The Good Dinosaur

 The Good Dinosaur is a 2015 3D computer-animated adventure comedy-drama film^[8] produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film stars Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, A. J. Buckley, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand and Steve Zahn. Bob Peterson, who came up with the idea for the story, directed the film until August 2013.^[1] In October 2014, Peter Sohn was announced as the new director.^[9] The film, along with Inside Out, marks the first time that Pixar has released two feature films in the same year.^[10] The Good Dinosaur had its premiere on November 10, 2015 in Paris, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2015.

 

Plot

In an alternate timeline set 65 million years after the asteroid that would have caused the extinction of dinosaurs passes safely over Earth, two Apatosaurus farmers named Henry (Jeffrey Wright) and Ida (Frances McDormand), give birth to three children: Libby (Maleah Padilla), Buck (Marcus Scribner), and the runt Arlo (Raymond Ochoa). While Libby and Buck easily adjust to life and their responsibilities on their farm (signified by a mud-print on a corn silo), Arlo's timid nature makes his tasks difficult for him. In order to give Arlo a sense of purpose, Henry puts him in charge of guarding their silo from pests and helping him set up traps. One day, a trap manages to capture a feral caveboy, but Arlo is too reluctant to kill him and lets him free. Heavily disappointed, Henry forces Arlo to accompany him to track the caveboy through a ravine where it begins to rain. After Arlo injures himself, Henry decides to turn back just as a flash flood occurs and a massive rapid appears, but Henry only manages to save Arlo before he is swept away and killed.

