You will believe a shark can roar: Zoological malpractice in Hollywood.
- Thread starter DavidBrown
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I know this is an old thread but thought it deserved a bump. Last night I watched Alien vs Predator, (not through choice,) which is set in Antarctica. They see a penguin quite far inland and it's either a Humboldt or an African. Could they have been anymore geographically inaccurate?
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Geologically inaccurate too - they have Antarctica being tropical in the Pleistocene. This was a thoroughly wretched and disappointing movie.
Indeed it was, nearly 2 hours of my life wasted if we include ad breaks!
I was going to mention the tropical aspect but thought I'd keep it on topic... (SeeDudley 2012 thread for some serious off topic madness!)
Also watched a film a couple of months ago, made in about 1960 and called The Enchantress. It's about a hunter and a trapper in Kuala Lumpa trying to track down a half leopard-half tiger which looked suspiciously like a jaguar with some red dye on it! It also had macaws in a club scene and "Bengal" tigers being catapulted through the air.
I really wish I was joking about the last bit but I'm not!
anacondas do mate in "packs" (in a manner of speaking). The males compete for the female, forming what are known as "mating balls". It's quite fascinating.DavidBrown said:
As for the movie, it is indeed set in Borneo. The opening scenes feature a tiger, macaws and howler monkeys. The captain of the boat also has a pet capuchin (although I can forgive this last one because it's a pet so he could have got it from overseas).
that was the worst thing in the movie for me too. Also the way they were in the Antarctic and there was no breath visible in the air. And most of all, the way nobody in the movie could pronounce Antarctica correctly!!! The movie itself, as a monster cross-over, was still better than it should have been really, and you have to admit far far superior to the sequel!Brum said:
I excuse that one because the movie-makers were using the Piri Reis map as the basis for their script, and if you're going to have two species of alien monsters battling it out on Earth then why not accept the Piri Reis map as genuine!!DavidBrown said:
I get the point, I spelt a simple word wrong. In my defence I was using text speak and dropping letters!
I just saw a movie called "Bwana Devil" which is of historical note only because it was the first 3D movie. It is a telling of the Tsavo man-eating lion story, somehow rendered very dull. Most of it was filmed in the Santa Monica Mountains, the mountain range running through the middle of Los Angeles where Paramount and Fox movie studios had their movie ranches (now preserved as national park land).
The movie mixes real wildlife footage from Africa with the part filmed in California to hilariously inept degrees from a zoological malpractice perspective. At one point the heroine of the movie walks past an Asian water buffalo, presumably playing a Cape buffalo. The worst part is when they encounter an elephant herd and they are all Asian elephants with bigger ears taped on to play African elephants.
The movie mixes real wildlife footage from Africa with the part filmed in California to hilariously inept degrees from a zoological malpractice perspective. At one point the heroine of the movie walks past an Asian water buffalo, presumably playing a Cape buffalo. The worst part is when they encounter an elephant herd and they are all Asian elephants with bigger ears taped on to play African elephants.
oh, I didn't actually notice you'd spelled that wrong! No, in the movie every single person, including the experts, pronounced it "an-ar-ti-ka", dropping out the first T and the C.I get the point, I spelt a simple word wrong. In my defence I was using text speak and dropping letters!
the New Zealand episode of The Wild Thornberrys was pretty inaccurate (they went looking for and found emus, among other things)
"Welcome To The Jungle" (the one with The Rock) had baboons in South America. I think they were supposed to be stand-ins for howler monkeys.
"Conan The Barbarian" had llamas in one market scene (the land in which the story is set is fictitious of course, but it was definitely the Old World, so llamas are out!)
From memory, there was one quick shot in "Apocalypto" with a cattle egret by a stream (that species did not occur in Central America at the time the movie was set). Otherwise the movie was pretty accurate in terms of wildlife - they even made sure they used a Baird's tapir for the hunting scene rather than a regular Brazilian tapir.
