#if it’s too thin it 1) looks anatomically incorrect (somehow) and 2) looks very anime villain (which works super well in OTHER styles)

[steampunk-raven]

hmmm only 5 days and an 1/11 into the pmv… pretty good sign for my mental well-being during this i think :)

[f-nodragonart]

have you guys ever watched the docufiction film The Last Dragon | A Fantasy Made Real? Its a fictional documentary set in an alternate universe where dragons were real

I wrote a few reviews abt it quite a while ago, but the longer one is p old and kinda cringey/incorrect in certain places, so I’ll run down my basic thoughts here

also if anybody wants to watch this film, here’s a link to it. I first watched this when I was a wee lil dragon-fanatic, and I’m obviously a sucker for faux-documentary/field journal fantasy media, so this movie holds a special place in my heart. HOWEVER, as I will explain here, it unfortunately gets a LOT of things wrong. it’s def got some positive qualities (which I will also describe), and it’s a fun watch, but DO NOT take this movie as an accurate assessment of what dragons could have been under different circumstances

WHAT THIS DOCUFICTION GETS WRONG*:

*I’m ESPECIALLY harsh on this movie b/c it’s a DOCUfiction. I tend to be a bit more lenient when a story isn’t necessarily aiming for a realistic setting (stylistic consistency is relevant here), but when a piece of media sets out to describe a scientifically feasible setting?? I bring the hammer DOWN

1) dear god, the anatomy is janky

the wings in particular can get RLY bad. 

these wings clearly need more musculature and lower arm/’hand’ length, and a full membrane connection to the torso. they don’t even have ANY hint of integration/connection to the ribcage– no keel, no shoulder/chest musculature, not even any scapula!!

disgraceful…

while I can accept elbow spines in certain cases, I still don’t rly think they’re necessary in most cases– ESPECIALLY in this case where they don’t even provide extra area to the membrane around the elbow! what’s even the point!!

also I just noticed the designers forgot to put the elbow spines in the skeletal, so I can’t even check if they were integrated correctly….. hell, looking closer, I don’t think the front legs have scapula either….. DISGRACEFUL…

the wing shoulders also need to be shifted back behind the front leg shoulders, obviously, but they ALSO ought to be shifted down more towards the sides of the ribcage. wings based high up near the spine are typical of birds b/c they’ve got specialized wing musculature that basically pulls all the wing muscles (including the “back” muscles) down under the ribcage. bat wings aren’t built for that kinda setup, thus the shoulders are based more towards the sides on actual bats. this would likely be the same for bat-winged dragons

and those aren’t even the worst wings

I legit lose my mind a little lookin at these wings like…. why no membrane…. WHY NO MEMBRANE…

also there was clearly some attempt here to give these wings chest/shoulder musculature, but the designers didn’t know how much musculature a wing actually needs (or even how those muscles need to be shaped to properly hold a body..). thus, we just get pillowy, bara-boy boobs that would be useless for flight, even if the wings themselves were actually designed right

obviously a keel is necessary for a creature this big, but even if the designers nyxed the keel, the LEAST they could do is stretch the pecs down the full length of the ribcage to properly support the torso…

beyond the wings, some of the torsos are JUST a mess

the wyvern’s torso is mostly a problem b/c of weird wing integration, but the hexapod up top just has a plain weird torso, wings or not

it feels like the designers attempted to slap canine-like front legs on an ungulate/equine chest, and just utterly failed to integrate them properly. thus, the legs are floating to the sides of the chest rather than connected to and holding it up in any substantial way

I actually see this lack of shoulder integration in a lot in dragon designs, but it’s usually a result of trying to preserve the shape of chest/throat scales, so it’s kinda weird to see on a leathery-skin design

another thing abt this particular hexapod dragon is a bit hard to explain, but the neck is like… weird. idk if it’s super apparent to others, but the neck attaches more under the skull, a bit like a dog (ignore the skeletal, it’s clearly not accurate to the dragon actually presented). however, the flow of the neck from the chest is more of a horse neck? the strong up-and-over curve of a horse neck can’t rly attach to the skull in any way except the direct back of the cranium, yet this neck attaches somewhat to the underside of the skull, giving it a VERY awkward curvature. I happened to recently answer an ask abt necks that may explain this better, but suffice to say, the neck is weird

also, as u can see above, the base of the neck at the chest is super stiff b/c the animators didn’t bother to shift the mass of the chest/neck w/ the movement of the neck, which in turn makes the neck look ABSURDLY thin at angles like these

oh, and while this is certainly not the worst of the anatomical sins, the shrink-wrapping is p bad. yeah yeah, flighted creatures gotta be light, but flying animals still have SOME fatty deposits, like…. c’mon, u can SEE the cartilage rings in the throat of that poor wyvern, gimme a break… + it gets cold in the sky, where are some protective feathers/’fur’ for these guys?? especially side-eyeing the one living in the mountains. yeah I know they’ve apparently got that heat-retaining blood protein or whatever, but much like the flight bladder (which I will get to later), that’s asking me to excuse a bit much in terms of anatomy

(tho to be fair, the actual dinos featured in the film are naked and thin too so… at least this inaccuracy is consistent..)

