Flying With Monsters 3D

With his boundless passion for the natural world David Attenborough has educated millions. In over four decades of broadcasting there’s no one who manages to convey quiet, understated enthusiasm quite like him.

With his boundless passion for the natural world David
Attenborough has educated millions. In over four decades of broadcasting there’s
no one who manages to convey quiet, understated enthusiasm quite like him.

Flying Monsters 3D is a documentary about the flying lizards
of our pre-historic past, the contemporaries to the dinosaurs who ruled the
skies for millions of years. For anyone
that’s even remotely interested in the subject, the very idea of something like
this being brought to the big screen should have them salivating.

Attenborough patiently explains the way that tree climbing
and gliding lizards could have evolved from the four foot flapping Dimorphodon into
the colossal glider-sized Quetzelocoatlus and how the winged lizards’ demise
may have been sealed not by a gigantic meteorite but by the arrival of the
feathered birds.

Aided by the wonders of modern technology, fossilised
skeletons spring to life and assemble themselves before your very eyes,
fleshing themselves out into living breathing CGI creations which not only
reveal every little biological detail – every piece of bone structure, every
tiny wing membrane but also the lush tropical environments and soaring
landscapes that they would have inhabited.. It makes understanding a fairly complicated subject easy and
enthralling.

As Attenborough travels the world speaking to experts in
fossil hot spots, it’s impossible not to be awed by the sheer age of some of
the relics on display – 120 million years is an almost unfathomably long amount
of time.

It’s simply wonderful – a short but sweet look at how nature
can be so diverse and yet so beautiful, told by one of the best presenters the
world has ever produced.

If there are any criticisms, it’s that it’s a bit too
short. 40 minutes isn’t a long
time for a cinematic experience no matter how astounding or informative and
even though ticket prices have been reduced (they got for as little as £9 for
adults and £6.50 if you’re a student at the BFI IMAX), it’s still a hefty price
to pay for such a short film, and the 3D while adding to the sense of scale (3D
works best in environments which allow full range of movement, so flight is
ideal) isn’t breathtaking.

If this were on TV, it’d be an absolute must see – a
visually spectacular, informative and thoroughly enjoyable documentary. Whether you think that warrants the
tenner to see it in the cinema is another matter entirely, but the content is magnificent
and more than that will actually inspire the imaginations and curiosity of adults
and children alike.