want to leave you yet guess what the dinosaurs are pulling you back in well and you know i'm not a paleontologist i didn't go into that in any way but i will say that recently i went to dinosaur footprints and right yeah yeah and it was a very uh...
00:43:45
Speaker
moving experience. And I realized, oh, I, I'm still that kid that is thinking about dinosaurs not as a scary thing, but as something I'm really connected to and feel this wonder about. And so in that way, something like this fiction keeps that alive. Right.
00:44:09
Speaker
So anyway, we'll get to this. Let's finally get to this. So the premise of Dinotopia Land Apart From Time, the first book, is that it's the journals of mostly Arthur Denison, an explorer in 1862, and his son, Will, who are shipwrecked and saved by dolphins and brought to this mysterious continent of Dinotopia, this large island.
00:44:39
Speaker
um they discover when they get there that dinosaurs exist but humans also exist and they coexist in different cities and settlements around this island there's uh several capitals um
00:44:55
Speaker
And this whole world has its own language, its own sort of social structure. There's like a sorting hat-esque ceremony that they add in the movie, but is alluded to in the books about how children grow up and they join the sky, the sky backs where the pterodactyl writers, the sky core. And I think there's also like a sea that you, it could be this, the sea, the land or the sky or the three different
00:45:22
Speaker
Sort of areas you can choose to specialize in they meet a I she's not a Triceratops I forget the exact species but a dinosaur named Bix who is a dinosaur Ambassador who can speak to the different languages because she actually has kind of similar to parrots Like vocal cords so she can mimic different forms of speech and
00:45:48
Speaker
That's another thing is they talk about the dinosaurs. These are not just basic dinosaurs. These are dinosaurs that have a kind of sentience so that they can read, they can write. And even though they often appear carrying humans around and doing menial things, they have, at least as far as we see, equal rights to humans. Every region has a dinosaur and human ambassador, like government representative to the dinosaur senate.
00:46:17
Speaker
um there's parts of the miniseries that are basically dinotopia c-span where they just have people uh arguing and they'll just cut to a cg you know uh archaeosaur or whatever it's called uh yelling roaring
00:46:33
Speaker
So in this book, you get to see these different regions. You get to see Waterfall City, which is one of the major cities, Puktuk. You get to see the treetop city. You meet these different characters. And there is, he's only on two pages, but there's a character named Lee Crab, who wears a tall hat and has kind of a shifty expression. And he shows up basically to say like, oh, I think humans are
00:47:00
Speaker
technically enslaved by the dinosaurs here, and they shouldn't have to live under the Scalies. They don't touch on it much.
00:47:06
Speaker
The first book, no, because he's just somebody Arthur meets. Well, because again, it's presented as like a diary. And eventually, Arthur goes to explore the world beneath, which is this underground cavern civilization with ties to the origin of Dinersopia. And he disappears. And then Will takes up the main narrative. He meets a girl named Sylvia. They both join the Skybacks Corps.
00:47:31
Speaker
I think it's implied that they fall in love and grow up, and I don't know if they get married in Dinotopia, but they definitely have kids, because that plays into the miniseries. But anyway, so Will takes up his journal, and I was a little confused at the way time goes in this book, because how they mark the years, like when he's writing down like 1862, 1866, but I think
00:47:58
Speaker
Arthur disappears for five years and then comes back because then there's another page but they don't tell you exactly how much time has passed. I don't think he, I don't sure that he comes back. It's that the journal goes through the portal and is found. Oh well they, he does come back though because world beneath takes place after he returns.
00:48:20
Speaker
But doesn't his son stay? Do you think the sun stays? Well, no, he, sorry, he comes, he went to the world beneath and comes back above to Dinotope, to the cities. Yeah, the cities in the island. They don't return to our world, they stay in Dinotopia, but I just mean like, because he goes underground and then comes back up.
00:48:42
Speaker
Oh, that was I'm just a little confused. So you're saying the journal gets to our world through unknown means.
00:48:55
Speaker
Yes, I think it is eventually James Gurney discovers it in the Athenaeum somehow. So it's not clear how the journal gets here, but this book ends this. So like three quarters of the first Anatomia book is Arthur Denison's journal. Then he's like, I'm going to go to the world beneath. Then it switches over to Will. My father has been gone for some time. And then he talks about being a Skybacks.
00:49:20
Speaker
uh and then a skydex writer and then at the end of his part arthur comes back and he talks about how he was in the world beneath it's like dying to go ahead no and then i was gonna say and that's how the first book ends the second book which is not a guide book it's more of a straightforward adventure story is about going into the world beneath so it's yeah yeah yeah
00:49:42
Speaker
It's kind of like, Dinotopia is, or the original conception, going to another reference, when Disneyland was built, it was like you could do everything in one day, go to Tomorrowland, go here, go here, go here, and you'd see it. And then, you know, that's like Dinotopia, the original book, like, I'm going to show you everything that's here. And then they built Disney World, and that had a million, you could never see everything.
00:50:11
Speaker
Oh, so right. So then in the same way, now he's going to say, OK, here's this book. I'm going to show you this part. Here's another book. And then by that point, I was like, wasn't as interested.
00:50:24
Speaker
I know, it's like they have Dinotopia, you know, San Diego, Dinotopia over Europe, Dinotopia, Tokyo, you know, all these different expansions. And after a while. Now, as we keep going, I just have to mention that as far we saw on Wikipedia that George Lucas had a meeting with James Gurney or his people had a meeting or something. There was ideas exchanged in the early 90s.
00:50:51
Speaker
And some of that imagery seems to appear in the Phantom Menace and the other prequels. Yes, I think George Lucas knocked James Gurney over the head with the copy of Diatopia that stole all of his notes and made the Gunkins. That's my theory. I have an idea here. Can I just take all of your books and do it? Can I just put it in my movies?
00:51:19
Speaker
Because it's one thing that they really need is the Gungans. Yeah, I it's hard not to well, especially again, like the government and the focus on democracy and the Senate and all that stuff did remind me of the prequels. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so
00:51:39
Speaker
We kind of covered, notice there when Andy is describing the book that it's not very plot heavy. And that's kind of the point. The point of it really is to just look at this world that he created, right? I mean, that's how I see it. Yeah, I agree.
00:51:59
Speaker
though I will say we should touch on briefly the two of my favorite parts of it are the treetop culture that does seems to sustain itself on cashews and like blueberries or something seems to be all they're eating in this in this fantastic tree
00:52:21
Speaker
a tree house world of Ewok-like, Robin Hood-like, and they're diving off of trees into water with brontosaurus as I'm like, oh, I want to be there. I don't know what else to say about that.
00:52:42
Speaker
it's it's really yeah it's it's kind of hard to to not react like just get sucked into this like looking at how intricate these drawings are and just it feels like like you could smell i mean again not to be cliche but like you can smell some of these like oh yeah he just has a he has a gift you know that he just is uses all the time and the other place is this
00:53:10
Speaker
play so that did we mention that the stories diverge and will diverges from his dad. Yeah, in the story kind of classic. This is the closest you'll get to a plot is they lay on their to diverge and come back together. Yeah. And will goes on these always adventures.
00:53:29
Speaker
but the main one is that he ends up in, again, this Shangri-La type temple, which there are temples like this that are built out in the Himalayas and so on, but nothing of this grandeur. I mean, no offense to them, but just, it's very intricate with like this labyrinthine temple with the map room that looks out over the snow and the, this is in the first one, right?
00:53:57
Speaker
Yes. Oh yeah. I'm looking at the picture right now. If the listener is wondering what's going on, I tried to get the copy and I couldn't get the copy in time, but I've read this book so often that it didn't really matter in my mind. Those following at home, please turn to page 140. Okay. Yeah, exactly. So those are some of my favorite parts from that. And then the sun gets into being a skybacks, which is kind of shorthand. No one ever called a dinosaur skybacks, but it's a pterodactyl.
00:54:27
Speaker
essentially that they ride like a winged, kind of like a fighter jet in these canyons that look like the Grand Canyon. And he must have used the Grand Canyon as reference. And then he becomes this meddled skybacks.
00:54:48
Speaker
officer, I don't know what to call it, and then he returns. And that was one of the books I got as a kid, it was as a paperback for Christmas or something. And I'm reading and I'm going, man, this stinks. You know, where are the pictures? Yeah, it sort of feels like without the art, you're working at a major, you really got to make up for that disadvantage. You're at a disadvantage. And the fact that it is shaped when that landscape style, we call that when we print, but
00:55:17
Speaker
that horizontal direction of the paper is like a cinema screen. So he can really work with that. That adds to the immersion. Exactly, the immersion. When you pull it out too, you got double. So you got two pages, two feet of paint staring at you of a T-Rex.
00:55:41
Speaker
But then there's also just like, cause there's one where I'm trying to find it. It's literally just two plants. Like there's one plant and then there's another plant on the other side. And then there's text in between. So it's like parts of it, cause it's always switching between different things. Cause like you might see this giant panorama of a canyon or you might see like a description of one flower that was found. Like it can go from macro to micro. Right. Yeah.
00:56:09
Speaker
right it's like a symphony it could go very you know huge with every instrument going full bore or could be just like a single little you know triangle dinging like it just depends on what he's trying to
00:56:24
Speaker
get you into this world sometimes it's very big like the pictures are uh... bird's eye views of landscapes and then they're sometimes they're as if you were in the city street looking at it and some of those were those city streets were sort of the closest when i watched the miniseries is to sort of foreshadow our next topic is that the it's uh... well that was sort of the closest i thought to gernidian
00:56:54
Speaker
feel was the the streetscapes and so on. Yeah I think they did a decent job with the costumes and and rendering some of the streets but it's just it it it must be difficult to I think part of the reason there hasn't been more adapted is because it's just so hard to really translate this I think to any other medium.
