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The Land Before Time (film)

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The Land Before Time
File:Landtime.jpg
Directed byDon Bluth
Written byJudy Freudberg (story)
Tony Geiss (story)
Stu Krieger (screenplay)
Produced byDon Bluth
Gary Goldman
Kathleen Kennedy
George Lucas
Frank Marshall
John Pomeroy
Steven Spielberg
StarringGabriel Damon
Candace Hutson
Judith Barsi
Will Ryan
Pat Hingle
Helen Shaver
Burke Byrnes
Bill Erwin
Music byJames Horner
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
November 18, 1988
Running time
69 minutes
LanguageEnglish
BudgetUSD$12,300,000 (estimated)

Template:Infobox Film Certificates The Land Before Time is an animated film, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, directed by Don Bluth, with a soundtrack composed by James Horner. It was originally released in movie theatres in 1988 by Universal Pictures.

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The story involves an orphaned Apatosaurus named Littlefoot who has to flee from a drought-caused famine to search for the Great Valley, an area which has been spared devastation and where dinosaurs can survive and live in harmony. He became orphaned after the on-screen death of Littlefoot's mother from injuries suffered while battling an antagonistic Tyrannosaurus ("Sharptooth") and the effects of an earthquake; however, upon reaching the Great Valley, he could be reunited with his grandparents.

Along the way he makes friends with four other young prehistoric creatures: Cera, a Triceratops; Ducky, a Saurolophus; Petrie, a Pterodactyl; and Spike, a Stegosaurus, in order to overcome the challenges on their way.

Sequels and spin-offs

The movie generated many direct-to-video sequels, but the reaction to these have not always been favorable, with most fans of the original expressing annoyance at the superfluous addition of musical numbers (something even Disney had abandoned as of late) and more transparent lessons of morality. Don Bluth and his animation studio have attempted to explain to their fans that they have no connection with these sequels. One Rotten Tomatoes reviewer wrote that The Land Before Time was suffering from the "excessive sequel syndrome," with films that were "pure formula." [1]

According to the Internet Movie Database, a television series based off of the movie is set to air in December 4 2006. Any other information on this has yet to be released. [2]

Movies

The following is a list of the films in the series:

Voice cast

Crew

Release dates

Technical data

Trivia

  • It was George Lucas's idea to make Cera a female.[citation needed]
  • Steven Spielberg and George Lucas originally wanted the film to have no dialogue, like the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia, but to make the film appealing to children, they abandoned this idea and got actors and actresses to do the voices.[citation needed]
  • In the second film, they use the word "sun" instead of "Great Circle".
  • The film featured a hit song by Diana Ross: 'If We Hold On Together'.
  • Because they were deemed as too intense for young children, over 10 minutes of full animation was cut or trimmed. Don Bluth was unhappy with the cuts, but had to do so, making this film one of his shortest.[citation needed]
  • Unusually, this film was released on the same day as another animated feature, Disney's Oliver & Company.
  • Disney's computer-animated film, Dinosaur, was originally intended to have no dialogue at all, in part to differentiate the film from The Land Before Time, with which Dinosaur shares many plot similarites. [citation needed]
  • Some scenes from The Land Before Time VI: The Secret of Saurus Rock were shown in Beethoven's 3rd.
  • In the movie an old reptile mentions "The Great Circle of Life" to Littlefoot while he mourns over the death of his mother, and at the end of the film a ghost of Littlefoot's mother speaks to him in form of a cloud (some people say it was not really her ghost, but a screen manifestation of Littlefoot's memories of his mother). Both of these concepts were apparently borrowed in the 1994 Disney film, The Lion King.
  • Judith Barsi who did the voice for Ducky was murdered by her father, shortly before the movie was released.
  • When this film was first released on VHS, the Pizza Hut commercial was shown before the film. This was the first major film in which the Pizza Hut commercial was shown before the film.

Terminology

Due to the film being set in a presumably pre-Linnaean time, the movie's characters tend to refer to various animals not by Greek or Latin "scientific names" but rather by names noting those animals' conspicuous characteristics. A list at some of the terms used throughout the series.

  • Longneck Sauropod dinosaur (sauropods included Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus, among others)
  • Threehorn Three-horned ceratopsian, such as Triceratops, Chasmosaurus, and Torosaurus
  • Sharptooth Theropods
  • Swimming Sharptooth sharks, and pliosaurs
  • Swimmer Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs and even Hadrosaurs (see below).
  • Bigmouth Hadrosaur (these dinosaurs have also been dubbed as "swimmers" in later films, but paleontologist Robert T. Bakker disputed the idea of hadrosaurs as regular swimmers in his book "The Dinosaur Heresies")
  • Flyers Pterosaurs
  • Spiketail Stegosaurus
  • Clubtail Ankylosaurus
  • Thicknose Pachyrhinosaurus
  • Big mouthed Belly-crawlers Crocodiles
  • Egg-stealer Struthiomimus ("Struthiomimus" is actually used in one of the songs of the second movie.)
  • Rainbow Face Misidentified as a Troodon, which it obviously cannot be, since Troodons were meat-eaters a.k.a. "Sharpteeth." More likely they were supposed to be some kind of Ostrich dinosaur like Ornithomimus. Rainbow Faces only appeared in one movie, and only two of them were seen. And as it turned out these two were apparently aliens in disguise (see The Land Before Time VII, The Stone Of Cold Fire for details.) However, it is possible they could be Troodon since these dinosaurs ate primarily small mammals, insects, and lizards. Also, it was believed that Troodon might have also eaten some plants. With this theory in mind, the Troodon would be an omnivore.
  • Tree-star A star-shaped leaf known for its delicious taste. Presumably a maple or oak leaf of some sort, judging by its shape.
  • Tree-sweet A delicious pink flower that is considered a treat; it is an honor to eat the first tree sweet of the year
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