Disney’s Dinosaur - A Hidden Gem Among Dinosaur Films

Amazing cover art.

Greetings, happy Thanksgiving to my North American fellows, I’m at least having some Bernard Matthews turkey dinosaur nuggets right now. it had been two years since I’ve wholly watched the millennial Dinosaur, one of Walt Disney’s underrated hidden gems, until Thanksgiving morning. Yet again it was actually an awesome watch for many reasons. The film is about a young Iguanodon named Aladar, adopted by a clan of prehistoric lemurs on an island, having hatched there castaway from his nest, but unfortunately they lose the island to a catastrophic meteor impact and now find themselves on the mainland, journeying with a dinosaur herd on their way to the rich nesting grounds, but there are troubles ahead they all must face. From what I could find, this movie is a bit controversial according to critics because of of the "dull" plot and the dialogue of the realistic dinosaurs (something the Walking With Dinosaurs movie (which I also find quite underrated) would get criticism for thirteen years later), but my experiences were nothing afflicted of those personal claims, and in fact it was one of the best movies I’ve ever watched, though just a good hour long. I highly recommend it if you too love dinosaurs, especially for those wanting to throw themselves back to their "dinosaur-obsessed kid" vibe, such as me. Keep in mind there are a bit of spoilers ahead, so take care if you’ve not watched it yet.

My favourite scene, a stunning vista into a world long ago.

For one thing, it is soooo detailed and immersive. There’s almost a Jurassic Park level of special effects and whatnot, and the filming locations such as the Everglades are straight-up paradise, if not the most prehistoric. The scene in the image above is probably my favourite, the amazing view of the Pteranodon carrying Aladar’s egg abroad, flying high above the land of all those majestic dinosaurs living their lives, it straight up throws you back right to the Mesozoic. Oh, and who could forget the thrilling soundtrack James Newton Howard masterly composed for the film, epitomised in said scene? To add to the immersion, even for a Disney movie, there’s a whole menagerie of prehistoric animals than just dinosaurs as popular as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, which creatively don’t even appear in the film. It’s almost as if it’s as palaeontological as Walking With Dinosaurs, with even the most obscure animals so greatly researched, conceptualised and brought to life (although they are depicted alongside each other in a classic anachronistic fashion). There are the protagonistic Iguanodons, Pachyrhinosaurus, Styracosaurus, Microceratus, Oviraptors, Struthiomimus, the antagonistic Carnotaurus, and an uncountable more. What I like even more is that among the dinosaurs are some other primeval little critters. Throughout the film are flocks of waterbirds I always liked to think were ducks/Vegavis (waterfowl being an ancient lineage of birds that lived alongside their dinosaur relatives just before the asteroid struck), but from my research are probably primeval, toothed seabirds called Ichthyornis. They did honk like geese nevertheless so it’d be easy to see them as waterfowl. A young Parasaurolophus chases them across a lake in the beginning, then it comes across a Longisquama, a mysterious little reptile from the Triassic period with strange long scales running along its back. These scales were once thought to represent pairs of wings similar to a modern Draco lizard’s, as seen in the film, but are now thought to be just fanciful structures for display. As two Oviraptors fight for and drop Aladar’s egg into a stream, the giant amphibian Koolasuchus can even be seen engulfing it, but fortunately spits it out disgusted. Koolasuchus was the last of its kind, an Early Cretaceous relic of a group of giant salamander-like animals called the temnospondyls (which evolved far before the dinosaurs), calling the cool rivers of then-Antarctic Australia home with polar dinosaurs, before presumably a rise in temperature occurred and crocodilians outcompeted it to extinction. I find it very delighting to see it here. It seems that the lemurs are also based on early primates, the fact that primates are thought to have originated in the Late Cretaceous period thanks to molecular clock data, although strepsirrhine ("wet-nosed") primates like true lemurs are not thought to have evolved until the Eocene epoch. The oldest animal discovered possibly being a primate is a little squirrel-like critter called Purgatorius, discovered just above the iridium layer the Chicxulub asteroid left sixty-six million years ago, so it’s probable that it was not new to the Paleocene and just a mere survivor of the Cretaceous extinction. Dinosaur has the biggest amount of prehistoric animals I’ve ever seen in a Disney movie since Fantasia’s adaptation of The Rite of Spring, and it is very impressive, and to add to that even more they are really scientifically accurate for 2000 palaeontology (minus the scaly Velociraptors and Oviraptors and those silly equine lips on the Iguanodons, etc). All that work depicting prehistory for this movie is just incredible.

Koolasuchus. The adventurous theme of the sequence straight up gets the Yoshi’s Island title screen music playing in my head.

“Carnotaurs! If we don't hurry they will catch up to us!”