00:57:15
Speaker
I mean, I think it could be done, but it's hard, as you said, it's hard. It's like trying to take a Dostoevsky novel and turn it into a movie. It's been done, but it's difficult because it's how do you do that? It's too rich.
00:57:31
Speaker
The best thing you could hope for is something that's its own thing, but just as good. You're never going to reproduce the same feeling of looking through this faux cursive writing describing people sliding down a brachiosaur. It is what it is. The imagination is what it is. It can't, you know, the headset or whatever, the virtual. It would be that. That would be what it was. But that's not the same as filling it in.
00:58:00
Speaker
And again, maybe that is just a kid thing by default, right? An adult is not able to do that, because you're thinking, whatever, you know, you're thinking about the thoughts that you have on your mind, things you got to do, the kid is able to just boom, I'm there.
00:58:22
Speaker
You know, but as you said, you were also immersed in it, so it can happen. I mean, it's there. Yeah, that's what it's, again, I feel like if enough, if it's done well, then you can sidestep a lot. You know, I can forgive a lot if the payoff is Dinotopia. If the payoff is like something this rich and like has this much depth to it, then yeah, I'm willing to overlook any of the quibbles or any of the other things that might pull me out of it. I mean, I would look at the Waterfall City
00:58:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think has more than in the original book has more than one vista of this waterfall. Yeah, there's other images than walking around and so on. But there's these vistas where you see different angles. There's a giant globe, like a World's Fair. See, that's the other thing he's borrowing from all kinds of things, including World's Fairs, right? Yeah, this is a big globe that's part of the library.
00:59:11
Speaker
And now this is an interesting thing, the librarian, there's an assistant and a head librarian. And I believe in both, the assistant is a human and the head librarian is a dinosaur, kind of like a smaller, not a raptor, but type.
00:59:29
Speaker
creature. Is that the case? I think so. I'm trying to find who you're referring to. The librarian of Dinotopia has kind of like this shock of white hair, sort of like a wizard. Yes, Nalab, I think. But I think he's the assistant. And that's what I thought was kind of, there is a, you know, it's a little hum. It's a hum. But this is a book about tolerance.
00:59:56
Speaker
It is. And the fact that the assistant is a human and that the guy who leads it is a dinosaur.
01:00:05
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure this is in the book. The miniseries is fresh in my mind because I just watched it. But in that, they talk about how humans and dinosaurs, or saurians, as they say, will pair. So you'll grow up with a dinosaur on the part. Yeah. Right. I like that. And you're supposed to be equal. So yeah, Nalab is the guy with the frizzed white hair. There's also Malik, the timekeeper, who I believe is a
01:00:35
Speaker
It is a dinosaur, maybe not a rafter. I also- Oh, so maybe I'm wrong. The dinosaur, the librarian, is a human in the book? No, no, no, I think you're right. I think the librarian is the assistant. Hold on. Yes, Enid is the dinosaur, the chief librarian. Okay, so he's, do I like that? That's the thing about tolerance, that the dinosaur is intelligent and he's the lead guy.
01:01:04
Speaker
What's very, it feels kind of Star Trek. It is Star Trek. Definitely. There's a lot of Star Trek ringing with that. Is the clock that has the spiral telling of time in World Beneath or in Dinotopia?
01:01:19
Speaker
I was just about to get to that. This is another thing where they have their own conception of time. Yeah, it's spiral spiral. Yes, which feels a little like that's down. Oh, what were you gonna say? I would just say it's definitely like
01:01:38
Speaker
kind of this new age, Etyptos and that new age amalgamation of things. Cause it's like, the whole earth has a heartbeat is literally one line. And like they talk about like, you don't have a time. It's not just one thing. It is this long thing, which is an interesting thing. And an interesting thing that they built into it, but it did just make me think like, oh yeah, this is very nineties, like this nineties idea of, you know, the,
01:02:04
Speaker
sort of like mushing everything to get all these different kind of faux Native American and Tibetan things together and to like, oh yeah, listen to the earth. But certainly an Eastern thing in my mind is about cycles. Because isn't that if you marry the concepts of linearity with a cycle, instead of getting a circle or a line, you get a spiral.
01:02:33
Speaker
I mean, he's thinking, he's throwing a lot of stuff out there that, you know, works because I remember, well, go ahead, go ahead. I was just gonna say, this is so dense. Like, again, this part about the timekeeper and the spiral clock,
01:02:49
Speaker
which again is just a fascinating thing to see this giant spiral with a sort of measurement, kind of like a compass device that goes up for different things and sort of tracks like time in relation to previous things as opposed to like one series of cycles. That could be an entire book. There could be like a Stephen Hawking of dinosaurs that publishes an entire book just about that.
01:03:17
Speaker
Like that one thing occupies like two pages in the book and we could easily talk about that for like another hour. Well, it's a throwaway in the way, right? And yet it's so dense and that's what, you know, I don't remember the quote exactly, but something about Ernest Hemingway said something like, you know, you want to say as little as you need to say because the reader will understand how much you know about the topic.
01:03:46
Speaker
by the way you write about it. And he said, the other way around is it doesn't matter how much you write, if you don't know enough, the reader will also know that you don't know what you're talking about. So I thought that's a great idea that you should know way more about your topic and then what you put on the page. And it's a short book in terms of writing, like, you know, in terms of words, it's not long.
01:04:16
Speaker
Well, that was another funny thing I was going to say is like, you know, I'm the 35 year old adult man reading Dinotopia in 2023. And it took me like multiple nights to read through this, this first book. The second book was a lot faster because it is more of an adventure story. It is more of a
01:04:34
Speaker
uh coherent uh plot but this first one it was like you know i just remember keep going back to it and having to and also so they have the language and they have a footprint alphabet that they put in this book and the second book and then there'll be messages in the book written in this alphabet and if i i would have been a hundred percent into that if i had found that as a kid of like you could go back to the alphabet and translate the messages and you'll read you'll uncover certain things
01:05:05
Speaker
And none of it's like, you know, call they show it to you, right? Because it's it's it's it's it's is it do they show you an alphabet with the first book they definitely do in the second book because it's actually just a little bit of a Cheat because you're really looking at English with footprints. But as for a kid, that's cool.
01:05:26
Speaker
Well, and also it is a little, it does kind of teach you the basics of reading another language, or just reading in code, I guess. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, when you recognize, or symbology, like when you recognize like, oh, these two footprints mean the letter A, or this one footprints letter A, these two things mean B, whatever. Then when you start to realize, oh, those three things,
01:05:50
Speaker
Like, it was happening to me as I was reading this. I was like, oh, look at that. Those three symbols are together. That means the. So that's a the. So that means it. And I started doing it. It's like the Sherlock Holmes story of the Dancing Men, where he tells you how to basically decipher a code from scratch. Oh, yeah, cipher. Is it a cipher? Yeah. Like, my brain was already going into this. And that's when I sent you a text. If I was walking around back from the farmer's market, and I looked down at the cement on the sidewalk, and I saw pigeon tracks.
01:06:18
Speaker
And there was a part of me that was like, okay, that's an F, that's an E. And then I was like, I had to shake my head. So it gets, it's funny that it's simple, but it gets into you enough that you start. Well, I was gonna say, I don't want to tell tales out of school here too much, but
01:06:39
Speaker
I think when you first said, yeah, I'll be fun to discuss. I think it was a little bit like, oh, yeah, let me look at it and I'll try and remember it and then we'll have a discussion. But sort of as we kept going and you were kind of keeping me aware as of what you were doing, it was like, yeah, I'm like really reading it now. This is pretty neat. And then it was like, yeah, so I'm getting all the I'm getting the other books and I'm really looking at it. And you're like,
01:07:04
Speaker
You know, as a, okay, I'm watching it all. And it was fun to see you get as excited as I am about it. I know. Thank God you're not a Scientologist. Hey Andy, check out this book, Dianetics. Well, I'm on the trade winds now. You know, oh boy, just right.
01:07:28
Speaker
No, but I did. I did really. I mean, this is a theme of our friendship part is like you'll bring up these things and maybe it'll take me a while to get to it. But then when I get to it, I'm like, oh, no, this is this is fascinating. Well, I owe you I owe you perhaps forever because of Red Dwarf, you know, so you have to always
01:07:47
Speaker
be telling you something. And Irving Finkel. Yes. Yeah, well, you've had many. There's been many, and why not? He could be on here too. That would be funny. I mean, again, that would be like a highlight of my life. We could talk to that guy.
01:08:05
Speaker
that that he is he is a repository of knowledge yeah he's kind of like this other world you know because when you listen to that man speak it's like your brain just again it's like it lights up you're just like it's like someone jabs you with an electrical signal where i would pay at least for me you know
01:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, I would pay him money to do one of his lectures about Dinotopia as if Dinotopia was a real- Yeah, we could- I would love to get him on and see if he could do a counterpoint of his knowledge of Babylon, Sumerian, Assyrian societies. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to say- And we're like, no, we just want to talk about Waterfall City.
01:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, you take that knowledge and bring it to Dinotopia. Bring it to Dinotopia. Well, so I guess maybe this could be I don't know if you want to move on to World Beneath. World Beneath because one of the themes of World Beneath is
01:09:04
Speaker
The exchange of cultures because they talk about how dinitopian culture was sort of kind of like ancient aliens, except it's dinosaurs. So it's like dinitopian culture sort of filtered out and led to all the other human cultures and then
01:09:21
Speaker
it came back because then these shipwrecked humans would land on Dinotopia. And there's another thing, part of the reason everybody, you see people in different styles of clothing is because people wash up from different eras and there's a convenient life elongating tea that will help you live longer. So it doesn't make you immortal, but so you might have somebody from like the 1700s, like
01:09:47
Speaker
or 1500s walking around. And again, the first book takes place in the 1860s. So they're already like people there from a few centuries before. But I don't think that land, it's never quite said if Dinotopia is in a portal to another world. Like it's not on our world. It's not in our world. No, I think it, well, my understanding, yeah, maybe it's ambiguous, but I thought it is on our world. It's a lost island and this island.
01:10:17
Speaker
This island at one point was closer before continental earth was closer to the other continents. And then there was, you know, these vast civilizations that, uh, uh, or sorry, these, these cities that spread out and influence other civilizations. So like Egypt and Greece and China and all these different places. And, and then it comes full circle because then you get people in the later centuries washing back up and joining. Okay.
01:10:47
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's perfectly simple. Yeah. I mean, this is now we're getting into Greek mythology, Greek philosophy, because this is like Plato's theories of Atlantis. Right. And it's not a theory. It's just a story. No, it was a metaphor. But people think that it was real. It was it was a thought exercise. Right. Yeah. But, um, okay, this is interesting. Yeah. Let's put a pin in that and keep going. Okay. World beneath.
01:11:15
Speaker
Um, yes. Okay, let me switch. I have, I have World Beneath. Yes, I have it too. So this is the one, this is, like I said, more of a straightforward narrative. And it also has kind of two different plots that converge with Arthur gathering an expedition together to go underground back to the world beneath.
01:11:43
Speaker
and Will flying around and trying to herd dinosaurs away from the carnivores. Because another thing I meant to mention before, they mentioned in the first book, we are all vegetarians. So all of the dinosaurs in
01:12:00
Speaker
Most of the Dinotopean cities are vegetarians, the herbivores, and the humans have all become vegetarians, but there are carnivores out there and they live in these, like, valleys. I think there's, like, rainy valleys, one of them. And they eat the herbivores will give them fish to eat.
01:12:20
Speaker
i think it's implied that at some point the carnivores may have eaten cuz they are also sentient because that's the other thing is so they have the same kind of awareness that these herbivores do but they're kind of like they're not evil they're just kind of like this other because it's not like land before time where they're afraid of the dinosaurs until they need a good uh the the t-rexes until they meet a good one it's like
01:12:43
Speaker
they are like just their own society and in world beneath they kind of make contact with them they find out that the t-rex's aren't so bad they're just they're living their own lives in a separate section so i think he was really trying to have you know sentient dinosaurs without having to deal with like oh the senator was just eaten but you know or like
01:13:06
Speaker
yeah or pan far for t-rex where once a year he has to eat you know a bunch of dinosaurs and then he can then he's fine and he might he might eat like the arch chancellor or like the astronomer it's like oh that dinosaur was working on a novel that brontosaurus had just finished composing a symphony you know yeah
01:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how I feel. Again, I'm gonna let that go. It's like an issue that doesn't have an answer about- No, I think he did the best he could with it, because he wanted to have all of them there. I appreciate in World Beneath that they're there and they're allowed to not be, they're not just mindless predators. They also have their own society. They just, for obvious reasons, don't live alongside
01:13:59
Speaker
the herbivores but but they're there so i appreciate that he didn't just because he could have just not had them there or had them there and have them also be vegetarian he could come up with something really stupid and i think he did try to make it make sense so right as much as he could yeah now we're gonna go a bit to okay we're in we're in dinatopia there's a cinematic it has i would say world i'm gonna go so far it's to say that
01:14:29
Speaker
It's tough, but Dinotopia, the world beneath is a little bit better. In the sense that it's like really a movie.
01:14:39
Speaker
I mean, as a story, it's obviously- Nothing's gonna replace Dinotopia, the original. But in terms of the story and the cinema, here it has the skybacks flying across the waterfalls in Waterfall City and it says, Dinotopia, the world beneath. And it just seems like a movie. And then you go to here, they're doing the skyback stuff.
01:15:07
Speaker
And then they just shot over. He's kind of an inventor. We didn't go into that. Oh, yeah. Arthur is getting into this contraption.
01:15:21
Speaker
that is not an airplane so it's you know this thing's gonna fail so there's this great image of the old wizard-like assistant is he's a timekeeper the assistant guy yeah nala yeah yeah and he's going pull up yes pull up anyway we skip ahead there it is pull up pull up kind of go on and on and on um
01:15:50
Speaker
They have this kind of meeting. I'm going to keep moving here. And we're going to look at, we get another really good look at Waterfall City at this, it's a National Geographic style rendering of the city. It is a real place you can go to. Yeah. And it's like, wow, you can't think of a more dangerous place to put a city, but that's what makes it cool as a kid.
01:16:16
Speaker
and the dining commons, it's like dining commons. Is this a city or a, what is this? College campus. Yeah, is it a college campus? Exactly. The first book especially almost felt like a retirement brochure. Like come to Diner, spend your twilight years in Dinotopia. I mean, there's a place called Juggler's Plaza.
01:16:43
Speaker
and uh i kind of want to see i'd like to see the painting without the the type just to see it as it was originally intended right the bridge of winds i mean there is the the the haven of the muses this is the banquet hall i don't even quite know what it is it's like it's leaving it open to is this public space private space you know can you go to the haven of muses anytime do you need to pass
01:17:12
Speaker
I don't know. I'm sure. Yeah. No, no, I agree. I agree. It's kind of, um, there's hot baths. Like there's so much stuff. Yeah. There's some Roman stuff. So anyway, we get to this, this basic story is they go into the world beneath. We don't have to go into the exact plot, but now this whole world underneath, hence world beneath.
01:17:32
Speaker
And they go through one of my favorite parts of this book is the water shoot. Yeah, the ascension, maybe that's why it's my when I go to a, if I'm at an amusement park, it's like my favorite thing is the water flume because I'm like, it's Dinotopia. I'm going down this water flume.
01:17:54
Speaker
It's literally like to leave Waterfall City, you have to get in a raft and go down this huge flume ride. Which is amazing.
01:18:05
Speaker
I mean, again, you know, just imagine like having to do this and they show you like the boat that they're in going around the corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's the best part. It's like a ride. It's like even you don't even need the theme park. You can just read that and just imagine it. Yeah. No, I know. What maybe what if you just said like, Hey guys, like could we, um, could we, uh, maybe we just need steps and we could leave.
01:18:34
Speaker
But I guess they're saying there's no other way because it's up on this Lee. Yeah. Well, I think I think that's the way because of the way it's positioned. It's like there's a waterfall, like you said. So you have to go down that way. How do you get cargo in there on the other side? I think that was one thought I had, like, because this is the outro is down this thing. But do you literally have this that river, the huge deluge
01:18:59
Speaker
coming at the city. Does someone come in and be like, all right, we got a hundred pounds of acorns here for the brontosaurus? I think there's like trade routes. You know, I'd be surprised if there's not something that answers your question. I would agree that. Yeah. Wait, say that again.
01:19:19
Speaker
I would say I think that there is, there is like a trade route or something that avoids that so that they, they are able to get goods in from other parts. Cause it's not all like it's on the waterfall, but they can still access it from the land before it. Oh yeah. Gurney's done it all. Gurney has it all figured out. Yeah. Even though I talked about suspension of disbelief, I feel like there's an answer to a lot of things. Oh yeah. Gurney's thought about it. He just realized he can't put it all in, but he's got a,
01:19:48
Speaker
you know, a leather bound book that he would pull out and say, yeah, I wrote the trade routes to Waterfall City. Don't worry. You should have seen, I wanted to publish this at its own book, Trade Routes of Dinotopia. For some reason, they didn't think you could read that. Meanwhile, 12 year old Trevor is like, yes, I'll have Trade Routes of Dinotopia, Volume 8. I'm going to be taking this to the reading room.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yes, I'm looking for the poundage of grain and the price in dinosaur dollars. Yes, the history of the dino-topian economy. Well, they actually say it's based on barter in one of the. Oh, that's right. That's right. Adding to the utopia. Oh, yeah. There's no money. There's no. There's no money. There's no fear. There's no fear. Oh, wait. What was that front? It says every other Star Trek was something like that. There's no fear here. There's no fear here. There's no hate.
01:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's no hate. Well, unless you're a crab, C-R-A-B. Yeah, so we're gonna get into crab's world, the dingy side. A little bit of a dingy, he's thrown in. This wonderful kind of Asian themed tavern with these crystals that somehow would light up in some miraculous way with some
01:21:07
Speaker
faraway ray of light doesn't make any sense. Well, we didn't even talk about the Sun Stones. Yeah, that's what. Yeah, that's like their source of energy. Well, we don't need to go. They don't actually go into it that much in the books, but it's not a large part of the miniseries. Yeah, in the mini, it's a regrettably large part of the miniseries. Crab gets them to go. We don't need to go in all the details. But he goes into this underworld and then we get a lot of these cross cut
01:21:36
Speaker
looks into the underworld. So you're looking into kind of the caves, which is the caves of these underground places. Again, each, I think I looked at each painting the amount of time that Gurney painted them. Yes. It feels like you're watching this get manifested. Yeah. I want to say to him like, are you okay? Is it, I like, do you need to sit down? I mean,
01:22:05
Speaker
How many hours are you working a week that you are making a full scale model of the underworld, the world beneath of Dinotopia?
