Join us as we take a look back at some of the stand-out prehistoric film this side of the first century AD...
The Land Before Time
Studio: Universal
Original Release Date: November 18, 1988
Some prehistoric films feature bad-ass, limb-tearing dinos, while others – chiefly, the animated ones – feature the cute-and-cuddly variety of man-eating reptiles. In The Land Before Time, a young dinosaur named Littlefoot sets out with his mother in search of the Great Valley, a place where food, water and precious resources are in abundance for the dinosaur world. But when, in the custom of animated films, Littlefoot's mother is killed by the villainous T-Rex, he must journey alone through the wilderness, making friends, searching for his loved-one, Cera, and planning the defeat of the "Sharptooth" who killed his mother. With great animation and a touching, if somewhat familiar story, The Land Before Time presented a wide variety of dinosaurs for kids to enjoy without all the grue and gore of the next film on our list…
Jurassic Park
Studio: Universal
Original Release Date: June 11, 1993
If you were looking for a harmless little tour of prehistoric Earth, look again because there's something wrong over at Jurassic Park. What must have seemed like such a good idea on paper pretty quickly went horribly wrong when the local wildlife decided to run amuck. Sure, the triceratops or the brontosaurus were pretty friendly, but you let one little T-Rex and a few raptors out of their cages, and damn, doesn't all hell just break loose? Steven Spielberg's dino-action masterpiece set the standard for the use of CG back in the day before the tech was everywhere, providing audiences with a terrifying and intensely real look at a world that had captured our collective imaginations since childhood.
King Kong
Studio: Universal
Original Release Date: April 7, 1933 / December 14, 2005
While King Kong has certainly appeared on screen multiple times throughout cinematic history, the original 1933 film and Peter Jackson's more recent remake offer equally thrilling and wildly imaginative scenarios of a mysterious island sheltered from time. While the films may not be, strictly speaking, prehistoric, Skull Island has always been essentially a location unhindered by man, left to the fantasies of evolution, where dinosaurs persist and apes can grow to magnificent size. In that sense, King Kong is much like the next film on our list, a snapshot of an earlier time, a place left to its own devices, capable of dreaming itself into existence and creating a space where even a monster can fall in love.
The Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Original Release Date: December 16, 1959
An adaptation of the classic Jules Vern novel, Henry Levin's The Journey to the Center of the Earth, released in 1959, was originally celebrated for its remarkable special effects. Following Professor Oliver Lindenbrook and his group of fellow explorers, the film offers audiences an adventure that leads to the very heart of the planet itself, unveiling a fantastical world including underground oceans, alien planet life and overgrown reptiles, much like dinosaurs. The universe at the center of the Earth feels much like Skull Island in King Kong, a place where early, pre-historic existence was preserved well enough to take a bizarre left turn, developing on its own imaginative way.
Dinosaur
Studio: Disney
Original Release Date: May 19, 2000
Dinsey's Dinosaur shares a number of narrative similarities with The Land Before Time, tracking the journey of a pack of dinos across the wasteland in search of a better, safer home. Presented using a combination of live-action backgrounds and fully-CG dinosaurs, the film was originally intended to play without dialogue, communicating the story through visuals and action alone. While dialogue was added to the film prior to its release, Dinosaur offered a beautifully realized vision of what the world may have looked like back in the time of pre-historic man, so long as you don't take away points for the talking dinos. We're pretty sure they couldn't converse like that, right?
T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX)
Studio: IMAX
Original Release Date: October 23, 1998
T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous had done something similar to Dinosaur back in 1998, offering viewers a fully 3-D IMAX experience and replicating the world of the dinosaurs through computer generated imagery. But where Dinosaur provided a family-film adventure, T-Rex aimed to give audiences a more educational experience, taking the daughter of a paleontologist back in time to experience the entire catalogue of dinosaur heavy-hitters. The size and scope of the format, coupled with the 3-D presentation, makes this otherwise lackluster film a worthwhile addition to this list, if only because it captured the attention and imaginations of kids everywhere while imparting some worthwhile education on a species that seems, at times, almost mythical.
One Million Years B.C.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Original Release Date: February 21, 1967
You might know One Million Years B.C. more for the poster of a scantily clad Raquel Welsh than for the movie itself or for the classic tagline: "Travel back through time and space to the edge of man's beginnings... Discover a savage world whose only law was lust!" Featuring giant dinosaurs, giant spiders, giant turtles and giant lizards, the film definitely takes the point-of-view that in the time of the cavemen, almost every animal imaginable was 10 times its actual size. One Million Years B.C. follows a caveman by the name of Tumack and his love interest Loana, as Tumack attempts to defeat the evil leader of a tribe from which he'd just been banished. Fortunately, yes, he does find a sufficient amount of lust along the way.
The Clan of the Cave Bear
Studio: Warner Bros.
Original Release Date: January 17, 1986
While severely lacking in massive animals or dino-sized lizards, The Clan of the Cave Bear does take a somewhat serious look at the world of early man. Presenting the story of Ayla, a Cro-Magnon female torn from her family after a violent earthquake, Clan is based upon a celebrated series of novels written by Jean M. Auel that examines the differences between Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals. Staring Daryl Hannah in make-up not so dissimilar from her character in Blade Runner, the film succeeds at being both campy and legitimately dramatic, creating a worthwhile vision of the distant, prehistoric past.
10,000 B.C.
Studio: Warner Bros.
Original Release Date: March 5, 2008
We can all fully admit that 10,000 B.C., Roland Emmerich's lackluster epic, wasn't a particularly good film. Actually, to be honest, it kinda sucked. But once you free yourself from the burden of quality, you can start to admit that, at the very least, the film offered the best-looking version of prehistoric man we've seen in quite some time. Massive fight scenes, mammoths, tigers, warring tribes and early pyramids makes for a fanciful version of history, but seeing as how nobody's given us a good caveman-slash-dinosaur movie in quite awhile, we've gotta make do with what we've got, right?
Ice Age
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Original Release Date: March 12, 2002
While Ice Age does adhere to the typical formula of a group of animals heading toward greener pastures, unlike the other two family films on this list, the cast consists not of dinosaurs, but of prehistoric animals and the tone is considerably more slapstick. Ice Age doesn't quite get around to the dinosaurs until the upcoming third film in the series, but keeping the focus on the familiar band of friends – sloths, mammoths, squirrels, brontops and smilodons – the film avoids the Lion King-esque story of a boy separated from his clan and instead focuses on the friendships and the broad, comedic hilarity that arises along their journey.
