As good as this film is...

...Looking back on the film, if there was anything you could change at all about it, what would it be? Now, I'm not saying that anything absolutely needed to be changed, but I figure this might be an interesting diversion for a while.

Me, personally. Well, considering that most children's films are about an hour and a half, and this film was barely over one hour (about one hour and five minutes, less than one hour if you exclude the closing credits), I'd say this could easily have stodd to have about twenty minutes added to it without there being any remote threat of it boring the audience. A little more depth to some of the characters might have been nice. I'm not just talking reinserting old cut footage (no, this is not that discussion). Just, you know, more.

This post has been edited by WeirdRaptor on Oct 30 2009, 07:03 PM

Yeah, the length is too short because some of the footage were cut from the movie... "it was too scary for children". -.-

The longest sequel is "LBT X: The Great Longneck Migration" with a runtime of 80:49 minutes (and, by the way, it's one of the best sequels).

I agree with you, the film should have been longer.

I find that to be utter bull, considering that most kids would have survived the horrors that were Disney's old timey classics like Fantasia and the Pleasure Island sequences of Pinocchio by the time they saw Land Before Time. Seriously, if I can survive the sequence in which a T-Rex viciously kills a stegosaurus without being utterly traumatized, then I stand a sharptooth scaring but not killing some baby dinos.

But we're getting off track. I'll allow this to be discussed, but let's keep the speculation doing.

Edit: I am of course referring to Spielberg and Lucas's reasoning, not your claim.

This post has been edited by WeirdRaptor on Oct 30 2009, 07:05 PM

I guess the only thing I'd really change is the wording at the end. It sorta closes the possibility to further sequels. Of course I'm sure they had no idea 12 other movies and 26 TV episodes would come from it.

And I think the animation sucks and I don't really like Gabriel Damon as the voice of Littlefoot. Not much they could have done about the animation though. I think it sucks 'cuz it looks old and crappy. It was the best they could do back then though, so I'm okay with it. Never thought the animation sucked as a kid, so I must just be used to the wonderful animation of the newer movies.

I actually like the animation of the first movie. In many cases, I prefer it over the newer movies. It looks more detailed than what I'd see in later movies. There also seems to be far less mistakes in the animation, in comparison to the newer movies, in my opinion. As colorful as the newer movies are, I still prefer the animation style present in the first movie.

This post has been edited by DarkHououmon on Oct 30 2009, 07:57 PM

The original animation style is meant to be dark and gritty, better representing the setting... a land before time. The character and setting being all bright and colourful would have taken away from the impact the movie was intended to have, as well as the meaning of the story.

As for what I'd change... I would have hoped for a slightly longer movie, I agree that it was a little too short.

I know what I'd add: ALL THE STUFF they cut out of it, like whatever scene involved Ducky making faces, or the subplot mentioned in the novelization about them meeting a heard of racist longnekcs and domeheads or something like that. I'd like all of that stuff to finally see the light of day.

I bet we'd all love that. Unfortunately, well...

Anyway, if I were to change anything... I'd get it as close to Bluth's original vision as I could. That would mean getting all the deleted scenes back in (if they still existed ) make it longer, and explore the characters in more depth. It'd be an LBT film I'd want to go to the cinema and see.

Interesting question...most of us really like the film as is, so finding something else to add to make it better than we already enjoy it is hard to do. The deleted scenes probably would not have scared anyone so they should have been there from the start. If you could survive Jungle Book when Baloo gets his face scratched off you can see T-rex do the same.

Really, I wouldn't change much else.

Exactly my point...its not a happy story or is it meant to be.

I would love to see all the editted footage that was taken out of the film. I've read the original book that was released along side the movie which still has the scenes in it that were extracted from the final cut. As already said, kids could have easily sat through the additional minutes of that film and it was a poor decision to have them removed considering that the average running time of Disney movies at the time were easily 90mins. I love Don Bluth's animation style and would loved to see more of his work in a more modern day release. If anything could improved the original LBT movie for me, it would have to be getting a look at that deleted footage. A pray, one day, someone will come across it and on some random anniversary, it be there under bonus features. Maybe someday...

