The Good Dinosaur
Jan. 10th, 2016 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistHaving been less than impressed with Pixar's last movie (I'm apparently the only person who didn't like Inside Out that much? it seemed a movie about a little girl's depression and the only thing that really stands out about it to me was the girl's mother saying something like "we want our happy little girl back" which freaked me out; being happy for your parents' sake is no way to live), and not knowing much from the impressionistic trailer for this one, I was still happy to give something called The Good Dinosaur a try.
I love dinosaurs, and good ones are the best kind! The following is possibly mildly spoilery (though I don't think it's a story that's spoiled by knowing what happens).
I especially love the idea that the dinosaur-killing meteor was deflected enough that they carried on and became farmers. The eponymous dinosaur and his family are green sauropod-ish dinosaurs, the gentle herbivorous type that I've thought were friendly since I first watched The Land Before Time when I was small. The rest of their ecosystem is recognizably the one we have today, though; apparently the dinosaurs' agricultural revolution converged with ours, because the corn they farm looks very familiar, there are deciduous trees, fireflies, bison (kind of?), and so on.
The protagonist, Arlo, hatches from an egg twice the size of his siblings', but is himself tiny, and this sets up the themes of his upbringing. While his brother and sister excel at the chores they're given to do, Arlo struggles to feed the chicken-esque theropods the family keep on their farm, and in general is afraid of everything.
So far so kids-movie, but when Arlo's fear of killing a "critter" he's been asked to trap means he lets the little thing escape, his warm and gentle father gets angry and says they're going to track the vermin. They get caught in a storm and, after getting Arlo to safety, his father is swept away and killed before his little son's eyes.
Seeing the little critter again later, Arlo rages at it because he blames it for his father dying, and in chasing the tiny brown hairy thing around he gets knocked unconscious and swept down the river and is lost. So he has more kids-movie adventures trying to get home, finding both friends and foes along the way, most importantly the "vermin" (which ends up looking like a human child but also barks and howls and sniffs like a dog, and does not speak), who saves Arlo from starving when he wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings and panics.
I like how grown-up the movie is, for all its cuddly characters and simple story. Arlo has PTSD-like reactions to future storms, with flashbacks to his father telling him to run that leave him fleeing blindly from Spot, his little human-dog friend. The nonverbal Spot and Arlo communicate to each other the families they've come from: Spot very deliberately knocking over the two big twigs that apparently represent his parents and gently covering them with dirt, has probably left me closer to tears than any wordy explanation of his orphanhood would've. A big allosurus-like-thing tells Arlo "if you aren't scared of a crocodile trying to bite your face, you aren't alive." This shift from the kids-movie theme of "banish your fear" to the slightly more subtle "you can't wait until you're not scared to start doing things" was most welcome to me.
Then there's a point where Arlo is again knocked out after some baddies have stolen Spot away, his dad comes to him, doesn't speak but rescues him from the vines he's gotten tangled in, and starts to lead him away, in the opposite direction from Spot. Arlo is overwhelmed at seeing his father walking around again, but also is insistent they need to go back because he has to save Spot. He's learned the lesson about doing things even though they're scary just in time, because he's scared of the baddies that have Spot but he also says "I love him."
The moment where it seems like Arlo has to choose between his little companion and his beloved father back from the dead is actually heart-wrenching. Arlo notices his father isn't leaving footprints in the mud like he is so realizes that he father isn't really there. When Arlo says he's going to help Spot, his ghost-father turns around and gives Arlo a few warm words and a smile before disappearing into dust, and Arlo wakes up still tangled in the vines but now determined.
After Arlo has found Spot and is just about home, telling Spot excitedly about how great their lives will be and how it'll be Spot's farm too, Arlo and Spot's delighted howls attract a group of human-looking things making similar howls. There seem to be a male-female couple, and male and female children, all of whom Spot is smaller than, making this dynamic exactly like Arlo's own family. Arlo and Spot both have to make a difficult choice; Arlo nudges Spot toward his fellow humans a few times, who cuddle and coo over him, but more than once Spot comes back to Arlo again, and more than once Arlo nudged him back to the humans. I was surprised at how much I got swept up in this, and as Spot was nudged inside and then ran back outside the circle Arlo had drawn around this family, I briefly couldn't be sure whether the story would fork down the "people must be with their own kind" leg of the Trousers of Time, or whether it would be the "friendship transcends" leg. I ended up wanting Spot to just stay on the little circular trench Arlo had dug, but I think I may have been projecting a little bit there.
When Arlo finally returns to his family's farm, the shots are all parallels with the beginning of the movie, when it was his dad we saw going outside to his work. Arlo's mother is working in the fields and even whispers "Henry?" as she sees Arlo striding over to her, but then realizes it's her missing son, who may not be the only one to imagine that Henry is not dead after all.
I worry what was sweet and affecting in the movie sounds dull and clichéd here, but it had the unblinking intensity, heart and charm of the good Pixar movies, and a much more accurate and helpful portrayal of what it's like to lose someone you're so close to and how difficult it is to get past disappointing yourself and everyone else than I am used to seeing in movies, kids' or otherwise.
