Dinosaurs Disney Movie Views

General Goods

Since May 19, theaters worldwide have been screening the new blockbuster film from Walt Disney Pictures, Dinosaur. It joins many recent Hollywood movies (Jurassic Park, The Lost World, etc.) that have presented dinosaurs in an evolutionary context. With Dinosaur, Disney uses even more remarkable special-effects and computer animation than its predecessors. While the e“photo-realismn” of the $100-million film makes it a definite eye-popper, undiscerning eyes might not catch the Darwinian subtleties of the film.

One of the filmc’s directors, Eric Leighton, said that he and his collaborators wanted to learn as much about dinosaurs as possible, but he candidly admitted that he would d“cheat like h---o” to tell a story because he wasn ’t producing a documentary (USA Weekend, May 14, 2000). In a press kit, Disney publicists also acknowledged that the film p“intentionally veers from scientific fact in certain aspects.n” Indeed, the movie r“cheatse” not only with some of the ways the dinosaurs are depicted, but more importantly in the way they are presented in an evolutionary context.

There is more “make believer” to the story of Darwinian evolution than there is to the storyline of the movie Dinosaur. Nevertheless, with Dinosaur, Disney is promoting a harmful evolutionary and New Age worldview (although this is not as overt as the Jurassic Park movies). Once again, millions of children will be subjected to the false teaching that dinosaurs fit within an evolutionary framework.