Forgotten Childhood: Dinosaur
Walt Disney Studios, films just popped into your head and I can nearly guarantee that this film was not one of them. Not to mention that the Walt Disney Company is the last film production company that you think of having a forgotten filmography, not taking into account their direct to TV productions but Dinosaur is definitely a piece of our forgotten childhood.
Initial Release
Walt Disney have pretty much had the majority hold on the children’s film industry all through the nineties but now with the beginning of the noughties there was an influx of new childhood “fads” such as Digimon, Pokémon and new animation styles leaning in the live action style that are forcing Disney to jump up from their usual traditional animation. With two animated features, The Tigger Movie and Fantasia 2000 already lined up for release in the year 2000 and the Disney renaissance well and truly over they needed to kick off the new millennium with a bang.
Remember this is before Pixar for Disney, although having already released Toy Story for Pixar it would be six years before the Walt Disney Company would acquire Pixar. Knowing (a bit late to the party in my opinion) that animation was taking a new turn Disney pumped a bucket load of money into this computer-animated and live action feature while also teaming up with The Secret Lab, when I say a bucket load try $127.5 million making it the most expensive theatrical release of 2000 and this is alongside the release of Cast Away, Gladiator and most notably for geeks out there X-Men. Dinosaur despite now being a forgotten classic was a huge box office success grossing over $349 million worldwide making it the fifth highest grossing film of the year, grossing more than X-Men which now shocks me.
This film is a perfect example of excellent synergy of computer-animation and live action scenes, where the dinosaurs are completely animated using computer animation most of the backgrounds we see in the film were filmed in real life locations. Quite a few were in the Venezuelan Canaima National Park, Angel Falls and tepuis (table top mountains) that also feature, giving the film a much more authentic feel. Dinosaur is listed as the 39th Animated Classic for Walt Disney although it was originally marketed as a stand-alone film but in 2008 it was added to the Walt Disney animated classic canon.
The film was a commercial and financial success but somehow fell away over time and was forgotten but was it due to an overload of releases or the film itself?
My Full Experience
It is no secret that my allegiance has and will always lie with the house of mouse but when I think of my forgotten childhood
I never think of Disney, ever hence my constant referral back to films by Don Bluth, the master of forgotten childhood. This time around I wanted to choose something from the mouse since the only films I could think of were more Don Bluth films, I wanted in particularly a Disney cinematic release since it would be more impactful than their television content which sadly is always forgotten. It wasn’t till my own father mentioned he had come across this film on the movie channels that it hit me not only did this film fallen through the cracks with me but it had nearly been forgotten as a Disney classic, I even remember having a GameBoy colour game for this film which I still have yet forgot completely about it.
The film follows Aladar, an Iguanodon who is the only egg to survivor of a Carnotaurus attack after his mother was forced to abandon her nest of eggs including himself. After he within his egg make a perilous journey he hatches to a family of lemurs and is adopted into their family nearly without question. Years pass and Aladar grows up among the once young lemurs even taking part in the mating season where of course he is left without a mate as his bestie Zini (an actual Lemur) also goes without. This beautiful moment is cut short when a meteor strikes, destroying the island they all inhabit causing Aladar and the few surviving lemurs to escape to the mainland. They come across other dinosaur survivors who are making their way toward a heavenly place known as “the nesting grounds” where they will be able to live out their lives in peace, but their road is long and there is always the looming fear of another Carnotaurus attack. Will they make it and will Aladar even find a mate? Who knows but it is a long road to the nesting grounds.
This film did exactly what Disney meant for it to do, bring the studio into the new millennium and a new era of animation. This kind of computer generated animation is now what Disney is known for thanks to Pixar so why is it pretty much forgotten now? It could not have been due to the animation as it was flawless, I remember seeing this film in the cinema once I thought about it, I would have been nine years old and every outing to the cinema was an amazing experience, this film however was a whole lot more than just a regular animated feature. It was huge for me, the dinosaurs were done to perfection basically just a bit warmer and cuddlier than the Jurassic Park versions and for nine year old me this was a new chapter of film experience.
Re-watching it now I cannot understand why even I, a slave to the name of mouse had forgotten this film. It literally has everything and can be watched at any age and by any gender. There is the awe of watching these ferocious creatures brought to life for children while older children and teenagers will see themselves in the characters. Especially in the character of Aladar, he is essentially going through puberty, this is more than just a journey of safety for him, it’s a journey of self-discovery and this will relate with most teenagers who are discovering who they are. Then there is of course the little adult innuendoes thrown in there for the older audience and also I would say the level of action and violence would be appreciated by an older audience yet suitable for younger viewers. It could be compared to a film like The Land Before Time with having a very similar plot but this film took a different approach focusing more on the development of the characters however they both handle the subject of death really well but in Dinosaur it was a little more sugar coated that in The Land Before Time.
Dinosaur was a forgotten gem that I had the pleasure of rediscovering and hopefully others will pick up a copy and enjoy reliving the adventure.
