Life On Our Planet Episode 1

So the Netflix series Life On Our Planet is out today. It's also a life/prehistoric life documentary series. I definitely have some thoughts on the first episode...

First of all, this series' marketing is a bit misleading. It's not strictly a paleontology series. The episode has plenty of real modern day wildlife footage to tell the story of the evolution of life on Earth. So if you're expecting tons of CGI creatures... you're going to be disappointed. Feels like the show is 60% real footage and 40% CGI creatures. So set your expectations accordingly. The show does cover a WIDE range of times instead of just dinosaurs. You'll see early life in the Permian all the way to the Ice Age.

As for the actual episode itself, it's a bit of a mixed bag. They're trying to tell a story of evolution, but the footage just jumps all over the place. For example, it's telling a story about Terror Birds and Smilodons, and the next it's about Maiasaura nesting and Tyrannosaurus hunting. Morgan Freeman does a good job narrating, but a lot of times he's just saying really basic things or a whole lot of nothing. The show is using ideas that haven't been popular since the early 2010s.

The creature designs are also a bit of a mixed bag with anatomical issues here and there. Some look fine, while others look off. I wonder who are the consultants for this show? I haven't heard any paleontologists talking about their involvement with this project. This is the first show I've seen where they actually managed to make the teeth on a T. rex too small. We do get to see a lot of creatures, but as I said, the show jumps all over the place in time and some of them are just on screen for a few seconds. At least the episodes are over 45 minutes long

The CGI was excellent for the most part. It is by ILM. The shaders are extremely high quality, and some of the close up shots of the creatures look just as good as Prehistoric Planet or any big budget movie. It is nice to see more prehistoric animals get a modern CGI update. Many of them haven't been seen since the mid-2000s. I did notice the Maiasaura segment's CGI looking a bit rough. The smoke/fog effect looked really flat like it wasn't a volumetric effect. The show's intro is really cool though.

Overall, I can't say I'm impressed. I'll still continue to watch it, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting something better.