Pterodactyl premiered on The SciFi channel on August 12, 2006, at 9 PM. Two days later Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and completely destroyed the region, including my hometown of Long Beach, MS. Two days after that, the SciFi Channel basked in the glory of having the highest-watched original movie for the channel. The point I am trying to make is that even though it feels like a stretch, the aftermath of Katrina feels eerily connected to Pterodactyl. Call it a conspiracy theory or whatever, but I’m certain there is some strange connection.
A beleaguered anthropologist with a student ‘assistant’ and her love interest who doubled down on an anthropology degree set out with a group of misfit college students towards an inactive volcano in the middle of Turkey for a research expedition. The purpose of the volcano was of particular interest for reasons I cannot seem to remember, but there were students there for extra credit so it does not matter. What is important is that they arrive on time to battle some freshly born pterodactyls. Why, you might ask, are the pterodactyl eggs hatching? Well, at the very beginning of the movie, most of the plot was established and foreshadowed when the eggs rolled out of the volcano and started to hatch. Logic is missing because this is the Sci-Fi Channel original movie, and we all know there is no logic in a Rob Schneider comedy nor in a movie produced by the canals of sci-fi. A few will argue it is there, but the rest of us know better.
American PhDs are bound to score no points because there is no way anything remotely intelligent is coming out of that volcano and they are too American to know that there aren’t any dragons in Armenia or near it. This piece of Sovjet propaganda, as bad as it gets, is a smear towards the Armenians. Did America and Armenia form some diabolical alliance against the rest of the world? Are Sovjets as nefarious as the Golan-Globus action flicks portray them? This has seemed to perplex none of the above-mentioned questions more than the Coolio head-shaved sergeant. A team of fully US-covering commandos makes sure that no harm comes to that hen-chick. What a horrible life to live.
Quickly, the college group is assaulted by the pterodactyls as well as the terrorists, hence the commandos arrive to ensure their safety. Surprisingly, the professor’s possible girlfriend happens to be the daughter of Sgt. Coolio’s squad leader from the Gulf War. Such a tiny place, indeed. Therefore, when a pterodactyl carries her away to the nest, they are forced to cooperate with each other to save her before pterodactyl baby creatures devour her. They also have to do it with the captured terrorist into the toe, and you can be sure he has no good intentions.
Regarding pterodactyls, I have to admit I’m surprised by the computer animation quality. It’s never entirely realistic, but the digital dactyls look quite impressive, at least 75% of the time, especially when compared to the CGI abominations of Snake King and Attack of the Sabretooth. The issue with the title creatures is the repetitiveness of their actions. The very first time one swoops from the sky and slices a dude in half, causing a geyser of blood to erupt from the standing half of his torso is pretty cool, but everything after that just feels monotonous. The fact of the matter is pterodactyls tend to fly in circles a lot. When you consider how many times you can watch a flock of pterodactyls flying around aimlessly before it becomes especially exhausting, the number is rather limited.
Director Mark L. Lester understands the importance of pacing. While it does tend to be monotonous, it is fair to say that Pterodactyl is never dull. Pterodactyl is unique when compared to other Sci-Fi Channel originals, as it is consistently engaging. As a seasoned filmmaker with credits that include Firestarter, Commando, Showdown in Little Tokyo, and Roller Boogie, Lester understands how to create an entertaining B movie and he comes extremely close to pulling off a miracle, a very close emphasis on a miracle.
The major downfall of Pterodactyl is arguably the characterizations. There is either too much detail that borders on caricature, very little detail, or too much detail displayed in an inconsistent way. The worst offenders in terms of poor stereotyping are the students who go along on the trip. To best encompass them; we have a nerd who is a conspiracy theorist, a forty-year-old virgin, a Paris Hilton wannabe, and a girl who didn’t bother forming a personality but dies early in the film. These character types are not simply terrible, but rather unacceptably absurd. The second any of them speak, and especially the conspiracy theory nerd, it is utter violence to one’s ears.
Coolio’s career has strayed pretty far from the limelight. Even so, he still manages to put on a good performance, but the movie isn’t much better off. Regardless, he delivers lines that are at times brutal while also talking military and speaking in fast ghetto talk, which makes me think he adlibbed a majority of it. Between his lines in this movie and Dracula 3000, I am starting to feel he is being left to compose his own material and I don’t know why.
There are hardly any more commandos left who aren’t cannon fodder and those that do stand out, do so because they have some lines in distinction, not because they possess some color or zest over the other less exposed people who die faster.
Then there’s the professor, who, I believe, is one of the least consistent characters I have witnessed in quite some time. First, he encounters the recently added pterodactyls in the game, and after already losing some amount of players to them, he still stubbornly chooses to go to the volcano to search for its nest, as it would greatly boost its worth for fame. If you consider him an anthropologist, he is exasperated with the very concept of being a mediocre wrangler. He is notoriously unconcerned about most of his group mates all of whom want to seek help and are not well off for his negligence. After a while, he goes from being a self-absorbed narcissist anthropologist to a romanticized hero looking to rescue his beloved without any transition. While I hoped for some gesture of heroism be it a noble sacrifice happen during the climax scene in order to save her and redeem himself which is very much expected from him to my horror none such thing happened. And it gets even more frustrating, as one of the side characters makes the most absurd self-sacrifice in the film to no effect, leaving us with Gordon, professor jerkface, to swoop on in and save the day Sorry, not buying it.
However, as I stated before, I truly detest it when screenwriters use B-movie names like these with some hugely talented genre people. For instance, in this case, the characters have last names Heinlein and Lovecraft and one is even called one Serling. If you are trying to make this insipid of a movie, then just play fair and give the characters last names like Wynorski, Boll, and Pyun.
Constructing A Blockbuster Movie The Ultimate Guide To Filmmaking For Dummies 2nd Edition explains the concept quite well in layman’s terms: Who cares about the last shot of the film, right? There lies the beauty of a lacking budget. It’s not like attempting to get funding once more would actually help this sorry excuse of a script one would dare to call bounding in bones and flesh. So tell me, would it set up a potential sequel not based on a completely different breed of dinosaur? Or would it simply just be another stab at dumbing down pterodactyls because show them next to other dinosaurs and they don’t really do much to stand out alongside titans like T-Rex and Brontosaurus? It’s not like you’re aiming for imagination when it comes to movies like this. There is no point in trying to wrap up the movie with a poorly executed wrap-up reason, I bet every human being would gladly sacrifice a shiny nickel for. Well, take that coin back because I do agree with whatever logic this so-called filmmaker tries to go by, so I suppose this is my new stance.
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