“The Good Dinosaur” asks the question: What if the asteroid that forever changed life on Earth missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct? Pixar Animation Studios takes you on an epic journey into the world of dinosaurs where an Apatosaurus named Arlo makes an unlikely human friend. While traveling through a harsh and mysterious landscape, Arlo learns the power of confronting his fears and discovers what he is truly capable of.
For some reason, I get a weird clash between the super-cartoony dino and the lushly realistic scenery. I suppose that in retrospect, previous Pixar movies probably had the same problem (esp. UP), but I didn’t really notice them then.
It’s an odd juxtaposition to be sure, a green cartoony (almost Puff the Magic Dragon-esque) dino in a landscape that basically looks like a mish-mash of near-realistic Yosemite and Yellowstone.
I didn’t respond well to the trailer when I saw it before Inside Out for the reasons others have already described. The opening sequence with the asteroid and realistic dino’s was great, but then the green cartoon one looked so low-rent that I couldn’t believe it.
Yeah, I concur. Would have been pretty cool if the dinosaur and kid were less stylized. But then I suppose that’d get us Disney’s Dinosaur – so maybe not. That damn trailer was a lie!
For me, it’s the contrast between the almost photorealism of the dinosaurs in the asteroid sequence with the cartoonishness of the little one that’s the focus of the film. And the trailer I saw in the theater was quite a bit different. Almost all of it focused on the early, realistic part, which made the juxtaposition even more jarring.
I think there’s a couple things that make this stand out more:
We’re used to seeing very stylized humans in relatively realistic settings (the caveman-boy didn’t bother me as much as the dino).
The dinosaur is more stylized than the rats were, relatively speaking.
We did get a shot of relatively realistic looking dinos, and that rainbow lizard (admittedly he didn’t have a face) seemed completely naturalistic looking
Also, I’ve always been a little bit disturbed by the Pixar-eyes, but they’ve been relatively back-grounded in past movies. But the close up shots of the dinosaur are just all-eye, all the time (partially because he doesn’t have any fur, etc on his head to distract from it.) The eyes are a larger % of his face than for other characters (e.g. the caveman kid).
Very strange style choice on this one. All the background animals look like, well, animals. But all the “participants” look like cartoons. The pterodactyls, the T-Rexes and the, umm, octoceratops (??) look more like they came from a Dreamworks movie than from Pixar.
Not to me… Dreamworks usually go for a more snap-and-hold style of anim that is more production friendly (less expensive) and more irritating after a while. This is definately the Pixar style of more fluid, soulful, nuanced performance, mixed with a really nice floppiness that is actually really hard to do well (outside of wearing a mascot suit), and probably took a lot longer to get right.
Not sold on it though. Obviously, it’s hard to judge a movie by its trailer, and if the reviews are amazingly positive, I won’t mind making my way to the movie theater. However, so far it feels like a far more conventional approach than Inside Out or Brave - and the trailer hasn’t really hooked me on the premise of dinosaurs and humans co-existing. Classic adventure romp. Young brontosaurus-style dinosaur loses (or gets separated from) his parents and now faces an exciting journey on his own while making new friends -Littlefoot anyone? It feels like a narrative and setting that, like Cars, is more tuned for a younger audience than let’s say Inside Out, The Incredibles, Ratatouille or other Pixar productions.
It’s the damn animation style that’s killing me on this one. How do you go from Ratatouille, Finding Nemo and Monsters to…this? The main character looks like he escaped from Toy Story 4 and stumbled in to his own movie.
I’m sure it will be cute and heartfelt and I’ll end up enjoying it. Just feeling like Pixar went a bit too “Disney” on this one, based on the trailers.
