Thursday, July 26, 2012

Aliens vs. Dinosaurs: Which Side Are You On?

Two of my favorite things going back as far as I can remember: Dinosaurs & Aliens.
What's not to like?
Apparently, each other!

I ran across this recently and it sounds awesome:  Aliens vs. Dinosaurs.

Follow that link for more details, but the pedigree looks impressive and the idea has a lot of meat to it.
Despite the name, which sounds like a low-budget movie for the Sci Fi channel (which changed to 'SyFy' in solidarity with Illiterates United), it is a lot more than aliens blasting dinos who in turn rip aliens in half.

The premise is more of an exodus than an invasion.  An alien race on the edge of extinction with no choice left but to make a life on Earth, 65 million years ago, must either eliminate the dinosaurs or be eliminated themselves.  I assume it will be explained why there couldn't have been coexistence. The dinosaurs in the story are more than what we believe: they have a higher intelligence than we would expect and have a rudimentary culture.

This opens up a lot of moral grey-areas that is pretty rare in the genre for movies.  Already it is a lot more philosophically complex than the likes of Avatar. It also opens up the door to question assumptions we have about the long past of our planet.  A billion years plus is a very long time for complex life, and it is a guarantee that we don't know the extent of the species that existed and everything that happened.
Makes for some interesting questions.

When I was in 5th grade, I remember we had an assignment, to write and illustrate a children's book, which would be given to one of the first grade classes.  The book I wrote was about an alien in a spaceship who came to Earth at the time of the Dinosaurs. Lost & not knowing how to get back, he had to make friends with a dinosaur, which wasn't easy since they terrified him.  Not the exact plot, but I think someone should cut me a royalty check.

Apparently there will be a series of movies as well as graphic novels.
The first of the graphic novels is already available. Amazon has it here.

Of course this got my gaming-mind going into overdrive.  
This is rich for the tabletop and mixing genres of miniatures.  

Check out the first episode of the animated movie below.

Enjoy!
(Sorry about the dang ad- Yahoo's fault- but the version on YouTube doesn't have the credits and art at the end, so I figured it was worth it, just tune out for the first 11 seconds)


So Aliens vs. Dinosaurs:Which Side Are You On?  Which Side Are You On?

10 comments:

S. L. Hennessy said...

I guess I'd say aliens, because dinosaurs don't have the best track record - extinction-wise.

What about dinoaliens (alienosaurs?). That would be the ultimate powerhouse.

Thantsants said...

Got to be the dino's - I love an underdog.

Go Earth reptiles!

Unknown said...

I don't think it's beyond the pale that dino's had a culture or that they had a complex language. The elephant is believed to have a culture that is ancient and it is believed that they pass this on throughout generations in the oral tradition.

Fun ideas to play with. Now I want to be able to buy well sculpted dino's at a reasonable price.

Michael Awdry said...

Oh no, I feel another distraction coming on! Great fun, but I have a wonderful image of a T-Rex trying to apply war paint with arms that just don't quite reach -Doh!

Chris said...

Too cool, I definitely want this to be a major movie for next summer.

Simon Quinton said...

It sounds great. No idea which to choose between mind its quiet a cool concept

MrLee said...

Dinosaurs are where its at.. though the idea of Dino's fighting with stolen Alien tech.. mmm.. maybe they are not extinct, but instead just left before the world became a ball of ice? Theories abound!

Bill said...

Dinosaurs, Go for the home team. To take Mr. Lee's concept one further. Dino's win, take the alien tech and escape the planet to avoid the Ice Age. What if they came back. Gazillion year old culture with super advanced tech vs us. I think they'd be Columbus and we the native Americans.
Sweet.

Paul O'G said...

I'm with the Terrans whatever their shape or size!

Laughing Ferret said...

SL: I did run across some "evolved-dino" concepts when looking into this, but I thought it was much too hominoid-centric. Land of the Lost already covered it ;) but true alien-dinos.. that could be fun!

Anne: Yeah, I don't think it's hard to imagine there could have been some saurian culture for some of the species. For good dinos in minis at 'big scale' I use the toys, can find them on Amazon and Reaper, I used some in games- can find under the Venus tag or search function for 'Big Game Hunt'. Also, this company has a lot of good dino minis:
http://achesoncreations.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=57&Itemid=1

Bill: wonder what a species could accomplish in tens of millions of years. they may be creating their own new universes by that point.

I think I have to side with the dinos on this one :)

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