There has yet to be a work of animation that I have consumed to truly display the brutality and viciousness of prehistory and times of prehistoric man than that of Primal, an animated series by Genndy Tartakovsky.
Primal is a TV series streaming on HBO Max that follows the story of a spear-wielding prehistoric man teaming up with an unlikely ally, a large tyrannosaurus rex mother. This caveman, aptly named Spear, watches his family immediately get savagely torn apart and eaten before his very eyes by a pack of wild t-rexes. Grieving and unsure of what to do next, Spear stumbles across a mother t-rex, protecting its children from more savage, hungry male t-rexes. As Spear watches, the mother t-rex’s children are killed and eaten, just as what happened to his own family. Spear steps in, in a fluidly animated flurry of rage and empathy, and slays the t-rexes who preyed upon the mother. These two characters, now connected through shared trauma, begin to spend more time together and forge a bond of protecting one another, something that they were both simultaneously unable to do for their family.
Genndy Tartakovsky has been an animator and director for several Cartoon Network shows, such as Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and most notably, Samurai Jack. Since Tartakovsky has almost exclusively worked on media centered for much younger audiences, outside of the final season of Samurai Jack. Primal is Tartakovsky’s first major work to air on adult swim with the rating TV-MA.
Primal features almost no spoken dialogue, the only example being of settlers that begin to appear later in the series. Through its lack of spoken words, Primal uses other sounds to serve the same purpose. Much of the noises in the episodes are largely influenced by Spear’s inhuman, barbaric screaming, accompanied by bone curdling roars from the jaws of the t-rex mother. When I first began Primal, I was anticipating very little spoken dialogue, and wanted the story to be told using elements beyond simple dialogue. Primal gave me just this, delivering on exactly what I was looking for. No other show I have ever seen has managed to tell such a diverse and analytical tale without the use of spoken language.
Another attribute I expected Primal to deliver on was accuracy to prehistory, despite the obvious difference of cavemen not living anywhere near the same time as dinosaurs. Primal is nowhere near accurate to the time period, which surprised me greatly. This is where Primal was allowed to shine, however, due to the fact that it was not confined within rules and boundaries that existed in the real world.
Although Primal without a doubt takes inspiration from, and directly includes, fantasy elements, the brutal force on display through this is not one to be taken lightly. Through buttery-smooth animation and vicious fight sequences, Primal perfectly captures the sheer carnage and bloodshed that must have occurred during the prehistoric time period.
Primal blurs moral lines and forces the reader to question what they think about prehistory, by bringing up several questions about morality and conscious thought. Questions of morality and humanity are seldom asked in regards to prehistoric life, let alone in other animals than humans.
There seems to be a lack of truly unique, animated media centered for an older audience, but Primal is and continues to be a shining example of what a TV show should really do. Primal delivers thought provoking, engaging story elements and introduces several questions that no one would really think to ask, things such as how it must have been to live during that time, and how living through such brutality would affect someone on a physical and mental level. Primal makes the audience question their knowledge about what prehistoric living must have been like. This series, through great detailed animation, paints a beautiful picture of what the struggle for survival really looked like.
