Rex Appeal

A one-shot BBC TV Documentary from 2011 about the history of Dinosaur Media. Discusses several stock tropes present in dino-movies, and reflects on their cultural importance in a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek way.

Thoroughly talks about:


 * Gertie the Dinosaur
 * The Lost World
 * King Kong and its R Emake
 * Godzilla and its sequels and remake
 * Gorgo
 * One Million Years BC
 * The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
 * The Valley of Gwangi
 * Jurassic Park and sequels

... and also features a stock of other, often pretty obscure productions, most of which are best left extinct.

Appearing tropes

 * Computer Generated Images: The latest method of bringing dinosaurs and other monsters to life. The program also has a brief Take That moment at it, or more specifically at the '05 King Kong R Emake, saying that the movie suffered from an overdose of over-the-top CGI scenes.
 * Cultural Translation: Gojira's brash, American Re Cut. Also the later remake.
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: The main theme.
 * Family-Unfriendly Death: The T. rex's defeat at the hands of King Kong. Some of the Talking Heads found it too disturbing.
 * Feathered Fiend: Velociraptors. The real ones.
 * Fight Scene Failure: "The fight between the ape and the dinosaur in Unknown Island. It has to be seen to be believed!"
 * Frazetta Man, and their contrast with sexy cave-women.
 * Fur Bikini: Raquel Welch could not be left out.
 * Lost World: One of the more commonly used settings in early movies.
 * Nubile Savage
 * One Million BC: Discusses the time the "genre" was at its peak, and also how the overflow of Fan Service and increasingly diminishing roles of dinosaurs lead to its downfall.
 * People in Rubber Suits: Godzilla, Gorgo, and tons of other, forgettable monsters the Narrator just calls "Crapasauruses".
 * Prehistoria: The "inventive" new setting that dethroned the Lost World, but brought about a gigantic Anachronism Stew. Again, the cave-woman made audiences gloss over this.
 * Prehistoric Monster: What Gertie, Gorgo and Ray Harryhausen's creatures were definitely not.
 * Raptor Attack: The program goes on to point out that real-life raptors looked nothing like their Jurassic Park cousins, but even so, faux-raptors are still cool and scary.
 * Sequelitis: Mostly in reference to the Godzilla and Jurassic Park movies, and how none of these sequels managed to overshadow the original.
 * Slurpasaur: Strangely an avoided topic.
 * Special Effect Failure: Films with poor SFX are mercilessly mocked.
 * Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying: Briefly touched upon, while JP is being analyzed.
 * Stock Dinosaurs
 * Stop Motion: A lost form of art in dinosaur media.
 * Tyrannosaurus Rex: It's almost everywhere.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: Dinosaur movies are all about spectacle. The documentary can thus also be seen as an overview on special effects history.