Karl Urban's Forgotten Dinosaur Movie Was Completely Ripped Apart By Critics

Karl Urban and dinosaurs are like peas and carrots or Paul Dano getting beaten up in a movie: It's just one of those combos that makes sense. What's surprising is that Urban didn't initially cross paths with prehistoric creatures on the big screen in something fittingly geeky like a "Dino-Riders" live-action film (which we're still waiting for, tragically). Rather, the "Lord of the Rings," "Star Trek," and "The Boys" veteran did so in 2013's "Walking with Dinosaurs," a live-action/CGI feature that's very loosely inspired by the 1999 BBC documentary miniseries of the same name.

Okay, so, I fibbed a little: Urban, sadly, doesn't interact with any living dinosaurs in this movie. In fact, he only briefly appears in the present-set scenes from the beginning and ending of the film as Zack, a genial paleontologist who takes his niece Jade (Angourie Rice) and nephew Ricky (Charlie Rowe) on a fossil hunt. However, the vast majority of the movie centers on a young Pachyrhinosaurus named Patchi (voiced by Justin Long) as he struggles to come into his own some 70 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous.

Basically, the film's modern-day framing device is designed to teach its youthful target audience that studying prehistoric creatures is useful and fun. In keeping with that, Patchi's coming of age storyline explores issues that are applicable to kids, like the difficulties of dealing with siblings that bully you and how to avoid getting slaughtered by dinosaurs while you're traveling with your family. (You know, standard stuff.) Toss in lots of fun dino facts, and the whole thing sounds like it should be an utterly benign piece of edutainment. So, why on Earth did critics rip "Walking with Dinosaurs" a new one, as evidenced by its lowly 23 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes?

You know those live-action movies where animals "talk," but it's really more like we're hearing their inner monologues? (Think Disney's "Homeward Bound" films, my fellow '90s kids.) Such is the case in "Walking with Dinosaurs," with Justin Long, Tiya Sircar, Skyler Stone, and Frank Welker voicing the movie's dinosaurs opposite John Leguizamo as its narrator, an Alexornis (itself a prehistoric ancestor of birds) named Alex.

Here's the thing, though: That wasn't always the plan. After the film struck out with critics on its way to flopping in theaters, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that the original idea was for the movie to simply have a narrator without any other dialogue, just like the 1999 "Walking with Dinosaurs" series. Unfortunately, the higher-ups at Fox (which distributed the movie) wanted the various dinos to have voices of their own after watching an early cut and worrying they didn't have enough "personality" for kids to relate to.

Because of this, the film's voice performances were added last-minute, and it's painfully apparent. The problem isn't the actors, many of whom are quite skilled in the art of voice acting (see: Sircar, who portrayed Sabine Wren in the animated show "Star Wars Rebels"), if not legends like Welker of "Transformers" and "Aladdin" fame. It's that their dialogue was clearly hastily written and feels like it was slapped on at the eleventh hour ... because, again, it was. That, and it features a lot of witless, immature comedy that's at odds with the film's majestic live-action backdrops, convincingly photorealistic CGI, and family-friendly dramatic plot beats.

It's not just me saying that. As the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes puts it, "'Walking with Dinosaurs' boasts painstaking visual brilliance, but it's unfortunately clouded by a clumsy script that's dominated by juvenile humor."

Voiceovers aside, "Walking with Dinosaurs" isn't nearly as narratively ambitious or emotionally rich as director Don Bluth's animated dino touchstone "The Land Before Time," nor is it the technical breakthrough that Disney's "Dinosaur" was in 2000 with its own mix of live-action photography and computer animated critters. But that was never the goal. This was merely meant to be a movie that would hook a new generation on the wonders of dinos by telling a story that isn't too challenging yet still has high enough stakes to keep viewers of all ages invested.

Fox's concerns that kids wouldn't like the film unless it was filled with wall-to-wall dialogue were odd even back in 2013. Recall that it had only been five years since the smash success of "WALL-E," an animated movie full of cutesy non-humans who barely say a handful of words, assuming they talk at all. Again, "Walking with Dinosaurs" isn't as sophisticated as that Pixar classic when it comes to its visual storytelling, but the notion that children wouldn't be wowed by adorable, non-verbal characters going on grand adventures doesn't align with that film's popularity (or that of the 1999 "Walking with Dinosaurs" docuseries, for that matter).

Admittedly, "Walking with Dinosaurs" might've not fared that much better commercially if it had been released in its original form, seeing as it had the bad luck of hitting theaters right when Disney's "Frozen" went from being a solid box office hit to a full-blown cultural phenomenon. All the same, at least that version wouldn't have felt like the equivalent of trying to watch a film while the person sitting next to you loudly cracks bad jokes non-stop.

Anyway, how about that Karl Urban "Dino-Riders" movie?