I feel like this is especially bad w/ the heads. it looks like there’s barely any muscular support at the connection to the neck, and no jaw musculature to speak of. of course, a croc-like jaw design could layer the muscles under bone so that they’re not necessarily visible from the outside

but note the mass distribution of the bones of the jaw– they still stick out a fair bit to leave room for the muscles underneath (including on the upper jaw), and more importantly, the area for basing the muscles on the lower jaw is WIDE. now dragons may not necessarily need a strong bite-force like crocs if they’re using their talons and fire for attack, but most ANY toothed-animal skull is gonna NEED a lower jaw with a wider back end to provide stable, strong support to the jaw muscles. what I’m seeing from the ‘croc-’like dragon heads in this movie (not the wyvern head so much, that actually isn’t too bad in this respect) are flimsy, cardboard structures that will warp at the slightest hint of pressure

also, the teeth on all the dragons are weirdly straight and thin? like fishing teeth? but the main dragons are all land predators– they SHOULD have thick/curved teeth. even crocs have thick, slightly curved teeth, get w/ the program!!

and let’s not forgot this fucker

sir… SIR, that is a muscle-less TUBE with LEGS….. 

………..funny how suddenly the wiener-dragon ain’t shrink-wrapped, eh?

also this dragon absolutely CANNOT glide, no matter what kinda “flight bladders” they got, the membrane surface area is FAR too small even for gliding, I’m sorry!!

2) “evolutionary theory? what’s that??”

basically the film goes, “WHOA this dragon has 6 limbs! no other vertebrate on the planet has 6 limbs! they must have a wild genetic mutation for that to happen– oh, yep, they sure do!” and just… leaves it there

the evolution of 6 limbs in any evolutionary tree similar to Earth’s is literally so complicated, I have an entire post dedicated to breaking down JUST that concept. the way this movie so briefly presents this “wild mutation” doesn’t even BEGIN to cover how incredibly difficult it would be to shift something as hard-wired as vertebrate limb number from four to six

what’s even MORE frustrating tho is that this movie’s timeline for evolution doesn’t even make SENSE! supposedly their oldest dragon is the wyvern– the tetrapod. then that TETRApod somehow led to the HEXApod marine dragon. what in the world?? WHERE did that other limb set come from? WHY is there another limb set suddenly???

as I explain in that post linked above, it’s practically impossible for another functional, full limb set to evolve in a complex vertebrate– that’s why it’s most reasonable for hexapods to evolve long before tetrapods set the standard, and the two evolutionary lines would go their separate ways. there’s a small chance a limb set could evolve properly into a small, early tetrapod (tho even that is a long-shot), but in a LARGE vertebrate whose entire physiology revolves around their current tetrapodal, bipedal setup, as this movie suggests w/ their wyvern? hell nah, not a chance

and there are def other evolutionary problems throughout– generally just the fact that dragons seem to change VERY little, ‘aesthetically’ speaking, despite so many years of evolution and adaptation to wildly different environments (looking at the marine dragon..). yet when the dragons ARE markedly different from one another (wyvern vs. hexapod), it only brings up more problems, as covered above. like it’s all just so vague and ungrounded in any real evolutionary reality

also this post pointed out further problems w/ the evolution I didn’t even think abt (like the forest dragon being a contemporary to the mountain dragon, despite being used as an intermediary b/t marine and mountain) so I’m rly just 🤔 abt all this

3) BAD lab procedure!!

why aren’t the researchers wearing masks? they need masks to protect the corpses from human germs, and protect themselves from breathing in anything weird that was on the corpse! and they keep touching the corpse w/o gloves, getting their human oils all over the body! have they never heard of contamination?? AUGH

there’s definitely more wrong here that I rly don’t have the experience to speak on (and some of it I’m willing to excuse for the sake of a short, dramatic film– like the team having a whole lab setup right on the mountain), but the cross-contamination is what rly bothered me.

WHAT THIS DOCUFICTION GETS RIGHT and/or FUN:

1) realistic, cool behavior

the dragon behaviors featured are actually realistic, and downright cool at times!

screaming to both call for help and hurt an opponent’s ears; flashing wings to warn off opponents; mimicry to trick prey; that KICK-ASS courting ritual (if not displayed a bit awkwardly in terms of body positioning); the fiery brooding method (if we at least assume egg physiology that could handle and require that kinda direct heat, which I don’t think is…. necessarily outside reality… perhaps… maybe…)– these are all awesome examples of neat behavior

2) flight bladders? kind of??

this one is in the “got it right” list based more on potential than actual application in the movie

see, the idea of a flight bladder is p cool! the source of gas from digestion is completely reasonable, and it makes sense as a way to help a huge creature relieve some of the stress of flight

plus, the connection w/ fire-breathing is super interesting! it’s a very reasonable give-and-take system, and I like it a LOT. so this post pointed out the problems w/ having a flight system that relies on a product also used up by a different system, so now I can’t even give it that much credit lmao

however, the flight bladders in the movie are used to excuse some of the worst wing anatomy I’ve seen passed off as “realistic designs”. flight bladders may make up for *some* shortened wing length, or flight endurance, but they CANNOT make up for the problems I described in the “got it wrong” list

3) fire-breathing mechanics

if we now ignore the problems w/ this gas system being directly connected to the flight system, the fire-breathing is decently grounded in reality! the designers not only took into account the fuel source (gas from digestion), but also ignition source (platinum deposits). both of these sources are super interesting to me cus’ they technically utilize outside resources, which is not usually the case w/ a lot of fire-breathing mechanics I’ve seen

also love the specialized mouth anatomy– a scaled inner mouth and protective palate-valve make perfect sense to protect the dragon’s innards from fire, esp since the fire is igniting towards the back of the mouth. though the source of ignition being so far back in the delicate throat is itself suspect, and makes me wonder why it wasn’t simply ignited up towards the front of the mouth to prevent injury….. man I can’t give this film an inch w/o taking a mile back, huh!!

-Mod Spiral