Sea Rex at the IMAX

By Stephen Harrison

When I was about seven, my family visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. The museum is renowned for its fossil collection and, if you haven't seen the Alberta badlands, it's well worth a visit. Making the trip back to British Columbia with my family was a plastic ichthyosaur, purchased in the museum's gift shop. I didn't know anything about ichthyosaurs at the time, beyond what I could discern from my new toy: they were dolphin-like reptiles that lived millions of years ago, and to my seven year-old self that was pretty cool.

I still think that seafaring dinosaurs are cool, so I was excited to watch the IMAX film Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World. The movie's goal is to educate the audience about a time when dinosaurs ruled the sea, but in its efforts to educate and entertain the film makes a variety of missteps.

The most glaring error is a fictional narrative needlessly dropped on top of what could have succeeded as a straightforward educational piece. Sea Rex opens with a museum patron, Julie, speculating that marine dinosaurs may still exist. She is greeted by the ghost, one presumes, of Georges Cuvier, a 19^th century French paleontologist. Cuvier takes her on a time travelling voyage to understand these creatures. Mercifully, Julie never physically appears with the dinosaurs themselves, but the storyline necessitates awkward scenes that could have been replaced by the simple narration and interview structure found in various IMAX features. There is distracting silliness throughout the film, such as when a real-world paleontologist addresses the audience as a skeleton for no good reason.

Two other problems are immediately apparent. From the in-your-face lobby poster to the skeletons and spinning orbs that often take centre screen, this is a film clearly meant to be seen in 3D. The Victoria IMAX does not offer this option, but it is the fault of the filmmakers that these attempts at gimmickry stick out like a sore thumb.

The larger issue is that the computer-generated graphics used to portray the dinosaurs are middling at best. The film's budget was a modest $5 million, but when one's goal is to inspire awe at the fantastic nature of these creatures, mediocre visuals are an unwanted distraction. There are moments when the film evokes the sense of wonder that I was hoping to feel throughout, but they occur when the marine reptiles are rising from the murky depths - murk that avoids the distracting graphical problems visible when these creatures are well lit.

There are still things to like about Sea Rex. As an educational piece, it provides a solid introduction to continental drift, evolution, and the time of the dinosaurs. I was also exposed to creatures I never knew existed, which will never cease to be fascinating.

Sea Rex didn't work for me, but there were numerous children in the audience at the screening I attended, and I overheard something that warmed my heart. One row in front of me, a boy asked his mother if the dinosaur on screen - one I'd never seen before - was the one he thought it was. He was right, and he was excited.

"Cool," he said.

There's that childlike sense of wonder I was looking for. Perhaps I'm simply too old for Sea Rex, though I could still play with that plastic ichthyosaur for hours. Maybe children love time travel and ghost paleontologist narrators, but I know kids can recognize subpar CGI when they see it. This film lacks both the cohesion and visuals needed to truly succeed with any age group.