Plot
In an alternate timeline set millions of years after the asteroid that would have caused the extinction of dinosaurs passes safely over Earth, two Apatosaurus farmers named Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand), give birth to three children: Libby (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner), and the runt Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). While Libby and Buck easily adjust to life and their responsibilities on their farm (signified by a mud-print on a corn silo), Arlo's timid nature makes his tasks difficult for him. In order to give Arlo a sense of purpose, Henry puts him in charge of guarding their silo for pests and helping him set up traps. One day, a trap manages to capture a feral caveboy, but Arlo is too reluctant to kill him and it runs free. Heavily disappointed, Henry forces Arlo to accompany him to track the caveboy through a ravine where it begins to rain. After Arlo injures himself, Henry decides to turn back just as a flash flood occurs and a massive rapid appears. Henry only manages to save Arlo before he is swept away and killed.
Without Henry, Arlo must help Ida with harvesting crops before the first snow. After spotting the caveboy inside the silo, Arlo chases him in a fit of rage, the both of them falling into a river where Arlo hits his head on a boulder and is knocked unconscious. Waking up, Arlo is dismayed to find himself far from home and tries to survive on his own with minimal success. The caveboy finds him and eventually gives him some berries to eat. The caveboy leads Arlo to a berry tree where they are both attacked by a snake. The caveboy fights and repels the snake which amazes Arlo. A nearby Styracosaurus named Forrest Woodbush (Peter Sohn), also impressed with the caveboy's physical prowess, tries to call him by name, but he only responds to Arlo, who names him "Spot." After traveling together for the rest of the day, Arlo laments about his lost family and confides in Spot who reveals that his own mother and father are dead. They sleep together that night. The next day, a storm ravages the land and Arlo remembering the storm that took his father's life, runs for safety on his own.
The next morning, Arlo wakes up to find Spot only to be encountered by a fanatical band of pterodactyls consisting of a Nyctosaurus named Thunderclap (Steve Zahn) and his accomplices Downpour (Mandy Freund) and Coldfront (Steven Clay Hunter). The pterodactyls turn out to be savagely carnivorous. After they find Spot, Arlo and Spot run away, encountering a pair of Tyrannosaurus named Nash (A.J. Buckley) and Ramsey (Anna Paquin), who both ward the pterodactyls off. Arlo and Spot then meet Nash and Ramsey's father Butch (Sam Elliot) who agrees to let the two of them join their party if they can help them locate a herd of Longhorns they had lost. Spot manages to sniff them out with Arlo discovering the presence of "Rustlers." On Butch's instruction, Arlo lures the Rustlers out, who are revealed to be a group of Velociraptor led by Bubbha (Dave Boat) looking to steal Butch's herd. Butch and his children try to fend off the Rustlers, Arlo successfully attacks two of them allowing Butch to scare them off for good. With Butch, Nash, and Ramsey now fully respecting Arlo, he helps lead them towards the area of their homeland. Along the way, Arlo and Spot encounter a human off in the distance, but ignore him and continue on.
As another storm begins to pick up, Thunderclap and the pterodactyls return and attack the two, this time managing to take Spot away and leaving Arlo behind. As Arlo gets tangled in some vines, he has a vision of Henry leading him away and back toward home, but Arlo admits his love for Spot and resolves to save him which makes his father proud before he fades away. Filled with determination, Arlo attacks the pterodactyls who have cornered Spot at the river and the two of them manage to throw them into the water where they ride helplessly downstream. A flash flood begins and a massive mudslide crashes into the river and triggers a torrent. Arlo leaps to save Spot and the two of them are carried away towards a waterfall. Arlo manages to swim to Spot and hold on to him as they both fall, with Arlo carrying Spot to shore where he regains consciousness.
As they venture back forth, Arlo and Spot both hear the calls of a caveman family just as they come over the hill overseeing Arlo's farm. With great reluctance, Arlo allows Spot to return with them and the two of them share a tearful, but loving goodbye. Arlo comes back home to his mother and siblings, and he is allowed to leave his mud-print on the silo between the prints of his mother and father.
