Speckles: The Tarbosaurus, also known as Tarbosaurus 3D or The Dino King in the US, is a computer-animated dinosaur film from South Korea.
About 70 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the Korean Peninsula the same way they ruled the rest of the Earth. At that time, the part of the land now known as Jeonnam Yeosu was the forest habitat of a powerful carnivorous dinosaur: Tarbosaurus. The youngest of a family of Tarbosaurus, Speckles is a curious and playful child. Along with his mother and siblings, he lives happily in the forest, waiting patiently to learn to hunt. When that day arrives, it marks the beginning of a long and painful journey into adulthood for Speckles.
The cunning One-eye, an older Tyrannosaurus rex looking for a new home, attacks Speckles's herd one day and, smelling sure victory, viciously tears Speckles's family away from him. Now on his own, Speckles meets up with another lonely, lost Tarbosaurus. Blue Eyes becomes his constant companion for two decades and the mother of his own children. But fate is fickle and Speckles's troubles with One-eye are not over. Revenge, death, fear, and sadness are all in Speckles's future - as are happiness and hope.
A sequel, Dino King 3D: Journey to Fire Mountain, was released in 2017.
Compare Dinosaur.
The film includes the following tropes:
- Always a Bigger Fish: One-Eye meets his end by getting eaten by a Tylosaurus.
- Anyone Can Die: You have no idea. Background dinosaurs, antagonistic dinosaurs, and even baby dinosaurs are shown dying throughout the entire movie.
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- Repenomamus is depicted as a little rodent-like mammal. In reality, it was one of the most badass Mesozoic mammals, being basically the Cretaceous equivalent of a honey badger, and is known to have eaten baby dinosaurs.
- Misplaced Wildlife all around, with the North American Tyrannosaurus,Torosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and Pachycephalosaurus showing up in Asia for no discernible reason.
- Ankylosaurus is particularly glaring, since countless other genera of club-tailed ankylosaurs (such as Tarchia, Talarurus, and Saichania) have been documented from Asia long before this movie came out. And similarly, there is also Prenocephale, one of the better-known pachycephalosaurs next to Pachycephalosaurus itself. Also, Sinoceratops was described 2 years before this movie aired, so they could have used it instead of Torosaurus.
- The armored tyrannosaurids. While the exact covering of late Cretaceous tyrannosaurids is still debated, even the most scaly renditions don't allow for the crocodilian-like armored scutes the film's Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus have.
- Haenamichnus and Nemicolopterus are both hairless. They also have rather leathery wings - pterosaurs had complex wing membranes -, pointy wingtips and most mistakes seen in 70's pterosaurs. To make matters worse, they're depicted as fish eaters, when in reality they were terrestrial predators not unlike secretary birds.
- Wrong theropod hand postures (although the tyrannosaurids tend to un-pronate their hands).
- Sparsely-feathered raptors and scaly Therizinosaurus, both of which would have likely been heavily feathered over all or most of their body.
- One-Eye terrorizes Speckles' life for twenty years. He's already an adult when Speckles is an infant. Tyrannosaurs reached full size at around twenty, and died at around thirty. So One-Eye is at least ten years too old at the end of the movie, and yet he's still in his physical prime.
- A 100-foot-long Tylosaurus?!
- Haenamichnus is not an actual pterosaur genus - it's the fossilized track of ahzdarchid pterosaurs walking on all fours. A rather glaring example of Creator Provincialism, since they could have easily used proper Asiatic azhdarchids like Azhdarcho or Zhejiangopterus.
- Pukyongosaurus, Hypsilophodon, and Microraptor stem from the Early Cretaceous, and yet are shown here as contemporaries of Tarbosaurus and other Late Cretaceous dinosaurs.
- Asshole Victim: Considering what he does to Speckles throughout the entire film, it's immensely satisfying to see One-Eye get caught by a pair of tylosaurs to be a snack.
- Attempted Rape: One-Eye tries to do this on Blue Eyes in one scene as Speckles stated that he was "looking for a mate." The fact that she's an entirely separate species of tyrannosaurid is apparently irrelevant.
- Awe-Inspiring Dinosaur Shot: After an introduction to Speckles's birth, the film properly begins with a tracking shot of an Haenamichnus as it soars over a herd of Charonosaurus and Pukyongosaurus. An orchestral theme is built up throughout the scene, eventually booming once a dinosaur herd shows up. It plays out similarly to its spiritual predecessor, Koreanosaurus, except with dinosaurs actually being visible in the tracking shot.
- Ax-Crazy: One-Eye acts this way when engaged in fights with carnivores he sees as a threat, killing them for the heck of it.
- Behemoth Battle: Speckles, as an adult, engages in this with One-Eye more than once.
- Big Bad: One-Eye.
- Bittersweet Ending: Speckles finally defeats One-Eye. Though only one of his hatchlings survived and Blue Eyes is gone.
- Captain Ersatz: One-eye's face design strongly resembles that of the Vastatosaurus rex from King Kong (2005).
- Carnivore Confusion: Averted. Speckles is a carnivore and proud of it. Unlike Simba and Chomper, he neither befriends creatures who would be on his menu, nor does he resort to eating bugs to curb his carnivorism. And he has no second thoughts about eating a pterodactyl's eggs or to have a bite or two of that delicious meat from the dinosaur killed by the Big Bad responsible for the deaths of his own family if it means taming his hunger.
- Combat Pragmatist: One-Eye is shown to be highly capable of using his surroundings to his advantage when facing off against his prey, or his rivals.
