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The skull of Torvosaurus.

When I want to watch a movie but am not sure what I’m in the mood for, I usually pop in one of the Jurassic Park DVDs. I am not going to argue that they are classic cinema, but it is pretty fun to see dinosaurs “brought back to life” through puppetry and CGI, even if the series became increasingly silly. Tonight I put on the second film, The Lost World, but as I did so I wondered about the fate of the franchise. Would there be a Jurassic Park IV, and if so, what dinosaurs would be in it?

There is a sort of unspoken expectation that each subsequent Jurassic Park film will feature new dinosaurs. Never mind that the introduction of new species has not always made sense; we want more dinosaurs! As such I have made a short list of five dinosaurs I would love to see should the series be brought back from extinction:

1) Therizinosaurus

This is probably the coolest dinosaur that most people have not heard of. Standing about 20 feet tall with eight-foot-long arms tipped in enormous three-foot-long claws, Therizinosaurus was one of the most bizarre dinosaurs to have ever lived. It had a small head, long neck, and huge gut for digesting plants, yet it walked on its hind legs and was more closely related to “raptors” than any other herbivorous dinosaurs. It may have even been covered in filament-like protofeathers. If the creators of JP IV really want to wow their audience, there is no better choice than Therizinosaurus.

2) Torvosaurus

The Jurassic Park franchise already has its share of large predators (like Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus), but what’s one more? Millions of years before the first tyrannosaurs evolved, Torvosaurus was one of the largest predators of the Late Jurassic (about 161 to 145 million years ago). It had a long jaw full of huge teeth and robust forearms tipped in large claws. It can’t compete with Tyrannosaurus in terms of popularity, but I bet it would be just as terrifying to whatever humans are pitted against the dinosaurs in the next installment.

3) Nigersaurus

The only sauropod dinosaurs that have appeared in the Jurassic Park series so far are Brachiosaurus and Mamenchisaurus (Thanks, zeta), so why not add another, stranger one into the mix? Nigersaurus lived during the middle of the Cretaceous, about 119 to 99 million years ago, and it was unlike the classic sauropods the public is familiar with. It was relatively small, had a short neck, and had a head shaped like a vaccuum cleaner. It would definitely be something audiences have never seen before on screen.

4) The “Last Chance Ceratopsian”

Triceratops made appearances in the first two Jurassic Park films but really only had the equivalent of a walk-on. Not only do I think that old “three-horned face” should get more screen time, but that a new horned dinosaur should be introduced. This past summer I saw the skull of what is informally being called the “Last Chance Ceratopsian,” a horned dinosaur with a big nose, two small brow horns, and a big frill that sports to large spikes. Word on the street is that it will even have a pretty cool sounding name, and what better way to make the public aware of it than to give it at least a cameo in the next movie?

5) Raptorex

During the first two Jurassic Park films the hapless humans had to worry about the huge Tyrannosaurus and the smaller Velociraptor. For the next installment I think the filmmakers should split the difference and introduce Raptorex, a relative of Tyrannosaurus that was about the size of the “raptors” in the films. Maybe it would have more trouble opening doors with its puny arms, but I think the “tiny tyrant” would be a fine choice for the next film’s main antagonist.

Obviously my list is biased towards recently-discovered and bizarre dinosaurs, and I’m sure you have ideas of your own. In the poll below vote for which of the above dinosaurs you would most like to see in Jurassic Park IV, or feel free to introduce your own picks in the comments.

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For the past several years the Walking With Dinosaurs live show has been enthralling audiences around the world with its life-size dinosaur puppets, but next week will see the opening of another impressive dino-spectacle that will soon be touring the United States.

Called “Darwin the Dinosaur,” the show is more concerned with good storytelling than scientific accuracy. After a scientist creates a dinosaur named “Darwin,” he quickly learns that he needs to give his predatory creation a heart. Darwin then meets a variety of other creatures, including another dinosaur who is not so friendly to the scientist who made Darwin. (There is even, believe it or not, a dinosaur lightsaber battle.) And the best part? The entire play is done in the dark. All of the characters are puppets made out of glowing wires, an artistic feat that is more difficult than it might sound at first.

The play will open on October 3 in Kansas, eventually followed by a national tour. I can’t wait to see it.

Cover of The World of Kong, courtesy Pocket Books

For the 2005 remake of King Kong, the special effects team at the Weta Workshop imagined what dinosaurs would be like if they survived into modern times. In fact, the artists created an entire menagerie that ended up filling the pages of The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, including many creatures that did not make it into the film. Of those who did grace the silver screen, though, none was more imposing than the enormous imaginary descendant of Tyrannosaurus called “Vastatosaurus rex.”

