Well, the trailer for Gladiator II promises a white rhinoceros in the amphitheatre....
You will believe a shark can roar: Zoological malpractice in Hollywood.
- Thread starter DavidBrown
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Yep, the protagonist fights a gladiator riding a rhinoceros at one point.
But a far more egregious example occurs in the same film; they hold a mock naval battle in the Colosseum (which was actually a thing; they're called naumachia), but they had great white sharks added to the water in the Colosseum.
Apparently, they were able to capture these sharks, transport them to the Colosseum, house them in water conditions that don't immediately kill them, and just have them readily available on hand for an event. Despite great white sharks having proved extremely difficult to keep in captivity at all with modern technology and animal husbandry, let alone being downright impossible long term.
I'm amazed you recognized this CGI-Shark as a PURE White Shark.
To be honest (in the very short sequences the audience is able to see the entire shark) I had the impression that there is also a little of bull shark and longimanus in them
However, - spoiler! - regarding CGI-animals, this movie is a complete desaster. Beside the sharks and the rhino (which was also too big), we have those huge (gorilla size) and vampire like baboons as well as a very bad animated tiger (viewable only for a second or two), that was even much worse as the tigers in Gladiator I (although I believe that in the first movie, there were also scenes incopied? with real tigers).
In the original they had real tigers, but with combined footage so it looked like the tigers and Mr. Crowe were in the same shot.
Iguana_Cabana
Well-Known Member
In 300, a white rhinoceros serving in Xerxes' army is shot and killed with an arrow. Where did they acquire this rhino? Wasn't the Persian empire closer to the range of the Indian rhino (back when it was much larger)? Couldn't they just get one of those instead?
As a matter of fact that one isn't all that infeasible; at its greatest extent during the reign of Darius the Great (the father of Xerxes) between BC 522 and BC 486, the Persian Empire extended well into southern Egypt, and moreover had trade links throughout the Red Sea. As the the range of the Northern White Rhinoceros extended into Sudan in significantly more recent historical times, the Persians would have likely been familiar with the species.
Conversely, I don't think the Persian Empire ever extended all that close to the Himalayas.
This is a very interesting point, that brings up a few other questions:
-Was it possible in those times to transport the Northern White Rhinos out of their - afaik - difficult to access habitat (I was told that even in the 20th century it was easier to find, catch and transport a Southern White Rhino to Europe as a Northern one - and the main reason why there were so few Northern White Rhinos in captivity in Europe)?
-Was it feasible that in ancient times northern indian and nepalese rulers sent captures Indian rhinos as gifts to their western and southwestern neighbors (maybe via traders), so that some might reach Persia, Greece or even the roman empire?
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The question is, where exactly "CGI" begins. Maybe parts were CGI in conjunction with motion capture. E. g. the movement of the tiger from 2:15 to 2:16 looked so animated/artificial (more work then a combined/incopied footage) to me. But I can be wrong of course.
Gladiator crowe tiger - Google Search
Was it Indian rhinoceroses the possibly the first to be officially classified in the European world of zoological classifications (albeit would have been aware of Northern white rhinoceros and Black rhinoceroses around the same time - well perhaps Indian rhinos and Black rhinos around the same time i.e unicornis and bicornis/one-horn & two-horn).
Re: Tigers like in Gladiator - based on their classification name (panthera tigris) and geographical layout of the world, always assumed Caspian tiger sbsp were the first tigers Europeans became aware of, considering they apparently once lived in whats now Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran (Persia), Kurdistan, Iraq (Mesopotamia), Kuwait, (some of) Syria, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and possibly some of Tajijkistan and Uzbekistan too etc (Tigris River name (that flows through Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Kurdistan & Syria), lol see the conenction with Tigris of Gaul's name even though he was Gallic (who obviously was named Tigris because of his strength and fighting skills i.e ''strong like a tiger'').
Re: original thread post - oh those sharks are always roaring in the waters off the beaches and coves and inlets here in Australia, people living within a few hundred meters of the water have to tell them to ''keep it down'' lol.
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During the time of Babur, the first Mughal emperor, many centuries after the Achaemenids, rhino was still found along the Indus. The control of the Persians did extend their control till said river, so I would imagine they could have encountered the animal.
Lucan (1st Century) and Gaius Solinus (3rd Century) both describe the tiger as a ‘Hyrcanian’ beast so you may well be correct.
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Well, bear in mind that there is a fairly massive timespan between 500BC and 1900AD, and that there is no reason to assume that the range and habitat of the Northern White Rhinoceros had remained static throughout that time with declines and contractions only happening within the 20th century itself; as such I think it is quite likely that the species wasn't restricted to "difficult to access habitat" at the time of the Persian Empire.
Without a shadow of a doubt, given the fact the Caspian Tiger survived in Ukraine and southwest Russia until the medieval period!
Excellent - always glad to learn something
Disney's Fantasia (1940) and its sequel, Fantasia 2000, hold a special place in my heart as I've always felt sensorially and emotionally attached to these movies and it's always a treat to watch them despite the several inaccuraces and stereotypes of animals: in the Rite of Spring segment (beautiful composition by the way I highly suggest it) the first uni and pluricellular organisms are depicted as being already pretty advanced and fast in movements.
Then throughout the rest of the segment animals from all over the Mesozoic and earlier share the swampy surroundings and while some designs were pretty advanced and speculative for their times - for example the sail on Parasaurolophus and the colours on the pterosaurs' face - others were outright omissions of known knowledge, most infamously the 3-fingered hand of the Trex, but since one is not really "others", the pointy sails of what I can only speculate as being some mosasaurid and one of the pterosaurs hanging from the rock like a bat are others.