I love dinosaurs, and good ones are the best kind! The following is possibly mildly spoilery (though I don't think it's a story that's spoiled by knowing what happens).
I especially love the idea that the dinosaur-killing meteor was deflected enough that they carried on and became farmers. The eponymous dinosaur and his family are green sauropod-ish dinosaurs, the gentle herbivorous type that I've thought were friendly since I first watched The Land Before Time when I was small. The rest of their ecosystem is recognizably the one we have today, though; apparently the dinosaurs' agricultural revolution converged with ours, because the corn they farm looks very familiar, there are deciduous trees, fireflies, bison (kind of?), and so on.
The protagonist, Arlo, hatches from an egg twice the size of his siblings', but is himself tiny, and this sets up the themes of his upbringing. While his brother and sister excel at the chores they're given to do, Arlo struggles to feed the chicken-esque theropods the family keep on their farm, and in general is afraid of everything.
So far so kids-movie, but when Arlo's fear of killing a "critter" he's been asked to trap means he lets the little thing escape, his warm and gentle father gets angry and says they're going to track the vermin. They get caught in a storm and, after getting Arlo to safety, his father is swept away and killed before his little son's eyes.
Seeing the little critter again later, Arlo rages at it because he blames it for his father dying, and in chasing the tiny brown hairy thing around he gets knocked unconscious and swept down the river and is lost. So he has more kids-movie adventures trying to get home, finding both friends and foes along the way, most importantly the "vermin" (which ends up looking like a human child but also barks and howls and sniffs like a dog, and does not speak), who saves Arlo from starving when he wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings and panics.
I like how grown-up the movie is, for all its cuddly characters and simple story. Arlo has PTSD-like reactions to future storms, with flashbacks to his father telling him to run that leave him fleeing blindly from Spot, his little human-dog friend. The nonverbal Spot and Arlo communicate to each other the families they've come from: Spot very deliberately knocking over the two big twigs that apparently represent his parents and gently covering them with dirt, has probably left me closer to tears than any wordy explanation of his orphanhood would've. A big allosurus-like-thing tells Arlo "if you aren't scared of a crocodile trying to bite your face, you aren't alive." This shift from the kids-movie theme of "banish your fear" to the slightly more subtle "you can't wait until you're not scared to start doing things" was most welcome to me.
Then there's a point where Arlo is again knocked out after some baddies have stolen Spot away, his dad comes to him, doesn't speak but rescues him from the vines he's gotten tangled in, and starts to lead him away, in the opposite direction from Spot. Arlo is overwhelmed at seeing his father walking around again, but also is insistent they need to go back because he has to save Spot. He's learned the lesson about doing things even though they're scary just in time, because he's scared of the baddies that have Spot but he also says "I love him."
The moment where it seems like Arlo has to choose between his little companion and his beloved father back from the dead is actually heart-wrenching. Arlo notices his father isn't leaving footprints in the mud like he is so realizes that he father isn't really there. When Arlo says he's going to help Spot, his ghost-father turns around and gives Arlo a few warm words and a smile before disappearing into dust, and Arlo wakes up still tangled in the vines but now determined.
After Arlo has found Spot and is just about home, telling Spot excitedly about how great their lives will be and how it'll be Spot's farm too, Arlo and Spot's delighted howls attract a group of human-looking things making similar howls. There seem to be a male-female couple, and male and female children, all of whom Spot is smaller than, making this dynamic exactly like Arlo's own family. Arlo and Spot both have to make a difficult choice; Arlo nudges Spot toward his fellow humans a few times, who cuddle and coo over him, but more than once Spot comes back to Arlo again, and more than once Arlo nudged him back to the humans. I was surprised at how much I got swept up in this, and as Spot was nudged inside and then ran back outside the circle Arlo had drawn around this family, I briefly couldn't be sure whether the story would fork down the "people must be with their own kind" leg of the Trousers of Time, or whether it would be the "friendship transcends" leg. I ended up wanting Spot to just stay on the little circular trench Arlo had dug, but I think I may have been projecting a little bit there.
When Arlo finally returns to his family's farm, the shots are all parallels with the beginning of the movie, when it was his dad we saw going outside to his work. Arlo's mother is working in the fields and even whispers "Henry?" as she sees Arlo striding over to her, but then realizes it's her missing son, who may not be the only one to imagine that Henry is not dead after all.
I worry what was sweet and affecting in the movie sounds dull and clichéd here, but it had the unblinking intensity, heart and charm of the good Pixar movies, and a much more accurate and helpful portrayal of what it's like to lose someone you're so close to and how difficult it is to get past disappointing yourself and everyone else than I am used to seeing in movies, kids' or otherwise.
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Date: 2016-01-11 05:45 pm (UTC)I thought the ominous size of the egg, and the tiny dinosaur inside it, would be commented upon but it wasn't really. Being me, I thought "but since he clearly had more egg-innards to feed on, shouldn't he have gotten bigger than the others?!" But biology was never my strong point. :)