The premise is appealing: The Future Is Wild is a forward-looking documentary, one that imagines what life might be like on the Earth 5 million, 100 million, and 200 million years from now. In thirteen half-hour episodes divided among the "Ice World" of 5 million years from now, the "Hothouse World" of 100 million years, and the "New World" of 200 million years from now, The Future Is Wild takes us on a tour of what life might end up looking like.

Too bad the program is so poorly done.

The Future Is Wild does indeed have a promising idea, and in the right hands it could have made an interesting hour-long program. As it's handled here, though, it's appallingly badly done, neither informative nor interesting.

Let's tackle "informative" first. It certainly puts a gloss on itself as being very educational, what with all the scientists who make appearances throughout the series, and the repeated assurances that the bizarre scenarios are scientifically plausible. But when you take a closer look, the actual merit of the program evaporates. For instance, let's take a look at what those scientists actually get to say. In practice... not much. Many of their clips are limited to describing the imaginary creatures we've just seen CGI animations of; telling us what the fictional "toraton" is like does not qualify as educational material.

A few genuine facts do get slipped in, almost by accident. For instance, we learn a little bit about the future movement of the continents and how that will affect the climate, and occasionally one of the scientists mentions how a particular feature of an imaginary future animal is similar to something that we see on Earth today. But these facts are few and far between, and are hastily brushed over in favor of getting back to the computer graphics.

There's also no context. We are shown how life changes over the course of millions of years, but the program doesn't even give the slightest reference to how long it took for creatures to evolve into their current forms. It would be useful to know, for instance, that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, the first single-celled organisms evolved 3.5 billion years ago, sharks first appeared on the scene 375 million years ago, mammals around 200 million years ago, hominids evolve around 20 million years ago, and Homo erectus doesn't even show up until half a million years ago. This is all ignored in The Future Is Wild, though.

How reliable is the scientific basis of The Future Is Wild, anyway? Well, frankly we aren't shown enough scientific content to make much of a judgment, but what I did see didn't inspire me with confidence. First, we are told that when creating this future, scientists simply posited that humans had vanished off the face of the earth. Uh-huh... that's a great way to start, by simply ignoring the presence of the single dominant species currently inhabiting the planet. Now, I can see that the filmmakers might not have wanted to venture into speculating about human society and culture in the future, but why not at least venture a possible explanation of where we all went? Did we pack up and move to Mars? Did we kill each other off in WWIII (sadly more plausible than relocation)? In any case, given that humans have had a profound effect on the environment, it seems sloppy to just disregard one major element.

But we can go with that. What about the rest of the scientific basis for the series? It's of debatable merit as well. Early on, we get a comment that, with humans gone, the species whose numbers had been dramatically reduced by humans, like wolves and polar bears... go extinct. What? That's completely backwards: once humans are gone, the populations of animals whose only predator was humans would rebound, not go extinct.

But then, by the time we watch more of the series, it's clear that scientific plausibility and accuracy take back seat to the "ain't it cool" approach. Take the creatures that we are shown: the general rule of design appears to be "design by opposites." Insects grow larger and eat birds. Sea-dwelling animals come on land, and land-dwellers head to the sea. Fish learn to fly. There's no indication of what kind of selective pressure would promote these adaptations; there's no indication that any creature from the present day would still be recognizable in the future, even though we know that in the past, well-adapted creatures like the humble cockroach, or the ancient lineage of sharks, persist in the same general pattern as they have for millennia. Species evolve out of a response to selective pressure, not because they got bored with their old forms, but that doesn't seem to have slowed down the creators of The Future Is Wild, who seem to have followed the rule of "the more bizarre the better" in creating their new animals.

So The Future Is Wild is basically worthless from an educational or informative point of view. Is it then, at least, fun to watch? Sadly, no. Any individual episode of The Future Is Wild is padded, puffed-out, and frankly dull. There's simply not enough content to justify the amount of time spent on each episode. We are introduced to a creature and shown some of the computer-generated footage of it; we are told made-up facts about the creature, but little to nothing about what leads scientists to envision it evolving in that way; and we get to see the glorious CGI footage of the creature going about its daily life. And some more CGI. And a few repeated shots of those CGI images, in case we missed them the first time. Did I mention that the CGI seems to be the main point of any of the episodes? And why are we watching endless CGI clips of an imaginary animal? There's no overall structure, no sense that the program is going anywhere, or building on anything; it's just one repetition after another of "Hey, lookit these cool things we thought up! Neato, huh?"

The best word to describe The Future Is Wild is "self-indulgent." The filmmakers have invented a bunch of cool and bizarre creatures, and boy do they feel proud of themselves for their imagination. In turn, the animators have made some glitzy CGI to bring these creatures to life, and they want nothing more than to show off their technical skills. The Future Is Wild becomes, in the end, nothing more than a demo reel for computer graphics... certainly not educational, and most certainly not worth sitting through thirteen half-hour episodes.

The DVD

The Future Is Wild is a three-DVD set; each disc has its own plastic keepcase, enclosed in a glossy cardboard slipcase.

Video

Considering that it's a program that's all about eye candy, The Future Is Wild ought to look very good, and it comes off reasonably well. The series is presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer, as originally broadcast, and is anamorphically enhanced. Overall, the image quality is good, with bright colors and a generally clean look. It's not as sharp or detailed as I'd have liked, though, and does show some edge enhancement.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is satisfactory, providing a clear, crisp sound throughout the program. The voiceover is always easy to understand, and the sound effects are effectively done and integrated well into the overall track.

Extras

There are no special features on this set.

Final thoughts

If you want to spend five and a half hours sitting through a self-indulgent, puffed-up, essentially content-free exploration of a possible future inhabited by made-up animals, why then The Future Is Wild may be the program for you. However, if you have any preference for actually learning something about the world around us, rather than watching an extended demo reel of CGI creatures, or if you just happen to prefer a well-done documentary in general, then I suggest you check out a program like The Living Planet, The Life of Mammals, or Blue Planet. I usually can find something worthwhile in any documentary, no matter how biased or badly presented, but The Future Is Wild is an exception. Skip this turkey.