01:22:15
Speaker
It's incredibly detailed. I know. I hope he was able to take a long vacation and just curl up and eat a loaf of banana bread. I was going to say, have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, yeah. I would be doing that. Go for a walk. Yeah. I try to write a short story, like a page, and I'm like, I'm going to write it. Yeah. Well, we both like to write, and I'm trying to write something, and it's like,
01:22:41
Speaker
It's difficult. So then imagine. I just think I can't even imagine doing something like this. Like this must just take so much out of you. I think and I mean.
01:22:50
Speaker
You just wonder and now we get into the, the, the dinosaur gods. Some of their, they find these ancient tombs filled with, um, dinosaur, uh, kind of like Egyptian gods, but instead of a jackal's head, it's a dinosaur's head. And you could say, is that irreverent? Well, I think he's doing his best to try and be respectful. Okay. Let's just say if you're at the book, um, for those at home,
01:23:19
Speaker
And Andy, 75, page 75. It's some sort of nuns. I don't know. They're like church.
01:23:33
Speaker
This is like a medieval painting, or like an 18th century painting of something like a romantic style, and then there's just like a diplodocus. And a child's expression is kind of like, I really am in this Dinotopia painting, aren't I? Like, kind of not bewilderment, like not really sure.
01:23:54
Speaker
Well, there's a painting in the first book where it's Will Asleep in a Barn Surrounded by Brontosauruses with Bix next to him. And it looks like a Nativity. It looks like Jesus, but he's surrounded by Brontosauruses.
01:24:10
Speaker
And that's why there's something kind of almost, I don't want to say perverse, but almost like he's like poking fun at famous paintings or something, you know, like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. So it's like, I'm going to draw this classical romantic style painting and then just have a dinosaur in there. So I think that is I think that is true. He's kind of like Bruce Lee, where Bruce Lee could take all of the he learned all of the martial arts.
01:24:39
Speaker
And he said, I can do all of them. And then I can have fun with it and make movies and do all. So he's just an incredibly talented martial artist. And, you know, I feel like- Yeah, the best artists like take a bunch of stuff and then fuse it all together or just like- Yeah, I think Prince was like that. You know, he could do anything. He could do jazz. He could do hard rock. He could do everything.
01:25:08
Speaker
fusion and then pop.
Storytelling Elements and Techniques
01:25:11
Speaker
So someone who's like, I think my feeling of it is the better you get at something or the more time you put into it, you start to not see the differences between the genres. Right. That it's, you know,
01:25:27
Speaker
There's only how many paint colors, right? There's only so many tones, so many musical notes. So it just... Yeah, if you know what to look for, you can see the influences. So we're getting through this. Anyways, so World Beneath has a lot of great... It just keeps going and going with this adventure underneath the world. Just as kind of like, here's another thing under the world. That's why I said it's a little bit more on plot, but they find these old
01:25:52
Speaker
structure these kind of crab like it's the guy's name is crab but they find these there's a steampunk element to it because they have these steampunk creature mechanical creatures that they find oh yeah the strutter yeah yeah the strutters that you can drive now we have these sun stones again the sun stones is is uh is it you wonder too is it um ever ever giving everlasting life does this energy from this crystal like stone last forever or is it
01:26:22
Speaker
depleting, I don't know, maybe they go into it, but I'm sure Gurney has written about, that's another thing, the sun, stone, energy system.
01:26:32
Speaker
That might be our eventual segue into the miniseries, because that's... Just to finish this up, so the major things are they find the city, they learn more about Ogthar, who is like the mythical god-king of the Dinotopians, and is supposedly
01:26:53
Speaker
And this part I was a little fuzzy on, but I think he was, he said to have been half human, half dinosaur. I don't know if it's implied that that's real or that's just, he's a symbol of the, I guess they leave it a little open-ended, but that's, he's, he's a symbol of dinotopia because he's both. But he dates back to, so the dinosaurs survived the extinction event, the meteor that hit the earth by going underground.
01:27:23
Speaker
And that became the world beneath. That became the civilization under there. And Agthar was the one who discovered the Sunstone. There's a secret message you can decode that says he stole the Sunstone. But then there's another one that says, beware the Sunstone. And there's another one that says, buy more ovolteen.
01:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, I was just about to say I felt like Ralphie from the yeah, yeah, Little Orphan, Ogthar, but so then there's the whole so they find the Strutters, which are these mechanical sort of like mech dinosaurs that you can pilot around. And then
01:27:59
Speaker
you know, in something that makes great sense, tons of judgment. Lee Crab is like, hey, you guys take all the good guys, you take that one, I'll take my own up to the surface. Like, okay, we can trust him. Spoilers, you can't trust him. He tries to make a break for the mainland and he has this, he's like, I'm going to go like sell the
01:28:20
Speaker
The plans of this, we're going to make war machines and come back and tank over Dinotopia because he hates dinosaurs. But there's a big action scene, Chase Sequence, and Arthur manages to get there and jump on his strutter. They capture him. He's captured by the dinosaur guards. And I think he's in the later books. Yeah, so that's how this one ends. And also, there's a character named Orianna, who is a musician.
01:28:48
Speaker
who had half of the key to get into the world beneath. Arthur had the other one, and I think they end up, they end up falling in love and marrying or becoming a couple at the end, which also sets up stuff in the movie. But they prevent him from going back. They capture Mr. Crab. Right. Yeah, so they get Crab, basically world beneath ends.
01:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, so that's the I know we're speeding through this. We're not spoiling the total. We're just the basic. I mean, if you didn't think crab was gonna yet. I mean, I guess he could have pulled up. He said of like a long john silver. Yeah, he's kind of like a pirate smuggler character. Yeah, that could be its own.
01:29:34
Speaker
Again, could that be a book or a video game where it's like, welcome to Krabs Tavern. Where would you like to go? Press A for... This is turning into Kramer. How do you just tell me where you... Right. Why don't you just tell me which part of Dinotopia you'd like to go to?
01:29:53
Speaker
You have chosen these lower tone. What does that mean? There's a lot of absurd hats in this series and he has one of the most absurd. It's like a wizard's hat but it has like gyno teeth or alligator teeth or something. Sort of like sitting low low on his forehead.
01:30:11
Speaker
I think they call that, is that like a slouch hat where it's like you have one half of the brim is like over one of his eyes. So he's always wearing this hat and like, yeah, he always looks like he's up to no good. All his faces, he makes these kind of like scowly faces. Well, he seems to have something, a garland of
01:30:32
Speaker
i mean one one is worried about what they are but on a cat is a garland of right dinosaur toes i mean i don't i thought it was it was teeth but yeah like you said where did he get those teeth what animal what sentient creature did he kill
01:30:49
Speaker
I mean, I guess we're not supposed to feel bad for the fish in this world. OK, before we move on, we get to choose. You choose one image. I'll choose one image. And it's got to be a ridiculous image. The most ridiculous image? Yeah, that you can find. OK. From either of these books? Well, I don't have Dinotopia, but you can choose. OK, I'll do World Beneathal. I mean, there's so many. I already talked about the nativity scene from the first one's pretty ridiculous.
01:31:21
Speaker
All right, I'm gonna choose, I've got one. Okay, if we pick the same one, it's gonna be- No, I don't think so. I think you're gonna choose a proper one. I just chose it because I thought it was silly. Okay, are we gonna do our webcams real quick? Oh, I could just tell you the page numbers. Okay, fine, you tell me yours. All right, 47. 47. All right, for the listeners at home, it's a
01:31:46
Speaker
image of crab. Is it Arthur? It's Arthur, right? Yeah, Arthur is in the background. Yeah, and his little friend, the dinosaur, who's like three feet, Bix is like three feet tall. But but and there's giant jellyfish out there in this weird submarine thing. And he's
01:32:10
Speaker
crab is like manipulating it and then below oh yeah it gets crazier because he's got a tinier image with a outline of each thing that you see on the previous page oh yeah the creatures and then they're labeled the trilobite nautiloid crinoid brachiopod and this is like the educational portion like yes
01:32:35
Speaker
These are real. Libraries and schools were like, well, we don't want to, we don't want to stock this, but if it is technically educational, we can devote the budget to Dinotopia. Right. And I think these all existed as the thing. I don't think he created the dinosaur. I think some of them he kind of made liberties with the colors and stuff. But anyway, that's my image. It's so ridiculous looking. All right. You ready for mine? Yes.
01:32:59
Speaker
It's also a crab image. It's 144. It's gotta be crab. It's gotta be crab. That part we shared. Yeah. Okay. Wait, 144. Yeah. Dinotoping is fast as I can. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This wins.
01:33:24
Speaker
This is evil, where he looks evil and he's holding the sunstone. And now is he holding the sunstone and he's pointing at you? He has the evil in his eye of Sinbad in Jingle All the Way when he's got the toy. He's like, I'm not getting this toy from me. The other most evil character in fiction. Yes, the wonderful portrayal of a man full of hate. I was a total man!
01:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, full of hate and greed for a turbo man. But yeah, he, he has that same energy. But he's doing it with a, you know, this guy is like, Rembrandt with dinosaurs. It's like, I don't believe it. It's like, he says skill of Rembrandt, but he's making it about a children's fantasy of living with dinosaurs, but also like a
01:34:19
Speaker
Dickensian morality tale, and the guys, it's even out of- And it's like Jules Verne. That's the other thing too, is most Renaissance painting, I'm just noticing this wonderful image, and I'm glad you chose it, because I'm noticing that in old Renaissance paintings and so on, are photorealistic in many ways, but they lack the cinematic touch of focus, because they didn't even understand focus at the time, so it's like, no, whatever, no.
01:34:45
Speaker
This, if you look at Crab's face, it's crystal clear. And then look at his hat. It's out of focus. Oh,
Disney and Hallmark Miniseries Adaptation
01:34:52
Speaker
that's like a cinema thing. You're right. Well, it's like showing you what's what's in the center. It's compositions. It's like what's in the center. What are we focusing on the most? Yes. Yeah. And is wonderful. And he also just makes liberties where he said, you know what, I don't need to paint the rest of it. So the bottom quarter of the image is white.
01:35:13
Speaker
There's also an interesting part, it's page 92 and 93, where he shows you the same thing from three different characters. He shows you a calcite formation. Arthur just sees it, drips and crab sees it as a monster and Orianna sees it as almost like a Madonna. I love that.
01:35:36
Speaker
Yeah, baby. So that's also kind of teaching children about perspective and point of view. But I'm thinking like the guy who he had real models and they were basically like friends that he had who he did. Yeah, yeah, they come over to a barbecue. Oh, by the way, can you stand in? And so some of them they did a little bit. But this crab guy, whoever was crab had to keep coming over the house. So that guy's like going to the grocery store thinking, I'm crap.
01:36:03
Speaker
Yes. At what point does crab end and I begin? Does anyone? And okay, look at this. This is wonderful. Do you think anybody went to his house like, I'm just here for the chicken wings. I don't want to wear a funny hat and pretend to be a senator from. Yeah, I'm sure. And he said, I am the Palpatine, you know. Oh, it was Lucas. He came to the barbecue and was like, I'm just looking for ideas.
01:36:33
Speaker
I'm just gonna excuse myself, he just grabs a maquette. But there's some in the making of Phantom Menace I saw. And when they've screened it, there's this, they have kind of in the din of the, you know, the dark room or whatever. You could see Lucas's face light up in panic, because he realizes it's not a good movie.
01:36:57
Speaker
And he starts to be like, well, at the end of it, sort of saying this quickly, he says, there's a lot of ideas here. Maybe too many ideas. Yes. Oh, yeah. No, I think I remember this. And I think, in a way, Phantom Menace, maybe that would have worked better as one of these books, because you can throw a lot of ideas at it. And that's the issue. So let's transition to making this into a movie. Yeah.
01:37:22
Speaker
uh this these stories were made into a miniseries in 2002 on what do we know what service on what channel um it was co-produced by disney and hallmark of course and it has kind of that feeling yeah it moves at a certain pace yeah
01:37:43
Speaker
Oh my god, it's so slow. So we'll say about this about miniseries. Any miniseries with specifically ones like this and this one is that you're watching a scene and you're like, wow, okay, that scene's over. Oh, no, it's not over. It's still going. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay, it's gonna end. No, it's very boring. I'm bored. It's still going. And I got two more nights of this. Two more nights. I'm bored. Maybe I'm not as bored. This is kind of interesting. He's saying something.
01:38:12
Speaker
Oh, no, wait. It's boring again. It's boring again. Okay, okay. But wait, maybe. No. What did you say to me, though? It said that time... Yes, you reach a Zen-like state where you just have to ignore the existence of time and just kind of be in the moment of Dinotopia, the miniseries, because... All right, let's... Yeah. And to answer your question, it was on ABC. Okay, it was on ABC. So let's hit it. Let's go.
01:38:41
Speaker
So this miniseries, it was three hour and a half, roughly, you know, films, I guess, or episodes. And it does not take place in the 1860s.
01:38:55
Speaker
Anyways, so yeah, so it takes place in the present day and this one follows a family Carl and David and then their dad and they're going for a plane ride. They similarly crash in the sea They're Carl and David are separated from their dad Carl and David are played by actors who both look like people who you think are more famous people but they're not because I thought Carl was
01:39:24
Speaker
Lee Pace. He's not Lee Pace. I thought the other guy was Jensen Ackles from Supernatural. It's not Jensen Ackles. But anyway, so they wash ashore in Dinotopia and, you know, they're brought into the Dinotopian Society. They meet Marion, who's a girl about their age who can commune with the dinosaurs. She is the daughter of
01:39:44
Speaker
Waldo, the mayor of Waterfall City, played by Jim Carter, aka the butler from Downton Abbey, and literally dressed as a clown. Like he's supposed to be the mayor, but he looks like a Commedia del Arte, like
01:40:01
Speaker
Pierrot clown And oh and I forgot to mention the first person they actually meet is Cyrus crab who is the son of Lee crab Played by David through this who is one of the best parts of this whole thing because he's actually very good And fun to watch but and he's like an antiques dealer. I get a roguish antiques dealer. Maybe he's an antiques dealer and a thief and
01:40:26
Speaker
He brings them into the city, gives them the rundown. There's a whole part before they even get to Waterfall City where they're riding around on a brontosaurus. The first 20 minutes are pretty drab. I have to say, it's not until it gets to Waterfall City that you finally start to see that color and it brightens up.
01:40:48
Speaker
And then the next like episode and a half, it's kind of just like a series of events that happen. Carl and David, they fight, they fall off a waterfall. Carl tries to steal, or he does steal a book for Cyrus because Cyrus wants to escape Dinotopia and all this stuff. And Carl really wants to see their dad again and he's upset that David has just been like, I'm going to join the school and I'm going to become a Dinotopian citizen, all this stuff.
01:41:14
Speaker
And so that's why they fight and fall off the waterfall. There's a dinosaur named Zippo, which is spelled Z-I-P-P-O in the credits, but in the Amazon Prime slash freebie subtitles is spelled Z-I-P-E-A-U, like a French name.
01:41:33
Speaker
Jeff out was kind of funny and then so they they leave waterfall city they kind of go through like the rites of passage they go to the school run by Marion's mom David trains become a sky backs there's a lot of sky back stuff
01:41:52
Speaker
Carl kind of rebels at first, but then he's assigned a baby triceratops that he reluctantly becomes the dad to, and he doesn't like this responsibility. He keeps saying, no way, no way, I'm not gonna be dad to the triceratops. He calls her 26 because he refuses to give her a name.
01:42:12
Speaker
uh but then of course he ends up carrying her he tries to escape but then he returns there's a great scene where he tries to he tricks Cyrus crab he thinks he's Cyrus thinks he's getting the sunstone but then Carl leaves and Cyrus goes you crook
01:42:27
Speaker
um and then uh there's uh yeah he tries to leave dantopia but the boat's been sabotaged and then he comes back to save 26 because he really cares and then there's a whole crisis about the sun stones going out um and they have to find more there's the legal drama section where they're in court and they have to defend themselves all these different characters come back saying no carl and david are good boys and then there's a bunch of pterodactyl stuff there's a world beneath
01:42:55
Speaker
uh return there's references to the books that come way too late they should have come way earlier um they were reunited with their father and uh they become heroes of dinotopia they both take up their different roles and the whole movie the whole miniseries feels like it should end with the star wars like
01:43:20
Speaker
But it doesn't. No, no, it has another four and a half hours. No, that is the I just breeze through the whole thing. But that is like how it Yeah, right. Yeah. Right.
01:43:35
Speaker
Wait, so how does it end? To be clear, I've seen this and I own this, but again, I don't feel the need to have total knowledge of that. You didn't just watch it today. No, no, I didn't just watch it today, but I remember a good chunk.
01:43:52
Speaker
So what happens is they find the father is still alive. They go in Arthur Dennis. At the top, did we mention how it started? How it actually begins? Because I saw this like, I was like, getting my popcorn, you know, getting my ice cream, I'm gonna watch Dinotopia. This is happening. I am way too old for this, but I'm watching it. I mean, I would have been
01:44:15
Speaker
Man, I'm not sure 15 or something Well, what is way too old with Dinotope, it's a family movie. I mean you can watch anybody can watch it. Yeah, you're never too old But anyway, it was so I would have been you know in that range and I'm like sitting down and it just starts with kind of these guys in
01:44:36
Speaker
kind of bro costumes in a plane with the faux clouds. And I'm like, wow, this is not what I was expecting. Well, it actually, if I remember, it even starts before that with Rosemary, like sort of the... Oh, you're right. Oh, you know what? I should have... It's just writing a letter. No, I know that. This older woman, we don't know, writing a letter to someone else, we don't know. I know, I know, I know, I know. Right away, you're just kind of like, what?
01:45:06
Speaker
Oh, man. So that's bad on me because I did start to watch it before our convo. Yeah, I did watch it. And it was like, I put it on. I'm imagining this, the clouds. And you know what, I bet you I did walk in on that. You know, maybe something was happening. I told you to take the trash out. I'm watching Dinotopia.
01:45:28
Speaker
You know, I don't know what it was, but, you know, I'm rushing in and I missed it, right? Then this was way back. And then, like I said, I bought it and rewatched. So I seen this four hour show twice, at least. Oh my God. And now I did see that. And now I'm seeing these clips for you. I watched some of it and I turned on like watching it going, wait a minute, wait a second. Whoa, what? Who is that? What's going on here? Why is she rose from Titanic?