In one particularly memorable scene from the 2005 movie, a trio of Vastatosaurus take on King Kong, and now Universal Studios Hollywood wants to place visitors right in the middle of this titanic confrontation. According to the LA Times, the director of King Kong, Peter Jackson, is working with the theme park to create a new attraction in which guests are placed right in the middle of a battle between the giant gorilla and toothy dinosaurs. The ride will feature a wraparound screen, tram cars that react to what is on screen, and plenty of special effects like wind, fire, and dinosaur drool. It is set to open in 2010.

The cover art for Carnosaur 3, one of the worst dinosaur movies ever made.

It is hard for me to say “no” to any movie with a dinosaur in it, so I have seen a LOT of really bad movies. For every Jurassic Park there is a multitude of cheesy movies that can only be endured if you invite some company over to make fun of the film with you. There are a few, though, that make even Jurassic Park III look like a masterpiece by comparison. Here are my picks for “The 5 Worst Dinosaur Films Ever Made”:

5: Carnosaur III (1996)

Dinosaurs vs. the military is a pretty old subgenre. Done correctly this theme could make for some pretty exciting cinema, but in Carnosaur III the filmmakers somehow managed to make it boring. What passes for a story involves a group of terrorists that accidentally hijacked a cache of genetically-engineered super dinosaurs. An American special ops team is sent in to clean up, but since the dinosaurs are said to be indestructible (the reason why is never made clear), the remainder of the film mostly involves soldiers being shredded by dinosaur puppets. The director left things open for a fourth installment, but mercifully the series was left to wither.

Goof to watch for: When our heroes blow up a mama Tyrannosaurus you can clearly see the metal “skeleton” of the small puppet used for the shot. Sometimes slow-motion explosions are less thrilling than the director hoped they would be.

4: Planet of Dinosaurs (1978)

Planet of Dinosaurs just goes to show that good special effects can’t save a film. The plot involves a group of people stranded on a distant planet going through its own Mesozoic phase. The stop-motion dinosaurs in the film, brought to life by a crew including paleo-artist Stephen Czerkas, actually looked pretty good. They were so well done for their time, in fact, that I was really hoping the dinosaurs would pick off the rest of the human characters and end the movie sooner. If you really must see this one, download the hilarious commentary from RiffTrax.com provided by the former stars of the cult classic television show Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Turning the irritation up to 11: The film’s soundtrack is among the most grating of any I have ever heard. It sounds as if the producers blew the remainder of the budget on alcohol, sat down at a synthesizer, and just jammed while in a half-drunk stupor. And the worst part? It’s so repetitive that it will be stuck in your head for days afterward.

3: Legend of the Dinosaurs (1977)

Legend of the Dinosaurs was one of the first dinosaur movies I ever saw, and when I heard that it was being re-released on DVD I made sure to check it out. I probably should have held on to my fond childhood memories and left well enough alone. Produced by Japan’s Toei Company, the film tells the story of what happens when a plesiosaur and a pterosaur (neither of which are actually dinosaurs) are loosed upon a lakeside community. More specifically, though, Legend of the Dinosaurs is a mixture of hammy acting, rubber monsters, bad dubbing, and a strange pop-jazz-funk fusion-fueled soundtrack that makes it sound as if the titular monsters are about to make some baby creatures. The ending is so depressingly abrupt that it made me check the disc afterward to make sure it did not skip over something important because of a scratch.

Most unintentionally funny moment: The killer pterosaur makes a kind of laughing sound during its raids on the lakeside village. It was apparently having a better time than I was.

2: Dinosaur Valley Girls (1996) /Dinosaur Island (1994)

Second place is tied between Dinosaur Valley Girls and Dinosaur Island, and for good reason. They are basically the same movie. Both involve what are supposed to be heroic (but actually sleazy) men discovering lost lands where scantily clad cavewomen wrestle and try to outrun dinosaurs. If you gave a dinosaur-obsessed 13-year-old boy a shoestring budget these films are probably what you would get for your money. The skeevy exploitation of the women in these films alone is enough to make them among the worst films ever made (and definitely NOT for kids!).

Creature cameo: The Tyrannosaurus in Dinosaur Island is the same one used in the Carnosaur series. I guess when you’re a low-budget dinosaur you have to find work where you can.