Production
Bob Peterson and Peter Sohn started working on the film in 2009, when Peterson came up with the idea.[16] The film's first release date of November 27, 2013 was first announced in June 2011.[17] The plot, director and co-director, producer, and other small details were announced at the D23 Expo on August 20, 2011.[18] Peterson and John Walker announced the film as The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs.[18] On April 24, 2012, Pixar announced that it would be titled The Good Dinosaur.[19]
In June 2012, John Lasseter gave details about the film's plot: "They are kind of cartoony but they are dinosaurs; they are not walking around with clothes on or anything like that, they still are kind of dinosaurs. We focused on mostly the plant-eaters, not the carnivores... Their society becomes more of an agrarian society, meaning farmers... It’s a very funny story about a certain way of life that a young dinosaur has trouble fitting into and he ends up going on this quest. He kind of messes up and he has to put everything right by going on this quest and on that quest he meets this character that is an outcast from his society too and so the two of them form this bond and it becomes this unique kind of story..."[20] The filmmakers wanted to explore what dinosaurs represent today, and how they are represented in stereotypes. Peterson stated: "It's time to do a movie where you get to know the dinosaur, what it's really like to be a dinosaur and to be with a dinosaur."[21] Peterson said the inspiration for the movie came from a childhood visit to the 1964 New York World's Fair where he was impressed by some dinosaur audio-animatronics.[21]
On the film's title, Sohn stated "The title is deceptively simple. It has more meaning than it seems."[21] He additionally explained: "Arlo has a lot of issues when he's born. He's fearful and he's weak and he's disconnected from the family because of these issues and he feels like he's not worthy, and so he finds a way to become worthy."[22]
In April 2012, Pixar announced that the film's release date had been shifted from November 27, 2013 to May 30, 2014.[23][19] On August 9, 2013, it was announced at the D23 Expo that Lucas Neff, John Lithgow, Frances McDormand, Neil Patrick Harris, Judy Greer, and Bill Hader had joined the cast of the film.[24]
By summer 2013, the director and producer had been removed from the film due to story problems.[2] Peterson, who could not crack the film's third act,[25] was absent from D23 Expo, where Sohn and producer Denise Ream presented footage from the film.[26][27] Ed Catmull, Pixar's president, explained the departure: "All directors get really deep in their film. Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors... are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up."[2] Peterson moved on to another project he is developing at Pixar, while Ream replaced Walker, who left to work on Disney's Tomorrowland. On the subject of changing directors, Ream stated "It's given a lot of thought and care. Bob still works at Pixar [and] he's a beloved member of the studio. He helps out on a lot of the movies. We care about him, but he just needed help getting the movie done."[28] John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Mark Andrews, and Sohn stepped in temporarily to work on various sections of the film.[2] In September 2013, The Good Dinosaur had been pushed back from May 30, 2014 to November 25, 2015 (the scheduled release date for Pixar's Finding Dory). According to Ream, the primary reason for the rescheduling was "the story was not working, period, full stop, it just was not where it needed to be."[29] In November 2013, due to the delay, Pixar laid off 67 employees of its 1,200-person workforce,[25] following the closure of Pixar Canada a month before, when about 80 employees had been laid off, officially to refocus Pixar's efforts at its main headquarters.[30]
In August 2014, Lithgow revealed in an interview that the film had been dismantled and "completely reimagined" and that he was expected to re-record his role in the next month, while mentioning that Frances McDormand was still part of the film.[31] In November 2014, it was reported that new elements had been added to the story, such as treating nature itself as the film's antagonist.[32] Pixar's general manager and president Jim Morris stated "We all liked the movie from the beginning, but... the story had some kind of fatal flaws in it that none of us really saw. It was kind of a Billy Elliot story. It was a very different kind of movie – there was a whole dinosaur culture and community and so forth. It was one where the Arlo character was kind of repressed by the community. It never quite felt right. It always felt like that we were vilifying this group [of dinosaur characters] that was otherwise a very likeable [sic] group. It just didn’t feel like it resonated truly."[33] Morris additionally explained: "We give people the chance to work on a story, and we give them our support, but it doesn't always work out... there were story issues that were just not solvable. So we changed the story to make it better, and we're very proud of the film we have now."[34] In October 2014, Sohn was announced as the new director of the film.[9]
In June 2015, it was announced that the majority of the cast had been revised.[12] Of the original cast, only Frances McDormand retained her role in the film. It was revealed that Neff had been replaced by Raymond Ochoa, and Lithgow had been replaced by Jeffrey Wright.[12] Arlo's three siblings, to be voiced by Harris, Hader, and Greer had been cut altogether and replaced by a single brother named Buck, voiced by Marcus Scribner.[12] On the cast revisions, Sohn explained: "It was all about finding a younger Arlo, it was really about finding a boy [to play Arlo], so that we could push into that idea of him growing up and becoming a man, so the actor previous – who is a great actor – he was already a man, and so I needed to push that arc and find that compassionate kid, so that was the major kind of change. Then everything else, all the other characters that supported that story came in and out and changed and evolved and through that evolution, some of those performers changed out of it."[22] It was also confirmed that the farmer aspect was still part of the film, and that Arlo would have a sister named Libby.[35]