01:45:58
Speaker
there is a tight a weird titanic there's a lot of stuff that is not fully explained or just kind of dropped in there there's a very weird scene and i don't know if this is explaining one of the books but so when carl and david are in rosemary school and carl's gonna run away but then rosemary's like no
01:46:15
Speaker
you should stay here, and that's like the lady at the beginning. So the final day, the brontosaurus is, all the, everybody's gathered around, and then the brontosaurus starts stomping their feet, and then there's like this lynching montage of like them overlaid on Carl's face, and Carl like falls down, and he's like in a trance of bliss or something, and then the next day he and David are like, hey, how was that? Oh, that was great.
01:46:42
Speaker
Cool. And so I don't it was that like a mind meld or like the pond far like you're talking that was weird. Well, they both remind me of and again with the plane reference and I literally just thinking of this now like their tone of voice, what they're kind of kind of banal. Yeah, little plain spoken. Yeah, but they're not like super mean or they kind of remind me of the brothers from wings.
01:47:08
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever seen that show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With Tony Shalhoub. Wasn't he on that? Yeah. Well, he's a minor character. Oh, okay. Well. But there's the two main brothers. Yeah, very vaguely.
01:47:20
Speaker
one of them's more famous of an actor I couldn't tell you like but anyway they're they're um they just have that same kind of boring cadence with each other but they're mad and I murder and one of them is a real bigot because he's going on about how superior he is to the dialogue. Oh yeah well Karl is a real jerk through a lot of it
01:47:41
Speaker
The other guy's more laid back, isn't he? The... David. Yeah. David with the buzz cut. Well, and it's also funny because I kind of assumed that the buzz cut kid was going to be the bad boy, but he actually turns out to be the sensitive one who's like, I want to learn how to speak. Listen, I got my Sting and my CLCDs here and my Discmen.
01:48:05
Speaker
Yeah. Do you want to come listen to 98.5, the river with him? My family used to tease me that I hadn't. Seal was one of my main CDs that I would listen to. It's good. He's a good artist. No, I mean, he was a major, major figure. Give me my seal and some Dinotopia and leave me alone. Peter Gabriel. Yeah.
01:48:29
Speaker
I was gonna say, what do you think about this theory, which is, you think about a movie, I was listening to people talk about the taking of Pelham 123 a while ago. And it's a great movie. It's a great thriller. And but if you think about it, even the hero of that Walter Mathad, let alone his, you know, his issues he has as a character. Yeah, let's just say, we don't know anything about him.
01:48:54
Speaker
But for the story, we know then the amount we need to know about him to propel the story forward. Right. And so that's a lot of times like they think in movies that they have to say like, well, I was born here and that's why I decided to go on the run, you know, and that's why, well, maybe you don't need that. Maybe you just need to know the amount you need to propel the story forward. Sometimes, like it's in here, this miniseries, they put a lot in.
01:49:22
Speaker
yeah about the relationships and this it's like well i don't know if that was necessary right well again to go back to that that was a big criticism of the star wars prequels it's like more is not necessarily better and it's like uh a lot of there's a lot of like bad faith criticism like cinema sins and stuff that's just like this doesn't make any sense this isn't logic that you know all this stuff but like do you really want to just sit down and listen to like a ream of how things i mean
01:49:50
Speaker
I think the book, Dinotopia, does a good job of balancing enough stuff that makes sense with stuff that's interesting and fantastic. I don't need a blow by blow of why this dinosaur city is perfectly logical and functional. I know it's not. It's fantasy. So you don't need to go through these motions just to do it. That's what I mean, the suspension of disbelief. If I'm engaged enough, then I'm not going to care about that stuff.
01:50:16
Speaker
uh but there's so many scenes in this thing kind of to your point where it's just like why are we what why do we need to see any of this like they just keep going through i guess they're trying to build like a coming of age story but it really like and they also have multiple love triangles that don't really go anywhere because
01:50:35
Speaker
The boys both fall in love with Marion, but then there's this other girl who's Romana Denison, who is said to be Will's daughter, and she actually gets Will's saddle, but then nothing really comes of that, and she disappears halfway through the second ep- or the, uh, mini-series. She disappears basically at the end of the second episode. Who is that lady?
01:50:55
Speaker
and then Rosemary was the lady she's Marion's mom and the wife of Waldo the the butler the Jim Carter guy in the the senator he has like an Elizabethan ruff and literally like a jester's hat oh yeah so yeah he's like from Shakespeare in Love basically yeah yeah he was on the set of Shakespeare in Love he walked the wrong direction and he ended up on the Dinotopia set
01:51:22
Speaker
I literally think they were like, make him look like a 16th century clown. Okay. But here's what I think also could have happened, which is, hey, we have X amount for budget for costume. You can use anything in this room. Like you have hundreds of costumes that we don't have to buy. They're just sitting here. That's all you can use.
01:51:45
Speaker
You know, I mean, after that, yeah, you're out. So it's like, find what you can find. And that's why they're dressed in plain clothes, like the boys at the beginning in like a something from Eddie Bauer.
01:52:00
Speaker
I mean, I would have, I thought after reading the book, I was like, this should have opened at least with the denizens or like, you should have had more of that in the story. Because by the time we get to, because like they take Arthur's submarine to get to the world beneath. And there's like callbacks to the book. But by the time you get to that, it's already like the third episode, like it's so deep into this thing.
01:52:24
Speaker
And it just feels like there was some interesting stuff, so much stuff they could have done with it. And also Cyrus is Lee Krebs. It's a sequel to the books, technically. So they could have really built on that, but instead it just feels like it just goes nowhere for so much of it. And then finally
Comparison and Critique of Adaptations
01:52:44
Speaker
at the end, they basically redo the world beneath and have a whole bunch of stuff with the Sun Stones.
01:52:51
Speaker
Well, it's interesting that when you see a motion picture like a standard movie, you're thinking like, well, hour and a half, like something can only be an hour and a half, right? I mean, that's, that's just the way the world is. Actually, no, you can make a four hour film.
01:53:07
Speaker
about something you can make an eight hour film it's starting to realize like how long of a film could you make about dinotopia before you just go there's nothing more to say like someone the actor could turn to the camera and say we have nothing more to say our revelists most have ended we don't
01:53:25
Speaker
We actually don't have an ending. We couldn't write one. Well, what do you think should happen? We've run out of money. We've run out of money. We've run out of dinosaurs. Well, I did want to quickly mention, so this came out in 2002. This was a period like the early to mid
01:53:41
Speaker
2000s and late 90s where this was in vogue like this sort of miniseries because you had the dune miniseries you had the tenth kingdom uh there was merlin merlin there were a couple of months i think that i think the one that kicked it off was odyssey with armand de sante
01:54:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I remember we watched it all. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, you're a nerd if you're watching something that they're going to show you in school. But you are making the time to make sure that you can watch it. And and also like tell your parents like you've got to, you know, make sure you don't touch this record this so I don't miss it.
01:54:20
Speaker
You get that tape, like scotch tape and put it on your VHSs and you write Dinotopia, Trevor's tape. Well, I had to go to bed. I think the show was like two and a half hours or something or more for the first night. This is Odyssey. And I was like, and they said, you have to go to bed. You can't stay up. I was like, okay, well, tape it. So it just doesn't have the same feeling when you're watching a grainy version of the thing later.
01:54:46
Speaker
Well, and I remember setting up the tape. There was an Alice in Wonderland one, which had a bunch of celebrities in it. Gene Wilder was in it. And I set up a tape to record it. And I went to bed, and I remember thinking, like, all right, I'm going to watch it. And it only recorded, like, I think it missed a good chunk of it. Yes, that's the word. I just remember being sad, because I missed the first, like, third of it. So I had the second half.
01:55:13
Speaker
But yeah, I just remember being like, you know, like, this is this is the grappling with VCR is something you know, is a trial trial of coming of age in the 90s. Well, they had the the long play, which you could press on the VCR, which would somehow magically transform a two hour tape to like four or eight hours of like, what? Why? How does how is this? What what elixir is this VHS
01:55:40
Speaker
Well, yeah, and the amount of content that a VHS tape could store is still a mystery to me because you would see like, you know, Fiddler on the Roof or West Side Story or whatever, or Dr. Zhivago split into those big like two VHS tape. I think Titanic had one too, two VHS tape, those massive boxes. But then other things you could fit like, I don't know, like two to three hours on one VHS tape.
01:56:09
Speaker
Well, what if they finally came out and said, actually, we didn't do it. People were just acting behind your TV the whole time. They were actually just acting. Well, that's like the Truman Show. We've been joking, but someday the lights are all going to come on, and you're just going to hear a voice say, this was a simulation. Oh, yeah, this was a simulation. You have made the incorrect choice. But this long play would be like,
01:56:35
Speaker
you know, when you actually played it back so grainy, it was like looking through stained glass to watch whatever you because I mean, how could you go from two hours to eight hours or something? Something is happening to the quality. So disappointing. And it was as it and also you were watching you were so enthralled with the story like, and you forgot, I guess maybe I taped it from the beginning or something. But anyway, there was the Odyssey and then there was Merlin. Yeah.
01:57:01
Speaker
There was this really badly made, in turn, not the quality of the production, but the storytelling with Ted Danson.