I didn't say bright and colorful. I said I'd like it to be in modern animation style. You can make a setting dark and have a dreadful feeling nowadays just as well as you could back then. The old animation is like comparing the picture produced by a rabbit-ear TV antenna to a modern HD channel. It looks like crap. Grainy, old, and imprecise. I don't even like the animation of movies like Bambi because they look old. The newer animation styles of today look more realistic and just better altogether. Heck, even Inuyasha's animation style is looking old nowadays compared to newer anime's. Newer is almost always better. Clearly defined (but not too-noticeable) lines and a good pallet of colors are what make a good animation...which is something most older animated films lack. Bambi had some really great lines, but the range of colors was too narrow. Nowadays with computers, we can change colors so minutely that we can't even tell the difference between them!

What was wrong with Gabriel Damon's portraler of Littlefoot? I thought he was perfect, or at least better than all the rest.

Also, how can anyone dislike older animation just because its older? That doesn't make sense. Sure, some of it may not look as good as newer stuff, but that does not makes it bad. It also can't be helped, because Bluth and co did the best they could with what the time period had to offer. Also, you say that animation now looks more realistic. Er, why are you looking for realism in a film where dinosaurs talk and the predators are vindictive enough to hunt down baby dinos for revenge over a damaged eye?
I will admit that older specials effects old films may seen cheesy and outdated now, but I wouldn't say it sucks, because didn't at the time and it sure as heck can't be helped now.

Alright, new ground rule, for this point on, keep the posts based around things that could have been feasible at the time, the 1980s. I really don't think saying you think the animation sucked and needs to be changed because its old when it couldn't have been helped at the time is fair and the discussion can't go anywhere in that direction because well...what I just said. Land Before Time was on the upper end of what animation in the 80s was like.

This post has been edited by WeirdRaptor on Oct 31 2009, 04:14 PM

Of course I like the original. I'd buy a re-make of it in a second. I just don't like the animation of it anymore. I think that if an animated movie is good enough, it should be remade every 10 years or so. I can't even watch movies 1-7 without cringing at the animation. 1-6 had the old animation style and 7 had such a cheapo animation style I'd be surprised if they paid the animators $10k for it. Movies 8-13 have decent animation (though 9 had some experimental stuff that wasn't that great). Of course in 10 years I'll be hating the animation of 8-13 too because it'll look old. I'm all for the new and the greatest. Watching LBT 1 on a computer just makes it look even worse in comparison to the clean lines and fine gradients of Windows Vista or 7. Seeing as I can only watch movies on the computer (I gave my TV to mom), I guess that's one of the reasons I can't stand the animation style of the older movies.

I disagree. I think that films that are good enough should just simply be kept in circulation. I wouldn't have LBT any other way for the most part, even with the old animation, which I like, by the way. I just can't get into your mindset, but remakes are not the answer. They are rarely as good as the original, because there's not a snowball's change in hell that the film would be left untampered with by the moral guardians and media watchdogs. After it was handed to someone to remake, the film that we all know and love with a mere animation upgrade is not what we would get back.
this discussion if about how this film could have been made just a little different back then.

This post has been edited by WeirdRaptor on Oct 31 2009, 04:28 PM

When it comes to realism, I don't think the new movies portray that very well. When I look at the adults, like Littlefoot's mother and Cera's father, in the first movie, they do look more like adults, and seem more accurate to their real-life dinosaur counterparts.

But in later movies, I see a difference. When I look at Mr. Thicknose, I don't see an adult, I see a very large child dinosaur with an adult head. His body porportions seem more close to that of a child dinosaur like Cera than an adult. Littlefoot's grandparents and father aren't any better.

Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong, but this is what I notice anytime I look at a later movie.

