To anyone who viewed Jurassic Park III and witnessed the battle between the once-formidable Tyrannosaurus and the newly introduced Spinosaurus and thought, “There should really be a show about just dinosaurs fighting,” History has your answer in Jurassic Fight Club. While this Fight Club is soap and Tyler Durden-less, it does feature the most primal battles outside a video game.
The standard 42 minute program takes careful steps to setup the ensuing battle, and in the premiere episode a team of researchers on Madagascar discover the bones of a male Majungasaurus seemingly attacked and eaten by a female of the species. This leads researchers to extrapolate how this carnivore would have turned to cannibalism as the information is presented via CGI models in a life-action landscape. Future episodes will delve deep into the ocean, and then return to land with the final episode of the series focusing on the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The fight itself is contained within the last 10 minutes of the program with the other 30 being divided up between the discovery of the bones and a CSI-like research extravaganza to identify the killer and piece together the story. The first 20 minutes roll along great, with lots of background information on the dinosaur itself, but the steam runs out after that. The second act of the program is basically a summary of everything we’ve heard before, including numerous mentions of the same facts after every commercial break. You grow tired of hearing “65 million years ago…” from the narrator each time you return.
It doesn’t help as well that the same CGI clips are shown nearly all the time, including a trick to mirror the image to make it look like a new clip (especially when showing a Majungasaurus baby behind a tree). This is a shame because the production values are otherwise very high throughout the program, and the repeated clips themselves, while not Stan Winston/Jurassic Park awesome, do a serviceable job for the budget allowed.
With the amount of recapping available, you’re able to leave the room and return without missing much information, and you’ll quickly be back on track for the battle at the end. While the fight itself is narrated from pure speculation extrapolated from behaviors of current animals and dinosaur theory, it still provides an entertaining closing to the program and pulls no punches.