Thursday, January 31, 2013

Something missing in my Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Was I crazy to think Journey to the Centre of the Earth would have dinosaurs? My wife read it a few months ago, and I asked her while I was nearing the end of the book ... Hey? I don't think there are going to be dinosaurs in this.

She answered, uncertainly, "No, I think they're in there.... It was so long ago, but I think they were?"

I just knocked Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, off my reading list and .... it was fine, but I think there's a major revision in the first sentence that needs to be made.
On the 24th of May, 1863, a Sunday, my uncle, Professor Lindenbrock, came rushing back to his little house, No. 19 in the Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest part of the city of Hamburg.              - Verne
How it should begin.
There are no dinosaurs in this book. On the 24th of May, 1863, a Sunday, my uncle, Professor Lindenbrock, came rushing back to his little house, No. 19 in the Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest part of the city of Hamburg.
Notice the important difference? I had no idea that there weren't going to be dinosaurs. Was it unreasonable to think there would be? In 2008's adaptation in 3D, dinosaurs were fairly prominent in the marketing of the film.

This Tyrannosaurus is easily 1,000 ft. long, and 20 times larger than necessary.
In fact, in almost every adaptation of the text into film/television has featured dinosaurs. Heck, even Wikipedia has the novel (that has no dinosaurs in it) categorized under "Novels about dinosaurs". NOT the films, the television shows, etc, but the science fiction novel itself.

But, the 3D flick from a few years ago can't simply be the only reason this misunderstanding is so prominent, is it?

In the 1959 film of the same name, had a Dimetrodon and a "giant chameleon" in it, the classic types, which were just lizards with horns glued onto them.Those weren't in the book, but begin to illustrate when "dinosaurs" began to seep their way into the retelling of this story.

In a 1967 animated version of the text adapted for television has a griffon, a three-headed helldog, and an army of Roman soldiers, though I can't find much about dinosaurs in it. I think there was an episode called "Fossils Revenge" or something, which probably had dinosaurs in it?

A 1978 version of the film had dinosaurs in it.

By 1999, this tv series is using dinosaurs as a dominant selling feature:

Here is a "Wal*Mart" version of the classic appears to have a dinosaur right on the cover of the book:
There were plesiosaurs in the book, this COULD just
be a beached plesiosaur attacking Lindenbrock?
Here's some cartoon featuring Lindenbrock running from a tyrannosaurus as well.

In any case, if dinosaurs had been as prominent in the 1860s as they are now (they'd only first been discovered in the 1820s or something like that) I'm sure Verne woulda loaded up his prehistoric realm with the animals, but ... he just didn't.

So, beware, it's a neat book with a fun journey, but ... no dinosaurs.

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