01:57:11
Speaker
Huh, I don't know if I know that one. It was Gulliver's Travels. Oh, okay. I do vaguely remember that one. It was told non-linearly and so he'd say something like in the present and I'm like, this is stupid because I know you're alive. Like you're ruining the whole conceit of an adventure. I remember watching that on a vacation, like at a lake house, like, oh yeah, let's watch Gulliver's Travels. Right.
01:57:35
Speaker
Yeah and then the wigs look ridiculous i think the rich that was the first. First one that came out as a you know miniseries in nineteen seventy something there was a discolors travels that first came out that was supposed to be the first miniseries i mean that's not a historical event okay but it was a lot of yeah yeah.
01:57:55
Speaker
I mean, they make it into like it was, but it's interesting that it's just a long movie. I mean, that's really all it is. I was saying this, I was saying this over text too, but it's interesting because it's like, with Dinotopia specifically, but also these other ones, like there's something like so weighty about it because it's so long and there's so much happening, but it's also so ephemeral because I kind of feel like
01:58:18
Speaker
the only like the ideal way to watch this would have been on the nights because then you would have been like oh man because if you sit down and watch a 90-minute episode of a three-part miniseries and then you wait another week for the next part like you got time to digest it and stuff and it's also like you know
01:58:34
Speaker
like you you can appreciate it in the moment you're not getting too into it but like trying to watch these all like over a few days to prepare this podcast was just kind of like uh like just sitting there waiting for stuff to happen and i feel like um so in a weird way it's like it's more time consuming but it's like less consequential
01:58:55
Speaker
Like it's I don't know. It's like this odd combination trying to be like event television, but also right. Yeah. Have have the depth of a full series. I mean, it's not like a sitcom episode where you're just like, I don't really know what this is or where this falls into anything. And it's just but it's it's like, no, this has a real narrative and it's so long and they created a whole world.
01:59:22
Speaker
And it's four hours long. And like we've said, you're watching it going now in a traditional film, or if you listen to a movie commentary or read or listen to an interview, they'll always say, oh, we had to cut it for time. This had to be cut for time. No, in Dinotopy, it's like we added this for time. We added this. We had to keep adding. Writers had to keep adding to the story. There wasn't enough. It's like the writing to fill the space.
01:59:49
Speaker
Like they literally could have, I think they could have cut like a clean hour out of this. There's a scene. Oh yeah. But there's a scene. Well, that would still be the length of like, it would still be long, but it easily could have been. Yeah.
02:00:00
Speaker
There's a scene at the beginning. So the plane ride, they crash into the water, which is absurd, then they're lost, then they come. Somehow they lose the dad, but are still together themselves. Then they split apart and they learn about the world and so on. It is interesting to see it rendered, but they're missing a lot of that saturation of color and a lot of the other things that he was doing. And it's just like a straight up kind of the same standard color that you would see in a normal light.
02:00:29
Speaker
and the saturation is just standard, so it's missing. In fact, sometimes it's kind of dim. That's how I say it, especially before they get to Waterfall City. It's very brown and drab and the CG. I don't think the CG was that great even for the time, but even the better CG, it's kind of blurry at certain points.
02:00:51
Speaker
But yeah, there's just no comparing to the experience of looking at the paintings and reading the journals. It's like, and it could have been made into something good, but it just feels, yeah, like something's missing. And it does get better at certain points, but yeah. But there's a scene where they're wandering from the beach, you know, they're on Washa shore. So there's sort of,
02:01:15
Speaker
you know, still looking immaculate, and they walking and they find this group of people and they're sort of proselytized into them and they're on top of this dinosaur. Yeah, remember that part? Yep, yep. And they're, and it goes on for so long.
02:01:31
Speaker
And this is like the beginning of the movie. You're like, oh, they're going to get to it. They'll get there. No, we're still on this scene. But then there's a part of you that's like, I like that this is slow, the slow TV, because I feel like I'm really in Dinotopia. But then I'm like thinking.
02:01:46
Speaker
Well, who else feels like this? Do other people want to be this invested in Dinotopia or where they prefer? But if you think about a TV company or studio, they don't want to put the money in for an hour and a half. They're thinking, let's milk this.
02:02:03
Speaker
Well, and also there's like, it doesn't actually devote as much time because a lot of the runtime isn't even the interesting stuff about Dinotopia. It's just like setting up exposition or, you know, having another pointless scene where they're like, you don't care about our dad. It's like, no, it's it's.
02:02:20
Speaker
sufferable. Yeah, those things are trying to go on about Yeah, you don't care this. Hey, this is like some melodrama we added like no, I want to see why don't you take me on a digital tour of the library? Right. I want to see
02:02:37
Speaker
that kind of thing, like as if it's the National Archives. How about the guy that's like the Niles Crane librarian, the raptor man? I was going to say Zippo or Zippo. Yes, Zippo, I'm so sorry everyone. I'm so sorry. Oh my god, he was so annoying. I mean, he's- Why are you neurotic? Why are you neurotic? He's a neurotic dinosaur. I guess they thought that would be endear- but he's not very endear- like, and even as a kid. He's not endearing. No.
02:03:05
Speaker
There's also a part where David Thewlis knocks him out and puts him in a bag and throws him in the river. But then the river, because it's because they don't want to like scare kids, it's like as soon as the bags in the river, he's basically, they basically show it's like, he's fine. He's like floating on top. Right. He'll be okay. So in that case, David Thewlis basically just did this for fun. He wasn't going to kill him. He just did that. He knew he was going to be okay. So it's a defeat. Yeah.
02:03:35
Speaker
Well, maybe it defeats it, but maybe it's just a threat. Like, don't mess with me. I guess it could be, but then later there's a part where Zippo goes, oh, don't get the sack again. Oh, don't get the sack. Oh, he's supposed to be in the sack. How did he even do? Yeah. How do you knock a dinosaur unconscious?
02:03:54
Speaker
Well, a lot of the two is like, you know, granted the really large animals, we know the size of them. Right. Sometimes the scale is off. It's like the movie Cats. Like, are you three feet? Are you 10 feet? How tall are you? Right. It's like in different scenes. One scene he can fit through the door and the other scene he's like on top of the house.
02:04:12
Speaker
Like how slimy is your skin too? I'm imagining that if I touched him, he would kind of be like chain mail. Like if I shook claws with Zippo. Is Zippo having coffee? Is he, I mean, these are sort of like red wall questions that I come up with, but. Well, they do have the thing where it's like, because they don't like to read
02:04:32
Speaker
turn pages the way that dinosaurs read is they have scrolls and then they walk on treadmills. Yes, yes, it's treadmills. I love that, I think that's great. And he dips his little claws in ink and he dumps on it. I was just gonna say the theme song
02:04:51
Speaker
felt did feel like they were trying to do like the inverse of the Jurassic Park theme song because it's like nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah so it sort of felt like they were trying to play like nah nah nah nah nah nah but backwards yeah now that's good and they played it over and over yeah
02:05:15
Speaker
yeah it's more um it's more um anthemic yeah then then the dinosaur it's um so after a while you're like oh this is like something you hear at a hockey game it's like the like please leave the stadium
02:05:38
Speaker
how did they did they do pretty good they they do pretty good visions of waterfall city a lot of it is miss like they don't yeah they didn't do that those two my favorite things the treetops I think maybe no they yeah they cut out a lot and they don't go to that monastery
02:05:56
Speaker
No. Well, again, so much of the world isn't even there. And they make reference to the denizens having existed. They make reference to a little bit of the world beneath stuff. And then when they actually go to the world beneath, they add another thing, which is that because in the book, Orianna, one of the people in the expedition, goes into this cave and sees a vision of her mother. Or I think it's the queen.
02:06:20
Speaker
I don't know, but it looks like her mother, but, um, in this, they go to that same room and they clarified that that the sort, which is where all the sunstones come from is the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. So that, that is where we get the sunstones. Right. That little bit of lore. It's a different, yeah, it had, they're in this room that has kind of like a hieroglyphics. Right. Yeah. That tell you the story of, of
02:06:50
Speaker
that whole thing that was missing. Right. Well, they add and they, they also imply that I didn't get this, but that Marion is Oriana's granddaughter, but Romana is Will's
02:07:07
Speaker
daughter so they should technically be related but they never go into that because those characters barely even interact and so it's like they're trying to set up a relationship between
Utopia vs. Dystopia in Storytelling
02:07:19
Speaker
like a dynasty you know with these different families but no well i guess you wanted to say something about merchandise
02:07:26
Speaker
Uh, I just wanted to say that did I want to talk about merchandise? I was just saying that they had a hard time merchandising it Oh marketing the marketing of it I think that there was I don't know this for a fact but it just feels to me because like you were talking about this too as like As a kid, you know, you get like dinosaurs are typically thought of as being like a young child's game You know like something kids get into
02:07:48
Speaker
But these books are really kind of, I think, more appropriate for older kids. And like I said, I think I would have been really into this because the world building aspect I think would have appealed to me more in like middle school. And then later, after they did this mini series, they would eventually do a cartoon series, which looks pretty dire. I haven't watched it.
02:08:07
Speaker
Oh yeah, we should mention the other media. They made paperback books for YA, young adult paper. I already told you I didn't particularly like it. But they were interesting. Again, it's that slow TV feel like going into a world that keeps going on and on. Then you have the cartoon series we don't know much about and a 10 episode TV series that was canceled.