- Creator Provincialism:
- Glaringly obvious with the inclusion of Pukyongosaurus and Haenamichnus, both of which come from South Korea, but the former lived some 40-50 million years before Tarbosaurus, while the latter isn’t a proper taxon but the name of a pterosaur trace fossil, and there was no shortage of Late Cretaceous Asiatic sauropods and proper Asiatic pterosaurs to chose from.
- Probably the reason the Asian Tarbosaurus was picked as the protagonist. Tarbosaurus itself is not known from South Korea, but it was the only large tyrannosaur that lived anywhere nearby.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to similar animated dinosaur films.
- Death of a Child: Several very young dinosaurs die over the course of the film.
- Delinquent Hair: Amusingly, the Velociraptors have feathered crests on their heads resembling mohawks. Speckles even calls them "outlaws traveling in packs", even though technically speaking dinosaurs literally live in a lawless world.
- Disney Villain Death:
- Inverted, in that several protagonistic dinosaurs die in this way.
- Subverted with One-eye. While the fall doesn't do him in, it's the giant mosasaurs that do.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The main villain causing a herd of clueless animals to run for their lives thus leading to the death of the protagonist's family? Never saw that before.
- Evil Old Folks: One-Eye was already a full grown heavily scarred adult when Speckles was a kid, and survives long enough to continue hunting and fighting adult Speckles.
- Eye Scream: The film seems very fond of showing the audience One-eye's empty eye socket.
- Exit, Pursued by a Bear: One-Eye meets his demise this way.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Speckles, who grows into an enormous Tarbosaurus.
- Giant Flyer: The Haenamichnusare pterosaurs with 30-foot long wingspans.
- Headbutting Pachy: Ironically shown with a bit of Truth in Television as in a headbutting match, the losing Pachycephalosaurus ending up knocked out, which as stated above in the description could easily end up being a death sentence for a animal.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Subverted with the Therizinosaurus. When Speckles first sees it, the creature is minding its own business browsing on plants. Once it sees Speckles though, it immediately acts aggressive towards him and would have slashed the young dinosaur with its claws if it weren’t for Quicks and his sisters showing up.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- The Velociraptors manage to corner a herbivore in quicksand but this being quicksand they are quite unable to reach it without drowning themselves. The leader learns this the hard way.
- The Therizinosaurus gets his claws stuck in a tree after he misses a swipe at One-eye, who dodged the attack right in time.
- Mama Bear: The Haenamichnus mother who chases down and nearly kills Speckles after he eats one of her eggs.
- When Speckles mates with Blue Eyes, she naturally becomes one to their hatchlings.
- Speckles’ own mother fought against One-Eye to save her son, at the cost of her life.
- Misplaced Wildlife: What is a Tyrannosaurus doing in prehistoric Korea? And for that matter, what are Torosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and Pachycephalosaurus doing in Korea as well? The Velociraptor (native to Mongolia) actually aren't too out of place, but their portrayal has other problems.
- Non-Malicious Monster:
- Played straight with Speckles and his family.
- Definitely averted with One-Eye. He holds a murderous hatred of theropods he sees as a threat to his supremacy in territory.
- Papa Wolf: Speckles becomes a protective father.
- Predation Is Natural: Speckles and his family are carnivores, and hunting is presented as something they regularly do to survive. One-Eye is not evil because he's a carnivore, but because he's a cunning, calculating sadist who wants to destroy his fellow predators.
- Raptor Attack: While Microraptor is decently portrayed, Velociraptor is sparsely feathered. However, the concept art shows Velociraptor (mostly) covered in feathers so it may have been due to
Executive Meddling. Interestingly, the movie averts the part of the trope where the raptors are portrayed as scarily intelligent. Here, they have an almost suicidal disregard for their own safety. For instance, attacking something in quicksand, ignoring a huge sauropod carcass (as well as a dying female Tarbosaurus) and attacking a still healthy (and much, much larger) Tarbosaurus. This last time is especially stupid, as they die by the dozens, and still keep rushing in. - Sea Monster: Tylosaurus. They are long aquatic reptiles who hunt in the depths of the ocean. Not even One Eye can take them on.
- Super-Persistent Predator: One-Eye, in a overblown case in which he terrorizes Speckles' life for over TWENTY years.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the cave collapse scene, Blue Eyes’ left leg is crushed by a falling rock. She survived an earlier injury to the same leg, so surely it would be healed again, right? Nope! Her injured leg never healed, it got infected, and Blue Eyes died in agony two weeks later.
- Stock Dinosaur Archetypes: Most predators are not malicious, only hunting to survive. The titular Tarbosaurus is no exception; he kills animals as he needs something to eat, but he's also a devoted mate to Blue Eyes, loves his family, and would defend his children. The herbivores are usually sociable and live in groups and herds, but the bigger ones like Torosaurus and Ankylosaurus will fight if provoked, and Pukyongosaurus is shown as a majestic sauropod that means no harm. The only exceptions are the Tyrannosaurus, One Eye, who is shown as a v
- Temper-Ceratops: Speckles mentions how the Torosaurus was the only dinosaur his family mostly avoided when hunting.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: One-Eye is a Tyrannosaurus rex and, fitting to his name, a tyrannical usurper to the majestic king of his close relative, Speckles the Tarbosaurus.
- Too Dumb to Live: Upon catching up to their victim slowly descending into the quicksand it had gotten itself into moments earlier, the leader of the velociraptor pack promptly jumps onto its back to finish the job... only to get stuck himself. The other raptors hesitate for barely five seconds before taking off as we cut to the leader drowning in the swamp.
- Wolverine Claws: Therizinosaurus has long sharp claws that it uses for defense.
