The Land Before Time/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Original film:

  • What Could Have Been: The film's second half was not as originally intended. In the original version, Littlefoot finds the Great Valley after he goes off alone and the others go with Cera. He realizes that he has to go find the others, because they won't find it on their own, and goes back after them. The Sharptooth scene then happens and he leads them to the valley. This can be detected in the final film. Look at the scene where Littlefoot is telling his mother he'll never find the great valley because it's too hard. The rock they pushed onto Sharptooth? It's still there in the background. There was also a deleted scene where the group finds an oasis, but the two groups of dinosaurs already there get discriminatory. They say that only Ducky can drink and only one of the others can eat. The babies are annoyed and move on.
    • These elements oddly still appear in the children's books released with the film.
    • Other things were also changed. The scene where Sharptooth lands on the back of Littlefoot's mother was originally fully visible, but it was changed to shadow. The scene where Sharptooth is pushed under by the big rock had a scene where Sharptooth was seen looking up to the water, but it was also deemed too scary.
    • Old Rooter didn't appear in the original draft of the film; he was added to soften the blow of the death of Littlefoot's mother.
    • The original film trailer has another apparently deleted bit from the final scene with Ducky saying "now we'll always be together!".
  • Sadly, the young actress who played Ducky in the original film (and she also played Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven) was murdered along with her mother by her stepfather a few months before this movie was released in theaters.


Sequels:

  • Did Not Do the Research: I know the producers didn't much care about historical accuracy as much a making a quick buck, but the inaccuracies to me (somewhat of a dinosaur whiz) were simply outrageous:
    • The Land Before Time III: Time of the Great Giving - Littlefoot and friends encounter three bullying dinosaurs, who would NEVER be able to actually meet in real life. This is because Hypsilophodons were only found in Britain, Nodosaurus was discovered in North America, and Muttaburrasaurus lived in Australia! I could say the same thing for the antagonists, four velociraptors, whose remains were in Central Asia. Those dinosaurs must have traveled hell of far over land and seas to reach the Great Valley.
      • There were no seas between continents back then, but the point is still valid.
        • Depends. The three bullies mentioned lived close enough to each other in time, but at that time, Australia was separated by a vast ocean and there was likely a somewhat narrower and shallower sea between North America and Europe.
      • The sequels get slammed for geographical inconsistencies, yet no one minds Cretaceous-era and Jurassic-era dinosaurs living simultaneously, something that's been happening since I?
      • Well, that one depends on your POV,really.
      • They were never explicitly stated to be velociraptors, and if their relative size is any indication, they were actually most likely Deinonychus, which at least would have lived in the same continent as some of the other ones. The assumption that they were velociraptors comes from the Critical Research Failure of Jurassic Park, which called a dromaeosaurid the height of a man a velociraptor. Velociraptors were actually only about 50-65 centimeters tall.
    • Rule Of... wait, we really need a Rule Of Money trope.
    • The sequels also have a tendency to destroy whatever was scientifically plausible in the first movie. Petrie in Don Bluth's movie spend at least most of the time in a quadrupedal pose like pterosaurs are supposed to, while in the sequels all "fliers" are basically standing on two (which, couple with their bare necks and the "collars" in the base of the necks, made them look like stupid vultures).
      • And in the first, they never mention his diet. In Don Bluth's movie, Petrie's pose and diet were intentionally kept vague until more research was found. They threw these hints to the garbage can in the sequels
    • In the earlier sequels, any large predatory dinosaur would look almost exactly like Sharptooth, even if it's not a Tyrannosaurus. The Giganotosaurus in The Mysterious Island looks like Chomper's parents except green and with stripes, and the Allosaurus in Secret of Saurus Rock is a Tyrannosaurus who likes to lean over (at least they got the horizontal body position right). The later sequels finally managed to make the carnivorous dinosaurs look different and even pretty realistic: the Spinosaurus in film XII and the Liopleurodon from film IX especially. But on another note, nearly all of the Sharpteeth are shown with two fingers, even ones who possessed three in Real Life.
  • Executive Meddling: The film was originally Darker and Edgier, but many scenes were deleted because they were "too scary for kids". This explains the film's very short running time.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are executive producers of the first movie.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Retroactive Recognition: In a Hey, It's That Guy!/Hey, It's That Voice! hybrid example, in the tenth film, The Great Longneck Migration, Littlefoot's father is voiced by Kiefer Sutherland. Really.
  • Talking to Himself: Not only did John Ingle provide the voice of Cera's father in the sequels and the TV series, but he also narrated some of the sequels, too!
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