Movies I'd like to see Vol.1

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

Comic book movies have been the rage for the past 10 years. Superhero movies have pretty much dominated the box office in recent years with X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman. It is true that there have been quite a few duds too (Daredevil, Electra, Catwoman, Hulk, Superman) to be honest. That said, comic book movies not based in superhero monthlies have had their share of success, like 300 or Sin City. Xenozoic Tales (a.k.a. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) falls in that second category... in fact, it might be done in a comic book format, but it has more in common with the adventure stories in pulp magazines of the 1950's.

Xenozoic Tales began as a critically acclaimed, independent, comic book series of the mid-80's by Mark Schultz (that in the late 90's-early 2000's went on to write some very neat sci-fi oriented Superman comics). Only 14 issues were published in ten years, from 1986 to 1996, and the final chapter of the story has yet to be seen. Even so, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was adapted to a short-lived animated series, a fondly remembered beat'em up arcade game, a FMV video game (that was my introduction to the franchise), and even a few miniseries of comics done to tie-in with the cartoon series.


When asked what Xenozoic Tales is all about, you could really say that in a nutshell "it is about Cadillacs and dinosaurs", in fact, I believe that is how the nickname for the series was coined, but the truth is that the concept is a little more deeper than that.

It all takes place some 600 years in the future, 500 plus years after an apocalyptic event only known as The Great Cataclysm, a worldwide disaster that almost wiped all humanity from the face of the earth and forced the few survivors to live underground for centuries. The men that developed and maintained the machinery to make sustainable life underground, came to be known Old Blood Mechanics, and it was them who lead humanity on those dark times. When it was finally saved to come back to the surface they find the world is not the same they remembered, lush vegetation has taken over the world, effectively turning cities into ruins inside a jungle, and almost every species of wildlife that ever walked the earth is back, obviously dinosaurs, but also large pre-historic mammals like woolly mammoths and smilodons cats, and even pre-cambric trilobites.

The technology in this distant future is pretty primitive, there is no electricity, telecommunications are a thing of the past, air travel is back to its infancy. That said, in this treacherous future everyone seems to have at the very least a revolver holstered on their waist, more than a few carry a shotgun to deal with the treacherous surroundings. Motorized land vehicles do exist, refurbished from the 20th century and modified to run on slither guano.

Slither is the word used to denominate dinosaurs, apparently all the scientific names got lost after 500 years of oral tradition. So Tyrannosaurs are Shivats, Allosaurs are known as Cutters, Pteranodons as Zekes, Triceraptops are Macks... you get the idea.


This is the world the hero of the story, Jack Tenrec, lives in. He is a direct descendant of the Old Blood Mechanics, and an authority in the doctrine of the Machinatio Vitae, which is about keeping a balance with nature. He leads a small band of Mechanics in the shore (New Jersey?) that looks to the City in the Sea (the ruins of Manhattan), and his main bringing ancient machinery -but especially cadillacs- back to life. He also has contact -albeit rare and only when they want to- with a race of strange lizard-men that seem to know more about nature and the dangers that come with disrupting the Machinatio Vitae.


Then there is Hanna Dundee, a scholar (but just as adept with a shotgun as she is using her brain), recently arrived ambassador from the city of Wasson, also known as the City of White Marble (Washington D.C.). She is unique in the sense that she can read the scriptures in books of the ancients, no one in the City in the Sea can read. She has leaned that in recent excavations the tribe of the City in the Sea has found intact libraries with books that somehow were able to survive all these centuries, and she wants to know what's in them. Possibly uncovering what caused the Great Cataclysm.

Unfortunately, she will have to go through Wilhelmina Schanrhorst, the visible head of a the corrupt government -is there any other type of government?- that leads the City in the Sea. This ruthless woman is also in a head on collision course with Jack Tenrec, defying everything the Machinatio Vitae and probably blindly repeating the same mistakes that led the ancient humans into the Great Cataclysm.

Other than the heavy Mad Max, I believe that a movie about Cadillacs and Dinosaurs would have elements that would remind people of movies like the original Planet of the Apes, King Kong and Jurassic Park. Now I think that a very, very important aspect of the movie should be the interaction between Jack and Hanna. They are basically one of those old-fashioned movie couples where the sexual tension comes from witty banter and getting on each other nerves, where they would rather ignore each other than admit they have feelings to one another.


If they ever did this movie one thing they should avoid is a text and/or voiceover in the beginning trying to explain the Xenozoic Age, almost always it comes off as cheesy, and is an indication of poor story-telling (I will say that the only movies that seem to be able to pull this off are the Star Wars movies). The movie should dump the audience straight into the action, trying to explain before hand why there are stegosaurus chasing after a 1950s car is only pointless, and besides the characters are just about as confused on their surroundings as the audience would be.

I don't know about you, but if done right, a movie like this would be just an incredible pop-corn success. I'm not holding my breath to see a trailer based on this fairly underground comic, but you never know...