Dinosaur/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Kron's social Darwinism may be interpreted either as a merciless tyranny or as a careful leadership whose aim is to save most of the herd, sacrificing the weak ones.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: The flight of Pteranodon and the first encounter between Baylene and Aladar during the sandstorm.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: Plio gives medication to the weakened Bruton, despite the rude way he had treated her and her family ("little parasites")
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The whole soundtrack (one of three James Newton Howard did for Disney - he also scored Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet) is wonderful, and almost qualifies as a Breakout Pop Hit. Many soundtrack collectors love the track "The Egg Travels" without having any idea where it's from.
    • Unusually for Disney, there aren't any songs in the movie.
  • Designated Villain: Kron could be seen as this for those who believe that his "the strong must survive!" mentality was correct, or at least correct in the setting the dinosaurs were in.
  • Dork Age: Thanks to its derivative story and bland characters, several Disney fans count Dinosaur one of the worst animated Disney films.
    • The film, and people tend to forget this, was actually a financial success; one of Disney's more successful in-house animations of the new Millennium where the box office was concerned. And yet, for all its seeming popularity at the box office, it didn't make much of an impact on the public consciousness at all.
    • It likely had to do with the fact that CGI animated films (even though only the characters are rendered in CGI) were THE new thing back then.
  • Genius Bonus: The probable explanation of the presence of many animals which are poorly-known among general public, but familiar to many dino-fans (Stygimoloch, Microceratops, Ichthyornis, Koolasuchus and Longisquama among the others).
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The close-up of the Velociraptor's eye after Eema saying "you consider yourself lucky that's all that's following us". All the scene involving Carnotauruses. The whole meteorite rain scene, especially when Aladar dives in the raging sea from the top of a 500ft tall cliff, with the tiny lemurs upon its back. And they all magically manage to survive.
    • One of the DVD games--it's dark, it's raining heavily, and you're wandering alone in a series of caves. One wrong step, and a Carnotaur charges out of nowhere and kills you.
  • Love to Hate: The Carnotaurus, those scary-ass bastards.
  • Misaimed Marketing: It's a Disney movie, after all. Anyone want an action figure of Aladar who says the most cheesy lines from the film and whose skeleton randomly glows in the dark?
  • Snark Bait: The film may be seen as a prime cut of it...
  • Tear Jerker: The "they're all gone!" moment after the meteorite scene is very sad.
  • Uncanny Valley: Kron's and Bruton's look. And every humanized character, monkeys not excepted.
  • The Woobie: Poor Bruton.
    • The film itself, according to some fans of dinosaurs. The animals of the film are not that bad despite the Executive Meddling, and it's difficult to combine amazing plots with realistic wildlife behavior (especially when the heroes are herbivores).