Production

Bob Peterson and Peter Sohn started working on the film in 2009, when Peterson came up with the idea.^[15] The film's first release date of November 27, 2013 was first announced in June 2011.^[16] The plot, director and co-director, producer, and other small details were announced at the D23 Expo on August 20, 2011.^[17] Peterson and John Walker announced the film as The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs.^[17] On April 24, 2012, Pixar announced that it would be titled The Good Dinosaur.^[18]
In June 2012, John Lasseter gave details about the film's plot: "They are kind of cartoony but they are dinosaurs; they are not walking around with clothes on or anything like that, they still are kind of dinosaurs. We focused on mostly the plant-eaters, not the carnivores... Their society becomes more of an agrarian society, meaning farmers... It’s a very funny story about a certain way of life that a young dinosaur has trouble fitting into and he ends up going on this quest. He kind of messes up and he has to put everything right by going on this quest and on that quest he meets this character that is an outcast from his society too and so the two of them form this bond and it becomes this unique kind of story..."^[19] The filmmakers wanted to explore what dinosaurs represent today, and how they are represented in stereotypes. Peterson stated: "It's time to do a movie where you get to know the dinosaur, what it's really like to be a dinosaur and to be with a dinosaur."^[20] Peterson said the inspiration for the movie came from a childhood visit to the 1964 New York World's Fair where he was impressed by some dinosaur audio-animatronics.^[20]
On the film's title, Sohn stated "The title is deceptively simple. It has more meaning than it seems."^[20] He additionally explained: "Arlo has a lot of issues when he's born. He's fearful and he's weak and he's disconnected from the family because of these issues and he feels like he's not worthy, and so he finds a way to become worthy."^[21]
In April 2012, Pixar announced that the film's release date had been shifted from November 27, 2013 to May 30, 2014.^[18][22] On August 9, 2013, it was announced at the D23 Expo that Lucas Neff, John Lithgow, Frances McDormand, Neil Patrick Harris, Judy Greer, and Bill Hader had joined the cast of the film.^[23]
By summer 2013, the director and producer had been removed from the film due to story problems.^[1] Peterson, who could not crack the film's third act,^[24] was absent from D23 Expo, where Sohn and producer Denise Ream presented footage from the film.^[25][26] Ed Catmull, Pixar's president, explained the departure: "All directors get really deep in their film. Sometimes you just need a different perspective to get the idea out. Sometimes directors... are so deeply embedded in their ideas it actually takes someone else to finish it up."^[1] Peterson moved on to another project he is developing at Pixar, while Ream replaced Walker, who left to work on Disney's Tomorrowland. On the subject of changing directors, Ream stated "It's given a lot of thought and care. Bob still works at Pixar [and] he's a beloved member of the studio. He helps out on a lot of the movies. We care about him, but he just needed help getting the movie done."^[27] John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Mark Andrews, and Sohn stepped in temporarily to work on various sections of the film.^[1] In September 2013, The Good Dinosaur had been pushed back from May 30, 2014 to November 25, 2015 (the scheduled release date for Pixar's Finding Dory). According to Ream, the primary reason for the rescheduling was "the story was not working, period, full stop, it just was not where it needed to be."^[28] In November 2013, due to the delay, Pixar laid off 67 employees of its 1,200-person workforce,^[24] following the closure of Pixar Canada a month before, when about 80 employees had been laid off, officially to refocus Pixar's efforts at its main headquarters.^[29]
In August 2014, Lithgow revealed in an interview that the film had been dismantled and "completely reimagined" and that he was expected to re-record his role in the next month, while mentioning that Frances McDormand was still part of the film.^[30] In November 2014, it was reported that new elements had been added to the story, such as treating nature itself as the film's antagonist.^[31] Pixar's general manager and president Jim Morris stated "We all liked the movie from the beginning, but... the story had some kind of fatal flaws in it that none of us really saw. It was kind of a Billy Elliot story. It was a very different kind of movie – there was a whole dinosaur culture and community and so forth. It was one where the Arlo character was kind of repressed by the community. It never quite felt right. It always felt like that we were vilifying this group [of dinosaur characters] that was otherwise a very likeable [sic] group. It just didn’t feel like it resonated truly."^[32] Morris additionally explained: "We give people the chance to work on a story, and we give them our support, but it doesn't always work out... there were story issues that were just not solvable. So we changed the story to make it better, and we're very proud of the film we have now."^[33] In October 2014, Sohn was announced as the new director of the film.^[9]
In June 2015, it was announced that the majority of the cast had been revised.^[11] Of the original cast, only Frances McDormand retained her role in the film. It was revealed that Neff had been replaced by Raymond Ochoa, and Lithgow had been replaced by Jeffrey Wright.^[11] Arlo's three siblings, to be voiced by Harris, Hader, and Greer had been cut altogether and replaced by a brother named Buck, voiced by Marcus Scribner,^[11] and a sister named Libby, voiced by Maleah Padilla. On the cast revisions, Sohn explained: "It was all about finding a younger Arlo, it was really about finding a boy [to play Arlo], so that we could push into that idea of him growing up and becoming a man, so the actor previous – who is a great actor – he was already a man, and so I needed to push that arc and find that compassionate kid, so that was the major kind of change. Then everything else, all the other characters that supported that story came in and out and changed and evolved and through that evolution, some of those performers changed out of it."^[21] It was also confirmed that the farmer aspect was still part of the film.^[34]
The filmmakers wanted nature to be an antagonist for the main character Arlo. Ream noted "Nature can overcome anything, including a massive dinosaur." In order to achieve the needed realism, the film's team traveled to the American Northwest, spending time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Juntura, Oregon, and southern Montana. Production designer Harley Jessup stated: "The area has a fantastic variety of landscapes, ranging from the Jackson Valley and the Tetons to the amazing geysers and waterfalls in Yellowstone, we studied the grasslands of Montana and the Red Desert, then incorporated all of it in Arlo’s journey." To use the landscapes that they had experienced, the filmmakers used data from the U.S. Geological Survey, and satellite images from Google Earth. The geographical data provided a foundation that the team then built on. According to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi, this gave Sohn "the freedom to shoot in any direction he wanted to make the world feel big and real." In addition, The Good Dinosaur features three-dimensional, volumetric clouds. In previous Pixar films, clouds have been "painted" onto the sets. Light and photography director Sharon Calahan explained: "Storm clouds are almost like a villain in the film. Plus, it’s very labor-intensive to paint clouds, and they’re in almost every scene." Calahan also noted "These particular clouds can be rendered and we can light them, which we’ve never been able to properly do before." According to the filmmakers, the environments and landscapes in the film are not photo-realistic, they are just detailed in a way that advanced technology and style decisions allow. In terms of animating Arlo, animators Rob Thompson and Kevin O’Hara went to a zoo and shot video of elephants in motion. Thompson stated: "One of the most intimidating things to animate is a quadruped, because there’s so much to them and there’s so much to manage. It’s very easy to make it not work if you don’t know what you’re managing. Locomotion is all about efficiency, a lot of times you think, 'We’re animating a big, heavy character. We should slam those feet. That’ll make it feel heavy.' The truth is, that’s not efficient. That wouldn’t be great for the legs."^[35][36][37]
Arlo was designed so that the audience could identify with him and be able to see the "boy" inside the dinosaur. Sohn explained "When Arlo gets lost in the wilderness, you need to worry that he's out of his element and in danger of getting killed, rather than just thinking 'You're an animal. Why don’t you just turn around and eat some leaves?'" He additionally stated "If you put like a realistic dinosaur in the woods, eat some leaves, you’re fine... But we really wanted to play with that twist of this is a boy out there. A dinosaur boy for sure, but trying to infuse those qualities into him."^[27][38]
Since The Good Dinosaur is set in a world in which dinosaurs never went extinct, they were instead able to evolve. Herbivores like Arlo and his family become farmers, and carnivores like the T. rexes become ranchers. Because they are meant to be reminiscent of cowboys, when the T. rexes run, their lower bodies mimic a galloping horse, while their upper bodies have the feel of a riding cowboy. To help inspire Butch's physical look and performance, the filmmakers looked at classic film cowboys such as characters portrayed by Clint Eastwood and Jack Palance.^[37]