Product: Future Is Wild [VHS]
Rating: 5.0
A Rather Cool Concept For A Program
"The Future Is Wild" is a rather cool concept for a program. There's tons of dinosaur themed documentaries out there that look at ancient fauna and their evolution, but this is really the only show I've seen that speculates about the future. Obviously, it's not a real "documentary" in the literal sense because it's 100% speculative fiction, but it is scientifically informed speculation, so it's quite interesting and fun.The whole premise of "The Future Is Wild" is that humans are gone from earth and the audience now gets to see what might happen in the evolution of the remaining animals there. The DVD series is quite long (about 5 hours total) and spans as far as 200 million years into the future. The imaginative views of what new animals would evolve over time are quite interesting, but obviously there's no way to know how true they would be because something as huge as evolution that far into the future would be very difficult to predict. Still, the scientists who worked with the film makers do stop to give exposition about their reasoning behind a particular animal and what it evolved from and why, and I appreciated these segments. Overall, I felt that the explanations and reasoning given for certain animal designs were pretty sound, but that the names given to the animals were pretty silly ("Phlish" and "Slither Suckers"). To be fair though, that's the sort of names that people would give to new animals - just very descriptive ones. Some of them still sound pretty silly though. As for any other complaints I have... I'm annoyed that the DVDs don't have a "play all" option. You have to select and play each episode (4 per disc) individually. That was a bit more inconvenient, but not a deal breaker or anything. Lastly, I'm a bit disappointed that there are no special features of any kind. None.So, do I recommend this DVD set? Well, if the premise I described earlier sounds interesting to you and you can withstand some silliness, then give it a try. If it doesn't, then obviously give it a pass. Also, if you liked this show and are looking for something similar to check out, try watching "Alien Planet".