Personally I think that the older style animation did have a great charm. I also think that so do modern animation techniques if done well (e.g. the near photo-realistic water in LBT 9 fit in well in my opinion). However, the way I see it they have been messing up much more frequently and seriously with the animation in the later installments than they did in the original movies. Among other there are what I would like to label color-amok-runs like everything turning red in case of danger, deep green skies, characters turning almost black in the cold, green lava. Then there is another favorite tool in the modern animation which irritates me quite a bit namely their habit of letting the ground slide past the running characters making it look like the layer of the ground sliding past behind the running characters was not connected with those characters in any way (this one was very prominent in many of the later sequels).
Again, I do think that the modern techniques can be used very well, but I would not say that they always have been used so well in LBT that I would consider the newer animation generally superior to the old style but very carefully handled animation of the original movie.

Like most of you I too think it would have been an improvement if they had allowed for the inclusion of some more scenes and I am not convinced that the change to let Littlefoot find the Great Valley only after the defeat of the sharptooth was a wise one (I take it they wanted to shorten the movie as well as keep the big effect of the Great Valley for the final end, but I still think the original script would have made more sense). There are a couple of questions left open by the original movie which might have been addressed if they had made the movie a little longer and then there are also some questions (in particular about the Great Valley and the characters knowing about it) which perhaps were left unanswered for good reason.
In a different thread I expressed my conviction that there may be some substance to the rumors of an earlier script (definitely NOT the movie as we know it) of LBT suggesting the Great Valley to be a dinosaur heaven and the characters getting there only after their death. Such a change would have been extremely emotional but dead sad as well (apart from taking away the basis for any sequels).
There are also some suggestions that earlier scripts had LBT in general to be somewhat darker (the racism bit for example being not limited mostly to Cera among the five main characters). I am not sure a more sinister setting would have been an improvement, but I would be curious to see how it would have worked out.

Well, Malte, in all fairness, you can delve deeper into an issue and make the world more intense without outright making the setting more sinister (though I would love to see how on earth you'd accomplish that. Barren wasteland, and death and destruction all around as the film is).
Although Don Bluth thinks that Spielberg and Lucas may have been right, I'm not so sure. As stated, the Disney company had made films that far surpassed Land Before Time and Don Bluth in how dark it got without generations of kids growing up into total maniacs. I call up Fantasia as my reference.

One thing I just thoght of. The grandparents don't talk in this film. That always kind of disappointed me. All they do is chuckle a couple of times while leaving momma Longneck to do all the work.

I'd add the deleted scenes, put the existing scenes, if any were rearranged, back into their original order. Try to make sure the movie was around 90 minutes. Also I would change it so Spike does not grow in size but remains the same size for the whole movie,and no sharpteeth that can fall a long distance and just be knocked out nor the super leaps.

Maybe for the kids to have some fastbiters appear. & make sure the various dinos look more like the type they are supposed to be. As well as writing it so all ages can enjoy it, kids, teens, adults, are get as close to having something for various age groups as I could.

This post has been edited by Kor on Nov 1 2009, 12:20 AM

As for the sinister bit I was mainly referring to an increasing of the racism bit and the idea of the Great Valley as a heaven which the characters reached but only after their death. This later thing, interesting though it might be would be very sinister indeed and I guess a bit too sinister for my taste. It would also have the disadvantage about making sequels rather impossible.
I do agree with you WR that the story could have been more deeper without being more sinister. I think that there could have well been scenes that would have come across as more sinister as well as some that would have been lighthearted.
The later might have been a chance to include Littlefoot's grandparents a bit more. For example it would have been a cute scene if they had included the scene which I found in one book (a book though which I think is not based on some earlier script of any sort) in which Littlefoot's grandpa enchanted by his grandson's cuteness sets his foot besides Littlefoot's pointing out that one of his toes is larger than Littlefoot's entire foot thereby earning him the name.
There are also scenes which could have been dark and hopeful at the same time. For example the Oasis scene which on the one hand would have shown a spread of racism that went further than it did in the movie as we know it, but that on the other hand could have been presented as an important lesson for Cera who would have had a chance to see the insanity of the whole racism from a different perspective. It could have been a very powerful scene.

I thought that oasis scene from the book was a very good scene that really could have shown some major character development. Granted racism is always a touchy subject but the way it was portrayed in the book would have been the right outset for the gang to develop a much deeper sense of compassion and trust within each other. A shame that it was removed really.