'Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens' about "genocide and indigenous revolt"

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Image credit: Wired.com

Comic book writer Grant Morrison has revealed yet more details about his upcoming multi-platform collaboration with Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens. Speaking to Wired recently, Morrison dismissed the notion that his comic/movie project is lacking in the brain cell department, describing it as “a philosophical treatise on manifest destiny, genocide and indigenous revolt.” Morrison said that “instead of another popcorny blockbuster thrown onto Hollywood's disposable entertainment pile,” Dinos Vs. Aliens is “a pointed critique of overreaching civilization at the edge of oblivion.”

Of the dinosaurs themselves, Morrison tells Wired:

“The dinosaurs don't speak and what they do tells us who they are. Every dinosaur scene had to be constructed like a silent movie to ensure that "characters" of the various dinosaur heroes would come through clearly. So although the dinosaurs don't talk, they're fairly expressive physically and it was obvious that audiences would immediately root for the reptiles as the underdogs. We were trying to avoid the trap of "good" dinosaurs versus "evil" alien monsters, and we wanted to be able to shift the allegiance of the audience from one side to another as the story progressed. Which made it important to flesh out our aliens' motivations and personalities, too.”

The aliens will also be relatable, says Morrison:

“As we know from watching animated movies like Wall-E, it's possible to create relatable characters who look barely human at all. So we decided to provide contrast to the buglike appearance of our aliens by making them very human in the way they talk and interact with one another. They're not just rapacious monsters from another world, as they might have been in a less ambitious movie. These aliens are conflicted, brave, frightened, hopeful and poised on the edge of extinction themselves. Establishing a new home on Earth is their last chance for survival." 

Image credit: Wired.com

Read the rest of the interview here. Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens will premiere as a web-based motion comic on July 23 of this year, while the feature film itself – the first in a proposed trilogy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld – is unlikely to hit cinemas until the end of next year at the earliest.

'Dinosaurs vs. Aliens': new details emerge

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Men in Black 3 director Barry Sonnenfeld has revealed more details about his next alien-themed silver screen project. As reported last year, Sonnenfeld has teamed-up with comic book writer Grant Morrison to develop a graphic novel and movie sharing the same name: Dominion: Dinosaurs Versus Aliens, which will chronicle a secret, prehistoric battle for the Earth.

Chatting with io9recently, Sonnenfeld addressed concerns that audiences might find it difficult to relate to his dinosaur protagonists: “First, we have to sell the project,” said the director. “We're going out to LA in about 6 weeks with a pre-vis and our script, to see who wants to buy into it. We've already had lots of ideas. The aliens speak in a way [that] you can understand them. And the dinosaurs — they actually have a certain amount of culture, through grunts and doing stuff with their bodies and sticks. We believe that the Dinosaurs had culture. They didn't speak, but they did have other ways of communicating. It won't be a problem, and it will be pretty fantastic.”

Dino-culture? Yep, apparently so. Sonnenfeld says his movie’s dinosaurs are “very smart... possibly the way they really were. They have rudimentary things, but they learn as they go along from the aliens.”

Yes, it sounds completely bonkers; however, the idea of animal characters utilizing non-verbal communication methods to carry a movie is certainly intriguing and was used to stunning effect in Rise of the Planet of the Apes – arguably one of the best Hollywood movies of 2011.

We can only speculate as to what else Dinosaurs vs. Aliens has in store for us. Will the dinosaurs defeat their alien invaders only to be wiped out later by an asteroid? Or will the movie postulate that ETs were responsible for the great dino-extinction? Watch this space, and expect a 2014 release.

Dinosaurs vs. aliens... seriously?

... Yes, seriously. Or so says director Barry Sonnenfeld.

Sonnenfeld - who is the director of the Men in Black franchise - is teaming up with comic book writer Grant Morrison to develop a graphic novel and movie sharing the same name: Dominion: Dinosaurs Versus Aliens.

Deadline reports:


"The graphic novel will chronicle a secret prehistoric world war battle. When an alien invasion attacks Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, the planet's only hope is the giants that roam the planet with, it turns out, a lot more intelligence than previously realized."

Must try harder, Hollywood.

For more details about this future classic, head on over to Deadline.com.