'Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens' about "genocide and indigenous revolt"

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Image credit: Wired.com

Comic book writer Grant Morrison has revealed yet more details about his upcoming multi-platform collaboration with Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens. Speaking to Wired recently, Morrison dismissed the notion that his comic/movie project is lacking in the brain cell department, describing it as “a philosophical treatise on manifest destiny, genocide and indigenous revolt.” Morrison said that “instead of another popcorny blockbuster thrown onto Hollywood's disposable entertainment pile,” Dinos Vs. Aliens is “a pointed critique of overreaching civilization at the edge of oblivion.”

Of the dinosaurs themselves, Morrison tells Wired:

“The dinosaurs don't speak and what they do tells us who they are. Every dinosaur scene had to be constructed like a silent movie to ensure that "characters" of the various dinosaur heroes would come through clearly. So although the dinosaurs don't talk, they're fairly expressive physically and it was obvious that audiences would immediately root for the reptiles as the underdogs. We were trying to avoid the trap of "good" dinosaurs versus "evil" alien monsters, and we wanted to be able to shift the allegiance of the audience from one side to another as the story progressed. Which made it important to flesh out our aliens' motivations and personalities, too.”

The aliens will also be relatable, says Morrison:

“As we know from watching animated movies like Wall-E, it's possible to create relatable characters who look barely human at all. So we decided to provide contrast to the buglike appearance of our aliens by making them very human in the way they talk and interact with one another. They're not just rapacious monsters from another world, as they might have been in a less ambitious movie. These aliens are conflicted, brave, frightened, hopeful and poised on the edge of extinction themselves. Establishing a new home on Earth is their last chance for survival." 

Image credit: Wired.com

Read the rest of the interview here. Dominion: Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens will premiere as a web-based motion comic on July 23 of this year, while the feature film itself – the first in a proposed trilogy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld – is unlikely to hit cinemas until the end of next year at the earliest.