The Land Before Time

Perhaps one of the best, greatest, and most influential Don Bluth Movie of our lives.

Hello Again, Everybody. So, I'm ain't talking about Jurassic Park but rather what I believe to be the best, greatest and most influential Don Bluth movie of all time and of our lives...THE LAND BEFORE TIME!!!!!

It was released 20 years ago on November 18, 1988 and beat up Disney's Oliver and Company's ass!!! It was produced by the creators of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and directed by Master animator, Don Bluth. And I know the movie's about:

It took place at the end of the age of Dinosaurs (which are my all time, most favorite animals, although they're extinct now) when the Earth is getting a facelift and makeover, givin' rise to the earthquakes and volcanos (all they do is blow their angry tops!!!) and other natural phenomena. At that moment, The whole wide world was ruled by my favorite animals, Dinosaurs, those who ate plants, and others, Theropods (aka Sharpteeth) who could munch the flesh off the herbivores.

Because of that, the plants are dwindling. So together, the Plant-Eating Dinosaurs set off for a legendary land still lush and green....The Great Valley.

The Long Necks, AKA Brontosaurs, welcomed and loved their latest arrival, a baby named Littlefoot, just in time for the quest for The Great Valley. Wanna see as a babe. Go ahead!

But a terrorist attack from Sharptooth the T-Rexy left Littlefoot's mommy senseless and beaten on the primordial floor!!!!

WHAT?!! LITTLEFOOT'S MOMMY GETTING HER ASS KICKED BY SHARPTOOTH?!!!! AGGGGHHHHHHHH! YOU BETTER WATCH OUT FOR THAT SHARPTOOTH!!!!!!!!!!!! THE SHARPTOOTH THAT KILLS LITTLEFOOT'S MOMMY!!!!!!!! HE'S GONNA GET YA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RUN!!!!!!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!! IT'S THE SHARPTOOTH!!!!!!!!!!!

Ugh. Anyway, when a ultraviolent earthquake took a huge shit on the earth by opening great gorges, Littlefoot was booted out of his grandparents' side by the so called Earth Shake, and is pressured by Mother Nature to find Great Valley separately.

He was later joined by a bitchy, feisty, little Three-Horn named Cera and sets out even more. They met up with a bigmouth (or hadrosaur) named Ducky (yep, yep yep!) (Well, I've heard that voice actor Judith Barsi got her ass kicked by her daddy who in turn kicks his family's ass and his own!!! Oh My God! Judith Barsi's Dad've killed Ducky!!! You Bastard!!!), Petrie the pterosaur, or flier, who've been stumped and befuddled, and the dumb-lookin' but gentle Spike tail, or Stegy or Stegosaurus, Spike.

Well, there ain't no herd like this before. With Littlefoot leading, the five little kiddies travels through unknown and uncharted Prehistoric Lands, searching for the great valley, and following the bright circle across the sky called The Sun. As days pass, and their hopes started to fade, the only thing that keeps them goin' is Littlefoot's optimism and determination.

However, Cera was pissed off, and went on her own, after the 4 dinosaurs escapes from a tar pit called Rancho LaBrea and a fiery volcano (Yeah, the wrong way they took and the turbulent ruins of their world predated Peter Jackson's Mordor in his groundbreaking, Oscar Winning Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which is for now, at this point, ain't retro for you til 2011 or 2010 or something.), She rejoins the 4 dinosaurs contritely.

Pissed off by Sharptooth's repeated so called terrorist attacks, the group thought they would kick Sharptooth's ass and they did by using Ducky as bait, and p'wning him with a boulder and banished him to his bottomless lake grave thingy.

With one final burst of strength, everybody reach one last hill and here comes....The Great Valley!!!! Whoo Hoo!!! I love that Great Valley, so do Littlefoot and his friends!!!

Families are, at long last, reunited Littlefoot find his grandparents, and the peaceful herds begin their new life in the glorious Great Valley.

THE END

This is one of the greatest animations of all time and of our lives. For this, The Land Before Time, Don Bluth, brought great animation and dinosaurs back together since Disney's Fantasia. Well, it took nearly three years to make. The Dinosaurs took shape after a whole lotta visits to Natural History Museums, examinations of fossils, dinosaur reconstructions and even studies of classic dinosaur art, perhaps. Modern Giraffes and Elephants and other modern animals were observed and filmed to provide the dinosaurs' movements clues. The Land Before Time features more than 600 backgrounds, 29 optical scenes, a million drawings and 100,000 hand drawn and painted animated cels were combined to complete the Land Before Time.