"10,000 BC" had phorusrhacids which really confused one of my friends who thought the movie was set in the Americas! (Until I pointed out the use of the mammoths to build the pyramids...you know, in Egypt, beside the Nile....). Picking on the phorusrhacids in this movie seems like a cheap shot because it was such a piece of crap, but apparently the movie-makers knew full well that the birds were from the Americas and used them anyway because they'd be scary. They also deliberately had the mammoths galloping because it would look awesome....er, apparently. To me it looks the opposite.
And if nobody's mentioned it yet, jungle scenes in movies always have a kookaburra somewhere on the soundtrack (most famously in the opening scenes of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark") and quite often a screaming piha as well. Lots of American-made movies have Californian quails calling in the background.
I'll think of some more later. Imagine what a Zoochat movie night would be like! Oh, the jeers and heckles that would be thrown at the screen!!
Loads of inaccuracies in "Ice Age"!
"Conan The Barbarian" had llamas in one market scene (the land in which the story is set is fictitious of course, but it was definitely the Old World, so llamas are out!)
From memory, there was one quick shot in "Apocalypto" with a cattle egret by a stream (that species did not occur in Central America at the time the movie was set). Otherwise the movie was pretty accurate in terms of wildlife - they even made sure they used a Baird's tapir for the hunting scene rather than a regular Brazilian tapir.
"10,000 BC" had phorusrhacids which really confused one of my friends who thought the movie was set in the Americas! (Until I pointed out the use of the mammoths to build the pyramids...you know, in Egypt, beside the Nile....). Picking on the phorusrhacids in this movie seems like a cheap shot because it was such a piece of crap, but apparently the movie-makers knew full well that the birds were from the Americas and used them anyway because they'd be scary. They also deliberately had the mammoths galloping because it would look awesome....er, apparently. To me it looks the opposite.
And if nobody's mentioned it yet, jungle scenes in movies always have a kookaburra somewhere on the soundtrack (most famously in the opening scenes of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark") and quite often a screaming piha as well. Lots of American-made movies have Californian quails calling in the background.
I'll think of some more later. Imagine what a Zoochat movie night would be like! Oh, the jeers and heckles that would be thrown at the screen!!
Loads of inaccuracies in "Ice Age"!
How about the Jungle Book?
The Disney classic was fairly accurate up until King Louie the Indian orang-utan comes in! And the live action version is even worse, brown bears and orangs inhabiting the Indian jungle in this one. As a kid I loved it but now it just screams shoddy at me!
@Chlidonias - I thought you were having a crafty dig at my inability to spell simple words, didn't even notice the pronunciation in the film!
@Hix - The Galapagos would be an even greater mess, didn't even occur to me!
The Disney classic was fairly accurate up until King Louie the Indian orang-utan comes in! And the live action version is even worse, brown bears and orangs inhabiting the Indian jungle in this one. As a kid I loved it but now it just screams shoddy at me!
@Chlidonias - I thought you were having a crafty dig at my inability to spell simple words, didn't even notice the pronunciation in the film!
@Hix - The Galapagos would be an even greater mess, didn't even occur to me!
Don't give a toss! I love it and don't think about accuracy! Bet you don't get many vultures with those accents in India either
Don't give a toss! I love it and don't think about accuracy! Bet you don't get many vultures with those accents in India either
I'm sure you do, I think they're the rare Indo-Scouse vulture!
How about the Jungle Book?
The Disney classic was fairly accurate up until King Louie the Indian orang-utan comes in! And the live action version is even worse, brown bears and orangs inhabiting the Indian jungle in this one. As a kid I loved it but now it just screams shoddy at me!
@Chlidonias - I thought you were having a crafty dig at my inability to spell simple words, didn't even notice the pronunciation in the film!
@Hix - The Galapagos would be an even greater mess, didn't even occur to me!
I thought Baloo in Jungle Book was a sloth bear, even if the character does look like a brown-ish bear.
Baloo was a sloth bear, but in the live-action version of the movie they used American black bears.Jabiru96 said:
What year was this movie, it must have been in the late 70s? I know I've seen it, but I can't find it on IMDB. Perhaps it had a different title? (EDIT: obviously I'm not talking about the one with John Cleese in it!)
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If Paddington Bear comes from Peru, why is he a brown bear and not an Andean or spectacled bear. Wouldn't the Brown family have worked that one out?