Disney is a wiz at marketing products, entertainment, and film to kids. They are their main consumer with the idea of if you get the kids, you gets their parents too. Disney has spent many years creating IP in order to attract this group from princesses to Winnie the Pooh to Mickey Mouse and his friends. They have been able to turn cute little animals into iconic characters, reboot classic fairy tales, and can even make seemingly unlovable characters such as Wreck-It-Ralph and Stitch into beloved merchandise.
But for some odd reason, Disney cannot take the easiest of all kid bait, the creatures you can dangle in front of nearly any young child's eyes and get them excited about, and make it work for them. I'm talking about dinosaurs. No matter how old dinosaurs get, kids generation after generation still remain fascinated with this giant reptiles. And yet, Disney has tried to use these behemoths several times to make money without much success.
First let's take the film Dinosaur. I know, not a very originally named movie. It was a computer animated film that came out in 2000. I had actually forgotten this film even existed because I never saw it. Surprisingly it made a lot of money, nearly $350 million. Made me wonder why it is not remembered like some of the other Disney films of that time such as Lilo and Stitch, Mulan, and Brother Bear which made less money. Then I watched the film. I could see why it wasn't remembered. It was a totally forgettable film.
Dinosaur is one of those films that seems like it was written by AI back when AI was just starting out. It hits all of the tropes of storytelling. A young dinosaur egg gets lost, a family of lemurs take it in, it hatches, and they raise the reptile, Aladar, like their own.
Years later when an asteroid hits and destroys their island, the animals must scatter, so Aladar leads his adopted family to safety and they join up with a herd of varying dinosaurs led by a big bully named Kron. Of course Kron is better than the two predator dinosaurs following behind waiting to pick off anyone who falls behind. Aladar must protect his slower mammal family as well as some weaker and older members of the herd.
There is the love interest, the surprising discovery of the nesting grounds by the weaker herd members, the misunderstanding of the leader of our hero, and every other cliche this movie can think to stick its foot into.
By the time the film comes to a close you haven't so much have forgotten the film as you have already seen it a hundred other times so nothing about this one makes it stand out any more.
Then there is The Good Dinosaur. This film has the distinction of being Pixar's first supposed flop which is remarkable considering there were 15 Pixar films before it. Although it also made nearly $350 million, its costs prevented it from breaking even.
Pixar has come up with a bunch of very unique ideas. Talking toys, a land where monsters collect the screams of children as power, a kitchen where rats make the food, a house that travels by thousands of balloons, WALL-E, and countless others. But this idea is a stinker. It is, what would have happened if the meteor that should have caused the dinosaurs to become extinct had simply missed the planet?
Their answer is that dinosaurs would talk and humans would become the pet-like creatures of the planet. Not sure how they landed on that but not much of a premise to work with and so the film has an uphill battle to make you interested in the goings on.
The only unique aspect of the film are the bad guy pterodactyls who start out funny, but then just become scary. Other than that, a by-the-book story of a son having to prove himself to the memory of his father is what buoys this film and it barely manages to keep its head afloat.
Neither one of these films is bad per se, but neither film is worth watching either. There are many other films in the Disney vault that are a much better use of your time. I would recommend seeing The Fox and the Hound if you want to see a Disney film about a unique friendship and Pixar's underrated Elementals instead.
Disney could not even save dinosaurs in their parks as they recently announced the closing of their DinoLand USA in Animal Kingdom in Florida. It always felt like a land that did not belong and it is going to be replaced with stronger Disney IP such as Encanto and Indiana Jones.
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