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I was just trying to be funny last week with all that Scientology subliminal conspiracy nonsense about Battlefield Earth.* How could a religion that bases its members’ spirituality on the size of their monetary contributions, whose ranks are top-loaded with rich movie stars, be any kind of threat to the typical middle-class, paycheck-to-paycheck filmgoer? And everybody knows that rich folks have personal assistants to taste their food and preview their entertainments for them just in case, so they’re not really at much risk either. But there is another, truly insidious plot afoot in Hollywood, one that involves dollar figures with obscene strings of zeros and at least one documented death, aimed at the most helpless, naïve, impressionable segment of society (besides cheerleaders, E-Bay browsers, and non-alcoholic beer drinkers): our children.
Reading up on Disney’s latest annual high-zoot kid-oriented summer animation event, Dinosaur, what caught my attention more than the ubiquitous usage of phrases like “state of the art” and “quantum leap in computer graphics” was the unabashed flinging of estimates on the project’s budget. Credible sources have claimed that the costs of this prehistoric, transcontinental epic, which required an untold number of geek-hours to place the latest iteration of silicon-generated characters on panoramic vistas filmed around the world, anywhere from $150 million to $350 million. Let’s spell that out for full effect: $350,000,000. Even the conservative guesses make it by far the most expensive children’s move ever; likely it’s the most costly production yet of any kind.
All those zeros could hardly keep from entering my mind as I sat through the film, which is essentially a slicker, glossier retelling of a story that will be painfully familiar to anyone whose saurian-obsessed offspring made them run the video for The Land Before Time continually for a week when little Catelynne or Jayson had the mumps: a bunch of lizards go on a quest. This time a giant herbivorous iguanodon named Aladar (voice provided by D. B. Sweeney) miraculously survives prenatal eggnapping and winds up being raised by a tribe of lemurs. Aladar grows up thinking he’s part of the monkey family, and despite his size gets along famously with his monkey parents (Ossie Davis and Alfre Woodard) and brother (Max Casella, from Ed Wood and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”). When a big rock falls out of the sky and causes a calamity of local but not global proportions, they fall in with a herd of like-dieting creatures of all sizes migrating to safe territory, suffering starvation, dehydration, and constant threat from nasty predators along the way.
End of story. At least the dinosaurs don’t form a chorus line and sing “If I Only Had a Brain (Instead of These Pitiful Little Ganglia Located Along My Spinal Chord)”. The animation is certainly gee-whiz quality, if rather colorless and suffering from the usual Disney predilection for anthropomorphism; look through the reptilian cast and you’ll find at least one character who reminds you of your grandmother’s nosy next-door neighbor or the cowlick-plagued guy who balances your tires at Wal-Mart. Otherwise, unless the novelty of hearing the biggest of the lot, a 150-ton matron named Baylene, prattle on with the fastidious voice of Joan Plowright can hold your attention for 90 minutes, Dinosaur may be a chore for adults to sit through. It’s got all the smarm of The Lion King (not surprising, since the two share a scriptwriter) but none of the Elton John.
Which makes me wonder – how in the world does Disney expect to recoup their investment? This will pack some kids in, sure, but probably nothing like Pokemon. And Disney’s stretched pretty thin these days, what with two more California theme parks in the works, a running feud between subsidiary ABC and the cable people, and that Minnie vs. Goofy paternity suit. So who’s gonna pony up $350 mil?**
Little by little, a nagging suspicion took shape. How come the plant-eaters all talk, but their pursuers, from pesky raptors to gigantic nightmarish carnotaurs, can only hiss, growl, and burp? Why are the herbivores mostly gentle, romantic, intelligent, and self-sacrificing, while the carnivores – nevermind that God made them too, and that predation is crucial to the food chain – are nothing but mindless, sexless, ambulatory meat-grinders? Like a tidal wave of low-cholesterol canola oil it suddenly hit me:
Dinosaur must be financed by the International Vegetarian Conspiracy. (Yeah, I know that McDonald’s has a Happy Meal tie-in – “Eat it before it eats you.” -- but have you ever actually had one of their burgers analyzed? From what I hear, there’s a reason you can never find cardboard in a dumpster anywhere within a block of Golden Archland.) They are not a force to be trifled with, having enormous human, financial, and political assets. They try to put on a guileless, concerned, activist front -- don’t be surprised if next summer there’s a Dinosaur musical on Broadway to take the place of Cats, with Andrew Lloyd Weber songs and k. d. lang as Baylene – but they are capable of operating with extreme prejudice. I mean, do you really believe the grip who got electrocuted while filming backgrounds in the San Bernadino Valley in February of 1998 just “accidentally” brushed a power line, or is it more likely he was spotted with a chili dog in his lunchbox?
Geez, where’s Art Bell now that we really need him? C
*No, you may not see the deposit receipts for my new Cayman Islands bank account.
**Believe it or not, before this project was turned into a computer-generated affair, it was in development by director Paul Verhoeven, know for such ultraviolent fare as Robocop and Starship Troopers. His version would have been very different, a bloody stop-motion cartoon much less compatible with Disney’s soy-based sensibilities than his own…but certainly less costly.
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