1: A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1991)

Truth be told, it is probably unfair for me to add this one to the list. I am not referring to the lack of any actual dinosaurs in the film, but the fact that I could not get more than 10 minutes into it before turning it off. It was AWFUL. I knew I was in over my head during the film’s introduction where, in a stereotypical “Valley Girl” accent, our heroine tells the story of how she came to be (you guessed it) “a nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell.” Civilization had been wiped out and now humans, dressed like rejects from the blacksmith’s booth at a Renaissance Fair, try to avoid monstrous puppets and stop-motion creatures. The trouble is that once you have watched even 10 minutes of it, you can’t un-watch it.

Low-budget solutions to everyday problems: The opening scenes appear to have been filmed in a local park or someone’s backyard. This should give hope to any aspiring filmmakers out there. All you need is a camera, a few friends, and a few bits of clothing from the bargain bin of a local costume shop to be a filmmaker just like the creators of this movie!

Not everyone will agree with my picks, of course, and I am sure there are plenty of other cheesy dinosaur flicks out there. What are your selections for the worst dinosaur movies ever made?

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One of the first dinosaur movies I ever saw was The Land That Time Forgot. Based upon the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name, the film followed a mixed group of British and German World War I sailors stranded in a dinosaur-infested lost world. I did not care very much about the human characters; it was the dinosaurs, brought to life via puppetry, that enthralled me. (Indeed, one of the saddest scenes in the film is when the sailors slow-blast apart a pair of oversized Styracosaurus, a kind of herbivorous horned dinosaur.)

Now The Land That Time Forgot has been adapted for film again, but this time in a direct-to-video production due out on July 28th by the American film studio The Asylum.

It is not a by-the-books retelling of Burroughs’ story or a re-make of the original film, but rather a new story that draws from both. The plot centers on a charter boat carrying a bevy of newlyweds that becomes stranded on a mysterious Caribbean island. The hapless tourists quickly find that the island is not deserted, though, and they have to find a way to escape the lost land’s prehistoric inhabitants.

According to the film’s Wikipedia entry, this new adaptation will feature a much wider array of creatures than the 1975 film. Along with old standbys like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops will be more recently-discovered dinosaurs like Carnotaurus and Therizinosaurus. The addition of extra dinosaurs does not necessarily mean that this b-movie will be good, but it couldn’t be worse than Aztec Rex, right?

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If you want to enjoy Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, you are going to have to suspend your belief for a bit. There is no use nitpicking over a children’s movie featuring talking extinct species of mammals from different places and time periods (to say nothing of saber-toothed squirrels). The latest installment of the franchise is different, however, in that it introduces the unlikely herd of mammalian heroes to an underground world populated by dinosaurs.

It all starts to go wrong when Sid the ground sloth stumbles across some enormous eggs. Feeling left out by the fact that the mammoths Manny and Ellie are expecting a baby and are about to start a new family, Sid appoints himself the mother of the eggs. (Diego, the saber-toothed cat, is having his own worries about losing his predatory edge.) These soon hatch into baby dinosaurs, but the well-intentioned Sid has no idea how to properly care for them. Needless to say the real mother of the babies is none too happy when they go missing, and being that she is a rather large Tyrannosaurus, that is bad news for the mammals. In gathering up her young ones she picks up Sid, too, and his friends set off to rescue him.

The mammals quickly find that they are out of their depth, but they get some help from a crazed survivalist weasel named Buck. Buck has only one eye due to a past encounter with a large, whitish menace he calls “Rudy.” From that point on the film settles into its search-and-rescue theme, even as Sid somehow becomes accepted by the Tyrannosaurus mother. The visuals are spectacular and the direction is great, but the dinosaurs are sometimes annoyingly over-stylized. While most of the creatures in the film are embellished in one way or another, the dinosaur designs are a bit over the top (such as small, Monolophosaurus-like predators that have quills that shiver when the dinosaurs roar).

There are even some dinosaurs that never existed. When “Rudy” finally appeared on the screen, for example, my wife leaned over and asked, “what kind of dinosaur is that?” “It’s a nothing-o-saurus,” I replied, as the monster was more of a bipedal crocodile than a dinosaur. “Rudy” is a scary villain, especially in 3D, but with so many giant predatory dinosaurs now known I would have liked to have seen an attempt at one like Giganotosaurus.

If you liked the previous two Ice Age films then you will probably like the third one. It is a “safe” movie that is not especially exciting but still is funny enough to be enjoyable (unlike this summer’s other dino film). And if you are offended at dinosaur running around with Pleistocene mammals, just remember it could be worse: humans could be riding them.

