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Gentle giants, cuddly friends, vicious monsters, deadly dragons: Even the earliest film depictions of dinosaurs evidence our complicated relationship with Earth’s prehistoric thunder lizards. Windsor McCay’s puckish Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) might be stubborn, but she’s unlikely to eat you, and might even dance if you ask politely.
D.W. Griffith’s Brute Force, also from 1914, doesn’t bother with the distinction between the age of the dinosaurs and the age of humans—which is a recurring bit of willful ignorance. Who doesn’t kinda want to ride a dinosaur? Buster Keaton’s Three Ages introduced more cave-people into the world of dinosaurs, while 1925's The Lost World truly brought them to onscreen life. (The latter drew a distinction between the friendlier-seeming vegetarian dinosaurs and their carnivorous cousins, a conceit that’s held up through Jurassic Park and beyond.)
There’s lots of variety in the dinosaurs-on-film genre, with movies featuring dinosaur cops, robot dinosaurs, and any number of entirely made-up dinosaur-ish creatures. Before the release of Jurassic World Rebirth, the 7th movie movie in the definitely not extinct franchise, let's consider other cinematic depictions of dinos that don't have the word "Jurassic" in the title.
The Lost World (1925)
Not the first dinosaur movie in cinema history, but the first totally stun in terms of story and special effects, with stop motion animation from Willis O’Brien, who’d go on to work even greater magic on King Kong eight years later. Closely following the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who has a cameo), the film sees Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) and company travel to a South American plateau that’s been cut off from the rest of the world and the advance of time, preserving an broad range of dinosaurs from the cretaceous and Jurassic periods (Pteranodons, Brontosauruses, T-Rexes, Allosauruses, and a Triceratops or two coexist the on the all-but-inaccessible plateau alongside ancient human species). As with Kong, the real trouble starts when the scientists attempt to bring a specimen back to a modern city; London, in this case. You can stream the 1925 version of The Lost World on Tubi, Kanopy, and MGM+ or rent it from Prime Video.
Walking With Dinosaurs (1999, 2025)
Even 25 years later, the original Walking with Dinosaurs remains the gold standard in dino-themed documentaries, its primary innovation being that it relies on the formula established for live-action nature shows, allowing us to observe the long-extinct (computer generated) creatures in the wild. Though much of the science has been superseded (and some of it was speculative even at the time), the series remains watchable for the way it crafts narratives around individual dinosaurs. (Take the second episode, which follows the life of a female diplodocus from hatching.) The result is something more immersive and compelling than the average dino documentary, with expensive visual effects that hold up reasonably well. The 2025 reboot uses a similar format, but splits time between digital reenactments and modern-day segments with paleontologists. The results are mixed: it's nice to see actual scientists get screen time, but the back-and-forth between past and present pulls you right out of the narrative. Still, advances in technology since 1999 make the living dinosaur segments that much more stunning. You can buy the original Walking with Dinosaurs on Prime Video here, and find the new series here.
The Land Before Time (1988)
The emphasis in Don Bluth’s gorgeously animated journey to the time of the dinosaurs isn’t in striking terror or even generating awe, but instead in reimagining a prehistoric world from a child’s point of view. Sweet, but not without moments of tragedy, it’s a brisk and charming trip to the past. The quality of the series (with 13 sequels and a short-lived TV show) falls off rather quickly, so you could be forgiven for just watching this one and calling it a day. You can rent The Land Before Time from Prime Video.
Prehistoric Planet (2022 – 2023, ten parts)
The indefatigable David Attenborough (96 when this was produced) hasn’t slowed down even a little bit—he's got two movies out so far this year and is working on a new Blue Planet series. The natural historian’s late brother, actor/director Richard Attenborough, is probably best known to modern audiences as John Hammond of the Jurassic Park series, lending David’s dinosaur-themed projects an added bit of poignance, especially as Jurassic Park/World returns to cinemas yet again. He’s in top form in this Apple TV+ effects-heavy, narrating a series of vignettes related to the creatures (large, and slightly less large) living on Earth in the Late Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago. It was the first major dinosaur-themed series from the BBC in over a decade, and provides a very welcome update in both modern science (check out those feathered Velociraptors) and visual effects. You can stream Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+.
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