02:08:26
Speaker
Right, which is based on the mini-series, but the characters are all played by new actors. So it has the same characters, but it's all different. Really? Yeah. And so I haven't explored David and Marianne and all those people, but it's different. Well, that can be explored some other time. I mean, we can, yeah, we can map the aliens. All of these things, but you know what thing is like everything I discuss, you can always keep going, but there's other subjects.
02:08:54
Speaker
You know, yeah, I mean, I am happy that I've gotten into these because, again, it's worth reading the books, the art books and like get immersing yourself in that. But, you know, like, I don't I just don't know personally how much I'm going to have the even I I mean, I put myself through some some very obscure media for no reason, except my own curiosity. But I don't know if I'm going to watch the entire Dinotopia series, but maybe
02:09:22
Speaker
Well, we'll leave that as an op, because we also have two more, we have two other Dinotopia books, so we'll just leave it as an open, yeah, we're keeping it open. To all of you listening to this, we've gone on and on and on, and we've barely even scratched the surface. Oh yeah, so we're leaving, but it was the same with Redwall. Yeah, I mean there's so much. And then I guess the final thought is the concept of Utopia.
02:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say something about, and I did very little, just a little cursory research about this, but just the whole idea of utopian literature has a long history. The word utopia dates back to the book utopia by Thomas More, and the word originates from Greek and actually has a double meaning, because depending on how you spell it, it could mean good place or no place.
02:10:13
Speaker
So some people think that the original utopia was actually meant as a satire, especially since some of the things in it kind of conflict with things that Thomas More himself probably would have supported because he was a Catholic. And so there's this element of like, this is a benevolent, like an ideal society, but it also will never exist kind of thing.
02:10:37
Speaker
But then after that, in the centuries following, utopian literature got really popular, especially in the 19th century and early 20th century. And there was a book called Looking Backward, which is not very popular anymore, but at the time was very popular.
02:10:53
Speaker
in the 1880s, and it was kind of about a socialist utopia. It was politically influential. There was also feminist utopias like Her Land by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. There was News from Nowhere is another one. But then, so I feel like to us as a modern reader, utopias tend to not be very compelling because you can't really do much in terms of story with them. If the society is perfect,
02:11:20
Speaker
then the only conflict has to come from outside the society or an individual that doesn't fit in with it. Whereas in a dystopia, if the society is imperfect, then the individual is empowered because they're the ones who have to change or escape the society. It's basically the same problem. I mean, you and I watched that documentary about NextGen. I was about to mention it. And they bring that up. They said it was hard to write for because there's only so many things you can talk about if the society is perfect.
02:11:50
Speaker
chaos on the bridge how could I forget I owned it and I made you like watch this like six times yeah I can't hide that I'm a truckie but but I'm proud but I showed you this documentary and it was it's such a bewildering movie with talking to all the characters
02:12:13
Speaker
But basically, I think the way they got around it with Gene Roddenberry, who came up with this idea that if the world is perfect for Federation, there is no conflict, is they made the other planets, the conflict. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, oh, you've gone into the neutral zone. Yeah. You know, etc, etc, etc. Although I will say that, you know, you know, Gene Roddenberry, you know,
02:12:38
Speaker
But when he died, the head producer was like, I was so relieved when he died because I could start writing better episodes. Well, yeah, there were a lot of issues. But I think that there's some similar parallels to Dinotopia because the conflict comes from
02:13:03
Speaker
You know, Lee crab, the bad guy, you know, the guy who doesn't fit, doesn't accept dino topia. So you have to, and in the movie, in the mini series, they also have the thing about the sun stones going out. So they have an energy crisis, but the society itself is, is perfect. You know, so, so we see, we don't see that dingier side, but I guess we're led to believe that it is that way.
02:13:24
Speaker
And that's another thing, because again, just reading about the original Utopia book, there were slaves in it, in that Utopia. And I don't know if Thomas More just didn't care, and at the time they were like, oh yeah, this is perfect. But it's like, there was stuff in it that felt like it would not be Utopian.
02:13:42
Speaker
Like, so I feel like there's kind of always like you're setting yourself up for a fall when you write a utopia, because you're kind of just waiting for somebody to point something out, you know, or waiting for there to be some some catch that comes in. And that's why I think dystopias tend to be more common or, or more popular.
02:13:59
Speaker
Well, or they always start with not 1984, but other other books start with a veneer of utopia, right? And then they descend into a dystopia of some type before finishing on sort of a sometimes anyway, kind of a hopeful like in THX 1138, where he comes out and he's they have that hope that over, you know, zoomed in on
02:14:23
Speaker
Well in Metropolis they have the city collapses and then at the end they make peace between the different classes and there's the in between the head and the hand lies the heart so it's the idea that we can have industry and a ruling class as long as we use we have morality you know.
02:14:41
Speaker
But I was going to say, does it feel like Dinotopia has each according to his utility or usefulness and each according to his need? I mean, it has. There is a social because there's like a code of Dinotopia. I did not look up the entire thing because I don't even think the entire thing is listed in the book, but they mentioned the code of Dinotopia. And one of them is like, you know, like don't take more than you need.
02:15:09
Speaker
Oh, so right there that turns into Well, they have live to eat, don't eat to live. Well, you got to read Carl. Carl. Carl Popper's, you know, essay on Dinotopia and why it leads to, you know, dystopia or whatever. Anyway, yeah, that's a little Carl Popper reference to everyone. Yeah. Anyway, he was just he was just a major opponent of Marxism.
02:15:36
Speaker
He was a major opponent of Diatopia. So he probably would be like, yeah, he would be saying like, it's not real. Because his basic thing is like, you lay out an idea for utopia, that's great. But someone will always dissent. So what do you do with that dissenter? That that's, yeah, and that's, that's kind of what happens in the in the show. And the basic answer is we kill them. Yeah, that's what he said.
02:15:59
Speaker
Well, because in the miniseries, Lee Crab, or sorry, Cyrus Crab strands everybody in the cave and then flees, but then he gets attacked by a giant anglerfish and dies. So it's sort of like... He's not Crab, though. He has a different name. No, he is. He's Cyrus Crab. He's Lee Crab's son. He says that.
02:16:18
Speaker
That's why I tell you, this is a sequel.
Conclusion: Original Books vs. Adaptations
02:16:20
Speaker
This is the next- Yeah, but we were talking before and you said, he's not crab. But I guess what you meant to, what you were trying to convey was he's not the crab. He's not Lee crab, the first crab in the book. Yeah, he's a different crab. He's a different crab. He's a crab of a different color. Yeah. So he's a crab. He's like a handsome crab.
02:16:42
Speaker
a handsome crab. He's like a blade runner coat a little bit, right? Yeah. He's talking like this the whole time. And he's got, he's always has something like any guy in a full suit or whatever full dress standing by the coast with what, you know, by the, you don't trust that guy.
02:17:04
Speaker
Well, speaking of the Dickens thing, he's walking with a cane, and I think they made him a little Fagan-ish, like in terms of being like a- Not the anti-Semitic part. But then, and then there's also a part towards the end when the pterodactyls are attacking because they're going nuts, and this woman is like trying to lead, who like has the orphanage, is like, everybody, all the kids come here. And then she goes, Oliver! And then a pterodactyl picks up a boy and flies away.
02:17:36
Speaker
And that made me laugh. Well, what about the Skybacks, the commander guy? Oh, my God. He's like someone from an... You had six months before you completed your training. He's like someone from an Oliver Stone movie. Oh, my God. Or a video game. Or a video game. Hey, listen. I am smarter than you. Or you are more like a Sylvester Stallone or something. He's so monotone. Oh, my God.
02:17:54
Speaker
Ha ha ha!
02:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, you will understand one day. That thing where I have to be so invested in your miniseries and show that I have to understand that I have to understand some day what Dinotopia means to me. I'm like, meanwhile, I'm like thinking, do I have homework tonight that I should have been doing? And I'm watching this show for like 10 year olds.
02:18:27
Speaker
And nothing, has anything happened? Has the plot advanced? No, nothing's happened? No, nothing happened. That whole sky, like every scene, that's an interesting point. Like you could run down and go, did that have to happen? But I like watching a scene and going, this is in real time. I could be with the characters right now.
02:18:48
Speaker
They could do like the seven up documentaries and every seven years just go back to Dinotopia and be like, yeah, you know, I'm a teacher now. I had my days as a scumbag. Right. I believe Gurney. Yeah, I read the Financial Times. Yes, I am seven years old and I own stock and 12 companies.
02:19:10
Speaker
No, I think Gurney liked the film as far as I know. I mean, I think that, like you said, it is fun to see this stuff realized. It's fun to be like, oh, that's Waterfall City. But I wish they had actually just adapted the book or just found a different way to incorporate stuff. And just made it shorter.
02:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it has a bit of the Black Cauldron thing where they went overboard, but not in the right way. Like, this is not enough character explanation. What I will say about the Black Cauldron, I think people think that they're gonna like it.
02:19:49
Speaker
because they're like, oh, like this kind of dark 70s Disney movie and you got this horn king stuff. This is going to be really interesting, like a lost gem. And it's not, it's not good. You want it to be better than it is because like the theme of it or the things around it look cool and interesting. Well, thank you, Andy, for coming to discuss Dinotopia with me. Thanks for having me, Trevor. It was great. Thank you, Andy, for exploring Dinotopia with me.
02:20:18
Speaker
And thank you for listening to Letters and Legends. This podcast is produced by me, Trevor Maloof, copyright 2023. Tune in for more soon. Goodbye.