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T-Rex - Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX)

T-Rex - Back to the Cretaceous (IMAX)

List Price: $14.97
Your Price: $13.47
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great for children who aren't fanatics about dinos
Review: Clean and decent entertainment. Saw it on the IMAX screen with a 10 year old boy who loves the dino's. He wasn't thrilled but I (33 yrs old and sick of shoot 'em ups) thought it was clean decent and even slightly educational. My dvd collection is 200 movies strong and I will add this for entertainment value for adults and children alike. (Although I know it won't be as grand as on the IMAX screen.)

Worth the under $$$ price tag. An even better value at the used prices.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great for children who aren't fanatics about dinos
Review: Clean and decent entertainment. Saw it on the IMAX screen with a 10 year old boy who loves the dino's. He wasn't thrilled but I (33 yrs old and sick of shoot 'em ups) thought it was clean decent and even slightly educational. My dvd collection is 200 movies strong and I will add this for entertainment value for adults and children alike. (Although I know it won't be as grand as on the IMAX screen.)

Worth the under $$$ price tag. An even better value at the used prices.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Short, but entertaining
Review: From the bulk of reviews on this site I gather most people don't realize that IMAX is about presentation and style rather than story and content. Shot on vertical 70mm film the reels in the projection booth take up a huge amount of space, thus the running time of IMAX movies tends to be kept to around 45-50 minutes. Thus the format lends itself more towards the documentary/short movie genre. Most of the movies are factual but sometimes original stories come along. T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous is one of them.

It came out in 1998 and when I was at the Trocadero IMAX-3D cinema in London I had to choose between this movie and another called Across the Sea of Time. I chose the latter. Which is a shame coz the dinosaurs and huge shots of this movie would have looked better in 3D.

T-Rex begins with an impressive opening shot of the camera swooping over the Arizona desert, which still looks great even on a widescreen TV instead of the huge IMAX screen. There's a hefty narration from the lead actress conveying relevant information about dinosaurs. In this respect the film feels a bit like a 10-year-old's educational program. But being familiar with IMAX movies I was expecting this. I think too many people were expecting a Jurassic Park variant.

Tho I would have expected a few more dinosaurs. In the 45 minute running time there wasn't much dinosaur action. Though there was a good amount of story that I did get into. Plus the movie has a great score by William Ross. He released a promo CD of this score but it's impossible to find.

Hey, I was entertained and I thot the brief story was quite okay. The horribly slanderous reviews on this site really baffle me. The IMAX format does not work well on DVD, you have to see these movies in the cinema. But if you have a good sound system then the DVD is still worth it.

The DVD is in 1.33:1 full frame (they are shown theatrically at 1.44:1 so there isn't much modification to the framing) with a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack that is quite impressive. A slight featurette and an IMAX movies trailer are also included.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disappointing T REX film
Review: I have been collecting IMAX films, with about 35 in my collection. This DVD version of T REX is one of the worst. The emphasis is not so much on the T REX and what we think we know about it, but on the special effects of going back in time to see the T REX. Unique to this IMAX film is that the film is acted out instead of narrated. The problem we have is poor continuity shots. Instead of seeing someone simply walk through a door, we see someone walk through time, but with no continuity as to how the person went back in time, and then back to the present. We have to figure out what the film maker intended, and this distracts us from catching the story line. The film is supposed to have the best special effects. I thought Jurassic Park had better, but then we learn little about the T-REX anyway, so what is the point of the movie? It is never explained to us, for instance, what the small hands on the R REX were used for. Finally, we are told this film is based on the latest scientific evidence. Right. The evolutionary concept is tossed out as if its the answer to everything, as is the span of millions of years, and everything has just worked out, and we have a clear picture of the past. The reality is that basic questions are not covered. For instance, if the earth is as old as this film says it is--millions and millions of years--and we evolved from one species to the next, then where are all the transitionary forms of animals--things that are part fish and part lizard, for instance? They should be as common as houseflys, but there are none to be found,and this should raise some serious questions for those who so easily promote evolution as a catch all theory of life. But this is not even addressed in this movie. In the end, we don't learn anything new about the T REX. The emphasis is on the trip and not the T REX itself. A major dissapointment. On the plus side, the acting seems natural, and the opening scene has some nice IMAX visuals, but other than this, with most IMAX DVDs selling for well over ..., and this one for well under ..., you get what you pay for, except in this case, its border line. A disappointing film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Terrible, about 10 seconds of actual dinosaurs in it...
Review: I saw this at an Imax theatre, I was thinking what awesome potential seeing dinosaurs in 3D would provide. Boy was I wrong, there was around 10 seconds of CG dinosaurs in this, and they were badly animated. The rest is the most banal story imagineable about a girl and her quest to find an egg or something (I forget, it was _that_ dull).

Check out Walking with Dinosaurs instead.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Saw this in the Smithsonian
Review: I saw this in the Smithsonian with my kids, and even with the novelty of seeing a movie in 3D it was *boring*. It was a complete waste of time and money.

If you are looking for eye candy, there are very few scenes that actually have "live" dinosaurs. If you are looking for science, and you're over 5, I doubt you'll learn anything new.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Saw this in the Smithsonian
Review: I saw this in the Smithsonian with my kids, and even with the novelty of seeing a movie in 3D it was *boring*. It was a complete waste of time and money.

If you are looking for eye candy, there are very few scenes that actually have "live" dinosaurs. If you are looking for science, and you're over 5, I doubt you'll learn anything new.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Definitely for the kids
Review: I saw this title when it was at the IMAX theater. Not as much meat to it as Allosaurus and this feature was made for the big screen. The childish plot centers more on the child's relationship with her father than focusing on the dinosaur. If you want a feature that is much more dinosaur oriented but "Allosaurus" or "Walking with Dinosaurs."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Saw it in IMAX - Don't bother
Review: I saw this when it was at the local IMAX. Don't even bother. Poor story line. Too much time on the young girl. Just wasn't worth it.

Better would be to see the Discovery Video series: Walking with Dinosaurs (1,2,3) or When Dinosaurs Walked America.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Where are the Dinosours?
Review: I suppose that a young girl's hallucinatory wanderings (after she gets a whiff of petrified dinosaur egg dust) was meant to be entertaining and informative. Her after hours ‘trip’ through a natural history museum trying to justify her T-REX laid eggs theory turns out to be just boring. Wow, look at all these plants. Whoa! Hey! We do actually get to see a couple (five or so) of the critters for a few minutes, and in their original 3D IMAX presentation they might have been quite startling leaping out at you from the screen. I wanted to know more about dinosaurs, not get 3D thrills which were confined to the original IMAX presentation. These dinosaurs don’t have much impact on the home video screen. The lone T-REX even turns out to be friendly enough to get a pat on the nose from our tripped out heroine. And wait! The petrified rock hatches! Now that’s really informative science for the kids, I’ve been around for 6 decades and even I had not known that petrified eggs could actually hatch (and of course the hatchling leaps out at you from the screen). Maybe I should get to the museum more often. I guess that might make 6 dinosaurs in the movie with two T-REXs.....


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