The Land Before Time was a great success. But the uproar over its ongoing series of sequels may have dimmed its impact. But nonetheless, stick to the original. I like the original 1988 film. One of my favorite lines cames from Cera's Dad....

"Come, Cera. Three Horns never played with Long Necks."
---Cera's Dad, The Land Before Time, 1988

And finally, one more thing. In 2011 or 2012 or 2013, Universal, my Tim Box Production Company, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Lord of the Rings and King Kong (2005) director Peter Jackson, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, Barrie M. Osborne (all 5 of which will be producers.), New Zealand-based VFX companies, Weta Workshop, and Weta Digital, and I, as director, writer, and producer, will remake the Land Before Time, and will keep it 100% true and faithful to the tradition of the 1988 original.

It will blend Realistic CGI (Littlefoot and his friends and some of the long necks, especially Littlefoot's mother, as it turns out, will remain unchanged, even though they'll be CG in my remake) characters and creatures seamlessly with VFX wizardry, and a blend of Live Action/Miniature/Digital environments, to groundbreaking effect.

It will be shot entirely on 24-P digital high defintion video and in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It will feature a music score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard (but no musical numbers, please!) (although it will sound like the music of Disney's Dinosaur, Jerry Goldsmith's music for Congo, and the music for The Lion King). It will be budgeted for $356 million, and will have a theatrical running time of 3 hours (that is 180 minutes) (or if extended for home video, 3 hours and 52 minutes, that is 232 minutes), and it will recieve a very, very, VERY MILD PG-13 rating, so it's gonna be different than the original, though.

The dinosaurs in the remake, except for Littlefoot and his friends, and the Brontosaurs, will reflect the latest scientific and paleontological theories on dinosaurs, ala Jurassic Park.

There will be three Tyrannosaurs chasing Littlefoot and his friends, Sharptooth, Redclaw and Darkclaw. In the remake, not only, the earthquake will separate Littlefoot from his grandparents, but also a meteor shower caused by the impact of an asteroid six miles as wide as Mount Everest. And There will be a protector for Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Petrie and Spike after the Asteroid strike and the earthquake cause by it, a brave, faithful and heroic Iguanodon named Argos.

My remake is gonna be the remake to end all Land Before Time sequels. And it will be, like Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's King Kong, an outstanding effects and animation achievement. and It'll be greater than the 1988 original.

And so, for now, until Universal, Tim Box and I will release my ambitious, groundbreaking remake of Land Before Time, Just stick to the original 1988 film, not the pointless sequels that followed it.

P.S. don't forget to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Land Before Time.

And that's the end of my article on the Land Before Time.

-Timothy Robert "Tim Box" McKenzie

Comments

DO NOT JOKE ABOUT JUDITH BARSI!!!!!! >

There is a song from this movie called "If we hold on together" We sung that at my elementary school graduation.

The sequels were & are TERRIBLE in my oppinion. They have become the Dora to an origonal masterpiece. Hell I haven't seen that movie in about 17ish years! & I still remember the preview for pizzahut on the VHS in the beginning! it haunts me.

There's a interesting story behind this movie. You may let your kids watch "A Land before Time" but you may think again if you really knew the back story, which is well hidden. This was reveled to me by valid sources, who I'll name later.
Since Lucas and Speilberg were 'producers', it merely meant for this film that there name would be on it and someone else in charge. It was very hands off. Basically, left up to a huge team of animators, who worked on parts separately. back in those days, when it was pen and pencil, there was very little supervision that could be done.
What I'm about to revel I found out. I talked with two former animators of the film, who told me that it was originally planned to be much darker. The two animators was my professor and a friend of his, who both worked for the 'head animator.'
One of the animators apparently did not want to do the new film for artistic reasons. (Who the two sources drew for.) The film, believe it or not, was originally supposed to be darker and more "Dark Crystal" like, but then Speilberg came along.
He was fired from the project when a reel of film was found, involving Littlefoot's head turning into a penis and doing something sexual to ducky? A scene with Ducky shitting everywhere?
According to my professor, they would work 18 hour shifts, getting by the day on LSD, and Hendrix music playing in the background. Drawling reel for reel kiddy dinosaurs. Who wouldn't go crazy?
My sources did not know if this reel or others still existed in a secret vault never to be opened.. Anyone know more about this? I think I may of found one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ud6knUCcc

(Ok that link is a joke)

The first one was the best. It was classic. But then it started getting increasingly stupid as they continued on. They should have stuck with 1 or 2.

rowemedic, is there anything you DON'T hate?

wow rowmedic is obviously dead in the brain. this is a classic. don bluth is the man

pure animated crap. numer 1 though 59 pure animated crap.

i loved the first 4 movies bu then they got carried away and ruined it with the last 7 they made

Petri [sp?] was always my favorite.