The Jurassic Park Discovery Center in Orlando, Florida. From Flickr user daryl_mitchell.

The Jurassic Park franchise has been having a rough time of it over the past few years. Jurassic Park III, released eight years ago, performed only modestly at the box office and was generally panned by critics. It is never a good sign when the audience is rooting for the dinosaurs to eat the lead actors so that the film will end sooner.

Still, the third film was enough of a success that a fourth installment was put into development. The question was where to take the franchise. Various ideas were tried out, including one involving a squad of super-smart Velociraptor trained for special ops missions, but no one could agree on a story. Then, last December, producer Kathleen Kennedy suggested that the franchise might be dropped. Michael Crichton, who wrote two novels the films were based upon, had passed away and it seemed like a good time to retire the series.

There is still some hope that the genetically-engineered dinosaurs might come back, though. A few weeks ago producer Frank Marshall mentioned that Jurassic Park IV is still up for consideration, even if he admitted that it was a “back-burner project.” The difficulty is figuring out where the films should go next, especially since the last film was so poorly regarded. The people-fleeing-from-dinosaurs-on-an-island bit has been done. The franchise needs something fresh (and not space dinosaurs), but we will have to wait and see if any writers can deliver.

When I walked into the theater to see the big-screen adaptation of Land of the Lost, I wasn’t expecting high art. Indeed, with a cast starring Will Ferrell and a story featuring dinosaurs, “ape-men,” a high-tech device that plays tunes from A Chorus Line, and Matt Lauer, the big-budget summer comedy is little more than an irreverent take on a cult classic. The problem is that it just isn’t very funny.

The plot of the film can be summed up fairly easily. The discredited “quantum paleontologist” Rick Marshall (Ferrell) is inspired to finish a machine by Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) that can detect time warps; she is a scientist who was kicked out of Cambridge for believing in Marshall’s ideas. With the device complete they go out for a field test, but this requires that they hire the services of the crude fireworks-salesman Will Stanton (Danny McBride). Together they plunge through a time warp where they quickly meet the ape-like Cha-Ka (Jorma Taccone) and their nemesis, “Grumpy” the Tyrannosaurus, along with the reptilian Sleestaks and other dinosaurs.

There is a larger plot that holds the film as a whole together, but it largely seems secondary to the film’s main purpose: providing Ferrell and McBride opportunities to ad-lib and goof around. Ferrell, at least, is not so much acting as being himself and reciting the lines given to Marshall’s character, and it is a little painful to watch him phone it in for the duration of the film. This is made even worse by the fact that there are more misses than hits when it comes to the movie’s humor. There are a few clever sight gags, like the fate of a giant crab that menaces the travelers, but many of the jokes center on bodily functions of one kind of another. Despite the presence of dinosaurs and the kid-friendliness of the source material, this is not a kids’ movie.

But, more importantly, what about the dinosaurs?

There are certainly a number of relatively minor points I could pick out, but when a critical part of your film is Will Ferrell riding a Tyrannosaurus, it might be best not to get too aggravated over scientific accuracy. Indeed, while the dinosaurs are more realistic than their stop-motion counterparts from the show, they are still embellished to have a bit of personality, and that often works well. Grumpy, in fact, was my favorite character in the entire film (but maybe that’s because he was trying to eat the unfunny folks and thus bring the movie to a quicker end).

There are two scientific points that did bug me a bit, though. During one scene we briefly see Compsognathus and non-descript “raptors,” two coelurosaurian dinosaurs closely related to birds. We now know that these dinosaurs were probably covered in feathers, and as paleontologist Thomas Holtz pointed out in his own review, it is time for Hollywood to stop showing us naked dinosaurs. Secondly, there are a LOT of predatory dinosaurs in this film, but scarcely a herbivore to be seen. The explorers would be nearly constantly running into plant-eating dinosaurs in an area with so many predators, and while the existence of at least one hadrosaur is alluded to, we never see it or it veggie-loving companions. Maybe I’m just a little sore because I wanted to see more dinosaurs, but ecology teaches us that there would have been many, many more herbivorous dinosaurs than rampaging, carnivorous ones.

While Land of the Lost might appeal to some (namely 12-year-old boys who think bathroom humor is the best kind of comedy there is), I would recommend waiting for the DVD. The idea had a lot of potential, and the visual effects team did a great job of making a strange lost world, but some of the dinosaurs had more personality than Ferrell did. Perhaps the studio execs were hoping that this movie would re-vitalize the franchise, but I think this film might mark its extinction instead.