And we cannot forget to talk about those CARNOTAURS! Again, Mr. Rex had taken a break from acting for a while and in his place were two Carnotaurus brothers who were just as terrifying, the most terrifying dinosaurs in the film you could say, or even villains in films overall, though I’m still too brave for them. The "meat-eating bulls" are designed with some fantastical characteristics from real carnotaurs, for example, being horrifically gnarlier, and twice the size and bulk, bigger and scarier than even a T. rex. Their expressions and badass screeches are also quite bone-chilling, occasionally snaring to each other with their toothy grins without even talking anthropomorphically. Carnotaurs in real life were one of the fastest dinosaurs, literal speed demons built to run up to speeds of around 50 kilometres per hour. Even in the movie they’re still terrifyingly fast. This is evident around the beginning, when the aforementioned baby Parasaurolophus, distracted by the flying Longisquama, accidentally awakens the Carnotaurus into a rampage across the tropical grassland, catching up to an unlucky Pachyrhinosaurus (who scarily, even being the size of a rhinoceros is absolutely dwarfed by the colossal predator), before claiming domain over its kill with a chilling screech, which would be one of my favourite dinosaur sounds in popular culture. Just imagine if you were chased by such a monolith on legs? Thrilling to think, right? I also really love how the Carnotaurus are simply referred to by the herding dinosaurs as "carnotaurs," like a cool little common name. Here you’ll nowadays often see me not just refer to dinosaurs by their tongue-twisting scientific names like in an academic paper (a lot I’ve seen take that approach, but as you’ve probably heard already I’m of a more immersive style to palaeontology), as in Giganotosaurus carolinii, but immersively refer to them in shorter easier format, normally after saying the genus name, like "the mob of giganotosaurs quarrel over their kill." I have just done this right now talking about the carnotaurs. Again I’m too brave for even them to scare me, but the Carnotaurus might just be the most terrifying antagonists of Hollywood. Influenced by the carnotaurs are the dark moments of survival occasionally shown in this film, which is captured morbidly. I can’t exactly define it but you might just feel it here and there. You might see skeletons and corpses of hapless dinosaurs on the plains who didn’t make it, or vicious scars and limping of Bruton. Nature is both beautiful and nightmarish, and this film illustrates that.

Poor, poor pachyrhinosaur…

Onto less frightening terms, the personalities of their respective characters are just fit and are very lovable. My favourite of this case would be Url, Eema the Styracosaurus’s pet ankylosaur who acts like a dog instead of being anthropomorphic. Especially as an ankylosaur lover, he is very cute and makes for a great occasion of comic relief while watching the characters’ adventure to the nesting ground. Baylene is a colossal old Brachiosaurus who is unfortunate that she is the last of her kind (at least in the migrating herd, because other brachiosaurs are clearly seen). Her age is ever more fitting with the elderly British accent of Joan Plowright. Kron and Bruton (who I’ll get into again later) are the herd’s strict, even antagonistic leaders. They believe in nothing but the survival of the fittest, and don’t care about the survival of weaker dinosaurs struggling behind so they don’t have to waste their time being idiots, when they already shouldn’t. This is a creepily realistic detail, common in species these days, like quantity over quality, whether it’d be massive amounts of offspring with no parents and danger about like in sea turtles, or deadly rite-of-passage migrations that are now or never for animals like wildebeest in the Serengeti. Not as empathetic as we are, and it isn’t too surprising the leading Iguanodons would be this disrespectful. Then there’s this hilarious part where Aladar falls in love with Kron’s sister Neera, and the uncle lemur Zini gives a little "help" trying to attract her attention, only for Neera to reply to her kids “That is what is called a Jerkasaurus.” What humour.

Who’s a good boy?

Finally, I’d like to talk about something about the designs of the Iguanodons. Don’t you think they evoke an equine (or at least perissodactylian) vibe? I find it quite majestic and a bit silly. They have emotional mammalian lips in place of where the beak would actually be (they were going to have beaks but was scrapped because speech movement didn’t work well in tests with them, they look even funnier anyway, though the beaks are cursedly actually underneath the lips as pseudo-teeth), a row of spikes along the top like a mane (especially on Kron), they trot and gallop, and they make all sorts of hard, horse-like snorts, growls and lowing bugles. Kron and moreso Bruton get more specific as a topic and the latter might actually be my favourite design in the film and for a dinosaur in pop-culture overall, you could say in an All Yesterdays fashion (though I’m now getting more independent from TetZoo). He’s really beefy and muscular like a bull compared to what’s often depicted for an Iguanodon, with a several skin folds, flaps and spikes, a stern, horse-like look on his face, and those growths on horn along his and Kron’s head. I was already planning of drawing Iguanodon some day, but seeing Bruton just inspired me to do so even more. See hippos and cattle compared to their skeletons, much less beefy right? Would’ve been the same for dinosaurs as we assume like Iguanodon and its kin. Bruton just captures that and I want to add as much soft tissue onto my reconstruction as he has, maybe the horny growths too, but maybe, because that’s unconventional in Iguanodon reconstructions and I’m not sure if there are any rough textures on the skull to support them. Still, in whatever way plausible, I just want to reconstruct Iguanodon like Bruton and a majestic bull on the field, as it probably would’ve been, especially the great males.

Bruton, looking powerful, my favourite design for an Iguanodon.

And that is it for my TED-talk about why I like Dinosaur. Again, I find it an underrated masterpiece for its controversies and any dinosaur lover of suitable viewing should give it a watch if they’ve not already. This is probably my first blogpost on this page of my website that is as long as a typical blogpost you’d find on the internet. Dinosaur has very much become my favourite Disney film of all time for, obviously the dinosaurs, but it also is greatly executed. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with that on your telly!