I won a coloring contest at Pizza Hut as a small child, and won a stuffed Little Foot.

Wow! What a lengthy article. Why remake it? Leave it the same and just re-release it on DVD or something. Why does everyone want to mess up a good thing?

I really hope you weren't paid to write this article, because it was terribly written. The subject matter was well chosen, but there are grammar and spell checkers for a reason. And you can't say that you will stick close to the original movie in your "remake" when you are going to be adding all that stuff to it. Just call it a remake.

"And finally.... APATOSAURS NOT BRONTOSAURS. I'm sorry, but Brontosaurs is grossly incorrect and leaves scientists in agony because no one hardly ever calls them by their correct name since no one EVER corrects the wrong. So pleeeeeeease, call them Apatosaurs like they're rightfully called."

Actually Brontosaurus is considered to be a synonym of Apatosaurus (proper spelling) and only a Paleontologists or someone with a Fire Hydrant up their ass would come to a fan based website and try and correct it.

Well, TV themes, it's because they made the Land Before Time corrupt with the so called garbage sequels and unbelievably bad TV show on Cartoon Network, just for fun. I don't know they're gonna stop with the sequels, But never to fear, for I'll put an end to the Land Before Time franchise with my ambitious, groundbreaking, 3 hour long, big budget, PG-13 rated remake of The Land Before Time when it comes out Christmas 2015 or so. My Land Before Time remake (written, produced and directed by me, with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings and King Kong fame), Barrie M. Osborne, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman as producers, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard as the music composers and Weta Workshop and Weta Digital as the VFX companies that will produced it.) will be the remake to end all LBT sequels. It will be shot entirely on HD digital video, an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and will blend Realistic CGI characters and creatures (Littlefoot and his friends, and some of the long necks, especially Littlefoot's mom, as it turns out will appear unchanged, although they'll be realistically rendered in CGI), VFX wizardry and Live Action/Miniature/Digital backdrops, to groundbreaking effect. The Dinosaurs in my remake, except for Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Petrie, Spike, and Littlefoot's mom and grandparents, will have to reflect the newest scientific research and knowledge, so they have to look as real to them as possible, i.e. the three Sharpteeth, or Tyrannosaurs in my remake and the remake character of Argos the Iguanodon, the new protector for the 5 young dinosaurs after the earthshake and asteroid disasters. Not only the earthquake will separate Littlefoot from his grandparents in the remake, but also a asteroid impact and a meteor shower. But it will remain 100% true and faithful to the tradition of the original 1988 film so there will be no musical sing along numbers in the remake. And so, until Universal, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, Barrie M. Osborne and I will release my ambitious and groundbreaking remake of Land Before Time, would you please just stick to the 1988 classic, not the sequels and the TV series that follows the 1988 classic. Thanks, TV Themes.

I just want to know when they're gonna stop with the garbage sequels. The Tv Show was bad enough so why do they keep milking the dinosaurs for more $$$?

Awesome movie, and definately appropriate to celebrate it's 20th anniversary. However, you could have been a little more professional and not very childish. I'm afraid I have to agree with CeciliaFett on this one, but thumbs up for the mention of the movie at least.

I honestly could not stand this movie or any of them. Matter of fact ive never sat still and watched any of them that came on the disney channel and I suprised that it kept on going with sequels

I like the Land Before Time, but this article is rather...childish. Overuse of explination points and not very good discriptions. It doesn't really go into detail either. Some facts about the movie would be nice (that DOESN'T pertain to Judith Barsi. I swear everytime someone mentions Ducky it turns into a big discussion about Judith. Focus on things that directly revolve about the movie, not about voice actors personal lives!) as would better pictures. You know, in colour. Some of the pictures were used several times; different pictures are much better. Also, try not to place a whole bunch of pictures together. It looks nicer spread out.

And finally.... APATOSAURS NOT BRONTOSAURS. I'm sorry, but Brontosaurs is grossly incorrect and leaves scientists in agony because no one hardly ever calls them by their correct name since no one EVER corrects the wrong. So pleeeeeeease, call them Apatosaurs like they're rightfully called.

Long Necks, AKA Brontosaurs are so lovable!

Cool article. I'm just amazed at all the sequels they've done, though. I was on my break at work yesterday and I found what is like the 15th or 16th sequel to this movie on the shelves.

Also, thanks for sharing your visions of the movies, but it's best not to reveal those ideas in a public forum. You don't want anybody stealing them.