The filmmakers wanted nature to be an antagonist for the main character Arlo. Ream noted "Nature can overcome anything, including a massive dinosaur." In order to achieve the needed realism, the film's team traveled to the American Northwest, spending time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Juntura, Oregon, and southern Montana. Production designer Harley Jessup stated: "The area has a fantastic variety of landscapes, ranging from the Jackson Valley and the Tetons to the amazing geysers and waterfalls in Yellowstone, we studied the grasslands of Montana and the Red Desert, then incorporated all of it in Arlo’s journey." To use the landscapes that they had experienced, the filmmakers used data from the U.S. Geological Survey, and satellite images from Google Earth. The geographical data provided a foundation that the team then built on. According to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi, this gave Sohn "the freedom to shoot in any direction he wanted to make the world feel big and real." In addition, The Good Dinosaur features three-dimensional, volumetric clouds. In previous Pixar films, clouds have been "painted" onto the sets. Light and photography director Sharon Calahan explained: "Storm clouds are almost like a villain in the film. Plus, it’s very labor-intensive to paint clouds, and they’re in almost every scene." Calahan also noted "These particular clouds can be rendered and we can light them, which we’ve never been able to properly do before." According to the filmmakers, the environments and landscapes in the film are not photo-realistic, they are just detailed in a way that advanced technology and style decisions allow. In terms of animating Arlo, animators Rob Thompson and Kevin O’Hara went to a zoo and shot video of elephants in motion. Thompson stated: "One of the most intimidating things to animate is a quadruped, because there’s so much to them and there’s so much to manage. It’s very easy to make it not work if you don’t know what you’re managing. Locomotion is all about efficiency, a lot of times you think, 'We’re animating a big, heavy character. We should slam those feet. That’ll make it feel heavy.' The truth is, that’s not efficient. That wouldn’t be great for the legs."[36][37][38]
Arlo was designed so that the audience could identify with him and be able to see the "boy" inside the dinosaur. Sohn explained "When Arlo gets lost in the wilderness, you need to worry that he's out of his element and in danger of getting killed, rather than just thinking 'You're an animal. Why don’t you just turn around and eat some leaves?'" He additionally stated "If you put like a realistic dinosaur in the woods, eat some leaves, you’re fine... But we really wanted to play with that twist of this is a boy out there. A dinosaur boy for sure, but trying to infuse those qualities into him."[28][39]
Since The Good Dinosaur is set in a world in which dinosaurs never went extinct, they were instead able to evolve. Herbivores like Arlo and his family become farmers, and carnivores like the T. rexes become ranchers. Because they are meant to be reminiscent of cowboys, when the T. rexes run, their lower bodies mimic a galloping horse, while their upper bodies have the feel of a riding cowboy. To help inspire Butch's physical look and performance, the filmmakers looked at classic film cowboys such as characters portrayed by Clint Eastwood and Jack Palance.[38]
Reception
Box office
As of November 29, 2015[update], The Good Dinosaur has grossed $55.6 million in North America and $27.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $84.6 million.[7]
In North America, The Good Dinosaur opened on Wednesday, November 25, 2015 alongside Creed and Victor Frankenstein, as well as the wide releases of Brooklyn, Spotlight and Trumbo. All will face competition with the second weekend of the final Hunger Games installment, Mockingjay – Part 2. The film is projected to gross $60–65 million from 3,749 theaters in its first five days, including $45 million in its opening weekend.[47] The film made $1.3 million from its Tuesday night previews and $9.8 million on its first day. The film ended up grossing $55.6 million in its first five days, including $39.2 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office behind Mockingjay - Part 2.[48]
Outside North America, it earned $28.7 million from 39 markets including 8 significant markets. Unlike the U.S. where it had the benefit of the Thanksgiving weekend, it did not had the same benefit internationally. Rather, it was designed to set it up to run through December holiday.[49] The top openings were in the United Kingdom ($4.3 million), Mexico ($3.6 million), France ($3.2 million), Argentina ($2.2 million), and Russia ($2.1 million). Of those, it opened at No. 1 in Mexico, Argentina and Russia. Among the big markets that have not bowed are Australia (December 26), Korea and Brazil (January 7), and Japan (March 12). A China release is still to be determined.[49]
Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 77%, based on 117 reviews, with a rating average of 6.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Good Dinosaur delivers thrillingly beautiful animation in service of a worthy story that, even if it doesn't quite live up to the lofty standards set by Pixar, still adds up to charming, family-friendly entertainment."[50] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[51] On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[48]
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