The Terror and the Beauty of Genndy Tartatovsky's "Primal"
The Adult Swim series immerses us in a world red in tooth and claw, where the only true imperative is to survive.
Clutching a spear in his hand, a primitive caveman thrusts it into a gently-flowing stream, capturing several fish, his movements assured and smooth, those of a master adept at his craft. Shortly thereafter, he hears a scream and, realizing that his wife is in danger, he runs at a breakneck pace, his body straining with almost superhuman exertion, only to arrive just in time to watch in horror as his companion and their children are devoured by a trio of young carnivorous dinosaurs. Though he gravely wounds one of them, they are soon called away by their mother, an even more terrifying being that towers over the landscape, leaving the nameless figure to mourn the ashes of his life.
This is the opening sequence of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Adult Swim series Primal, about the unlikely bond between a caveman (named Spear in the production notes) and a female Tyrannosaurus rex named Spear. In the ten episodes of the first season, we watch as the human and the dinosaur grow closer together as they navigate this primordial world in which life, to use a Hobbesian turn of phrase, is nasty, brutish, and short. From the first episode to the last, Primal immerses us in a world that is at once both beautiful and terrible, rich in pathos and drenched in blood.
Take, for example, the scene described above. There’s something almost idyllic about the first scene, in which Spear engages in the basic acts of survival: procuring food for his family. Even here, however, there is a hint of the violence to come, as blood seeps out of the fish and it gasps its final breaths. There is no sentimentality here, just the actions of a man who knows what he must do in order to keep starvation at bay.
It’s only when we encounter the death of his family, however, that Primal really brings out the bleak and merciless nature of this world. The vivid reds of the scene immerse us in primary emotions: anger, fear, rage, despair. Even though Spear’s wife and child are only shown in silhouette, it’s uniquely horrifying to watch them eaten alive, legs dangling and blood dripping from reptilian jaws. The family unit has been utterly destroyed by the uncaring forces of nature, and this will play out again shortly afterward when the same troupe of carnivores eats Spear’s young hatchlings (with yet more dripping blood).
The bond between Spear and Fang, then, is forged in the bloody conflicts of their environment, and the series expertly weaves together the brutal and the idyllic, demonstrating a profoundly rich emotional texture. Three episodes in particular illustrate the series’ deft touch with art and feeling: “A Cold Death,” “Plague of Madness,” and “Coven of the Damned.”
In “A Cold Death,” Spear and Fang come upon a straggling elderly mammoth and, unsurprisingly, they kill it for food and to make use of its hide. Soon thereafter, however, the rest of the herd, determined to exact vengeance, tracks them down, and it’s only when Spear realizes that they want the old mammoth’s tusks that they are able to stave off the attack and save their own lives. Shortly afterward, the mammoths leave the man and the dinosaur in peace, taking the tusk to their graveyard. The episode doesn’t shy away from the brutally visceral imagery that is the series’ trademark, but it interweaves this with other moments of touching sincerity, as when Spear hesitates to strike the killing blow, his mind taken back to a time when he took his young son hunting, or when he forges an unlikely bond with his fellow mammals. Mammoth and human share an understanding of what it is to grieve, a feeling that sets them apart from Fang, who doesn’t seem to understand or care about the mourning rituals that are so much a part of her mammalian companion’s mental life.
“Coven of the Damned,” likewise, manages to switch deftly between horror and an almost sublime form of pathos. As the title suggests, it focuses on a coven of witches who, led by their shape-shifting leader, extract the life essence from men in order to produce children. They manage to capture Spear and Fang, and they prepare to use him in one of their grisly rituals. One of their number, however, sees something in their bond that calls to her and, in a particularly moving sequence, she travels back in time to witness the death of their families. More importantly, she also visits her own past, and viewers see that she once had a child, a little girl. The flashback shows the two of them frolicking in a beautiful field of flowers, only for tragedy to strike when the girl tumbles from a cliff to her death. Seeing the death of her child reminds the witch of the ties that bind all beings together, and she ultimately sacrifices her own life so that Fang and Spear can escape.
“Plague of Madness” is, perhaps, the most tragic of episode of the first season. It begins by showing the peaceful existence of a herd of giant Argentinosaurus, showing the tenderness of the members of the horde toward one another. Unfortunately, such tranquility is short-lived, as one of the members of the herd is bitten by a Parasaurolophus bearing some sort of flesh-eating, madness-inducing disease. The infection quickly transforms the gentle giant into a relentless killing machine, and it proceeds to destroy its herd, biting and trampling its fellows to death. Driven mad by bloodlust, it also pursues Spear and Fang after they stumble onto the sight of its slaughter. Ultimately, they are only able to escape when the diseased monster falls into a lava pit. And yet, despite the fact that the horrifying creature almost killed them, there’s still something sad about its demise, and Spear looks on with a melancholy look on his face as the lava consumes its flesh, its agonized bellows filling the air while mournful music plays in the background. When a tiny piece of ash, all that remains of a once-majestic dinosaur, lands on his palm, it’s a reminder of just how transitory life is. It’s a beautifully tranquil moment, full of loss and sadness, a reminder that sometimes there is no justice in the world and that even the innocent can perish through no fault of their own.
Thus it is that Primal, perhaps more than any other television series of recent make--either animated or otherwise--captures the potent power of bare life. Spear and Fang constantly face a world that doesn’t much care whether they live or die and, in almost every episode, their sole purpose is simply to survive whatever new horrors unfold. Since neither of them can truly cross the communication barrier, the deepness of their bond will always be limited and the finale, in which they encounter a human that can actually speak, makes this abundantly clear. This character, named Mira, comes from a culture far more advanced than any that we’ve seen so far, and her abduction by those who first enslaved her leads Spear to utter his first actual word in the entire season: her name. Mira’s presence, briefly as it is, reminds both Spear and the viewer that there is something else worth striving for, that there is a higher purpose to human life than just existing.
There is, then, something beautiful and terrifying about Tartakovsky’s work. Blood and sinew, gore and violence are part and parcel of this world, and it would be easy to say that its primary appeals are to the lizard part of our brains, to that part of us that yearns for visceral stimulation. While that it is certainly true, there’s also something more at work in Primal, some expression of the deeper human yearning for connection and empathy. It’s visual poetry, and it nicely captures the extraordinary complexity of our emotional world. It’s a testament to what animation can achieve, and I can’t wait to see what the second season has in store.