Then we have Dimetrodon eating fish in a swamp because it was still the 40s - and the same creature runs from the Trex with the herbivores in the chase scene, so flesh eater = bad but fish flesh eater ≠ bad I would say a stereotype - and during the same scene no sauropod ever thinks about stepping on the predator which is portrayed as a bloodthirsty ruler of these lands and conveniently never gets pierced by the Stegosaurus' spikes but only gently hit by the tail (thinking about it the animals do feel like they're made of rubber by never bleeding even in the case where there should 100% be blood).
I could go on just with the Rite of Spring but I'm going to move on for the sake of making the post not too tedious.
We have the 4 Seasons of Vivaldi in what I believe is the Summer segment, we have a fish with abnormally long and unnaturally transparent tail for the sake of giving it a provocative feminine aspect (while the protruding lips are not characteristic of the fish's species I'm confident, kissing gouramis do exist so just this time it's passable).
In Fantasia 2000, Pines of Rome, the whales are very expressive with their eye movements and even with slight smiles and grouches, at least on the pup, something that does not happen in real animals.
And despite their extreme intelligence, they have not mastered levitation.
The Carnival of Animals segment features a very cocky and anti-conformistic flamingo playing with a yo-yo in an array of leg movements not typical of flamingos that, unless you have noticed, make very bad players and suffer from stage embarrassment.
The Firebird Suite (also very good piece in my opinion) features a human-blue-eyed deer that does not run away from impending doom when its spring-personification friend is being chased by a lava phoenix.
The whole Donald Duck being Noah's assistant segment.
And in both movies, correct me if I'm mistaken, no Mouse should know magic.
Despite these inaccuraces, I enjoy these movies every time I see them because I'm very affectionate to them, they're a delight to both the eye and ear, I cannot recommend them more for some quality classical music animation.
Then throughout the rest of the segment animals from all over the Mesozoic and earlier share the swampy surroundings and while some designs were pretty advanced and speculative for their times - for example the sail on Parasaurolophus and the colours on the pterosaurs' face - others were outright omissions of known knowledge, most infamously the 3-fingered hand of the Trex, but since one is not really "others", the pointy sails of what I can only speculate as being some mosasaurid and one of the pterosaurs hanging from the rock like a bat are others.
Then we have Dimetrodon eating fish in a swamp because it was still the 40s - and the same creature runs from the Trex with the herbivores in the chase scene, so flesh eater = bad but fish flesh eater ≠ bad I would say a stereotype - and during the same scene no sauropod ever thinks about stepping on the predator which is portrayed as a bloodthirsty ruler of these lands and conveniently never gets pierced by the Stegosaurus' spikes but only gently hit by the tail (thinking about it the animals do feel like they're made of rubber by never bleeding even in the case where there should 100% be blood).
I could go on just with the Rite of Spring but I'm going to move on for the sake of making the post not too tedious.
We have the 4 Seasons of Vivaldi in what I believe is the Summer segment, we have a fish with abnormally long and unnaturally transparent tail for the sake of giving it a provocative feminine aspect (while the protruding lips are not characteristic of the fish's species I'm confident, kissing gouramis do exist so just this time it's passable).
In Fantasia 2000, Pines of Rome, the whales are very expressive with their eye movements and even with slight smiles and grouches, at least on the pup, something that does not happen in real animals.
And despite their extreme intelligence, they have not mastered levitation.
The Carnival of Animals segment features a very cocky and anti-conformistic flamingo playing with a yo-yo in an array of leg movements not typical of flamingos that, unless you have noticed, make very bad players and suffer from stage embarrassment.
The Firebird Suite (also very good piece in my opinion) features a human-blue-eyed deer that does not run away from impending doom when its spring-personification friend is being chased by a lava phoenix.
The whole Donald Duck being Noah's assistant segment.
And in both movies, correct me if I'm mistaken, no Mouse should know magic.
Despite these inaccuraces, I enjoy these movies every time I see them because I'm very affectionate to them, they're a delight to both the eye and ear, I cannot recommend them more for some quality classical music animation.
Are you taking the Mickey?
Wildlife Watcher
Well-Known Member
I'm glad I found this thread, because I just wanted to point out an inaccuracy I constantly see in movies where animals have the ability to talk. I don't know about you, but I ain't never heard an animal talk before.
In all seriousness, it's definitely good to recognize when animal depictions break away from reality. As far as the "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia goes, I kinda feel like it gets a pass in the accuracy department, considering how old the film is and how groundbreaking it was at the time.
Undoubtedly, if a dinosaur film made today was riddled with Rite of Spring's inaccuracies, scientists and paleo fans would tear it to shreds because we have so much research at our fingertips, but back in 1940, scientists were still trying to figure out how these creatures moved.
At the end of the day, I think it is at least interesting to see what 1940s scientists thought the Mesozoic Era might have looked like, and I don't think the inaccuracies devalue "Rite of Spring" as a work of art.
On the note of Fantasia, I would also like to bring up the ostrich ballerinas in "Dance of the Hours" and their male plumage. While it could be argued that the dancers were meant to be female and the artists simply made a mistake in coloring them, it could also be argued that these ostrich ballerinas were intentionally made male.
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Randomalistic just did a fun breakdown of Blue sky's "RIO" I thought you guys might like