When the world is against you: A light defense of The Good Dinosaur
2015 sure was a bizarre year for Pixar. Up to that point, the studio had only released at most one film each year, having just skipped 2014, and now was about to release two films in the same year for the first time. Not to mention, 2010 onward was considered a massive slump for the company creatively, filling the gaps with sequels and prequels, and also Brave, a film that generally failed to meet expectations for Pixar’s first traditional fantasy film. 2015 was set to be the big year for this company, not only releasing two films in the same year but two original films at that. If there was an opportunity to pull Pixar back into the limelight, this was it.
And they did. 2015 was the year Pixar released what is probably one of their best ever films and still a cultural touchstone, Inside Out. Reviews were ecstatic, audiences were crying in theaters across the country, I completely lost my mind when I saw this film it was so good. This was the film that got tons of people, including myself, to excitedly shout “Pixar is back!” Then November came.
The Good Dinosaur was Pixar’s second film of 2015, following the tremendous wake left by Inside Out. The film creates an alternate prehistory in which dinosaurs were never wiped out and continued to evolve, and follows a young apatosaurus named Arlo who works on a farm with his family. Unusual and tragic circumstances unite him with a strange feral creature, a human boy named Spot, and lead to him being lost in a harsh and mysterious world. With Spot in tow, Arlo begins the long trek home across the vast wilderness of the unknown. It was the lowest grossing film in Pixar’s history, and to this day it’s largely forgotten and often yields the same response you may have had reading the title of this article: “Oh right, that was a movie.” All this, right on the heels of what it still one of Pixar’s best received and most famous films to date.
2015 sure was a bizarre year for Pixar.
Truthfully, I think maybe we’ve been a little harsh to The Good Dinosaur, especially since it seemingly had everything working against it. We’re talking about the worst kind of production hell: six years in the pipeline, multiple script revisions, and a late-game change in director, all combined with the scant 4 months after the biggest bombshell of Pixar’s last half-decade and hardly any advertising. It’s really not that surprising that the film dropped out of public consciousness like a live-action Robin Hood film, and honestly I don’t know if any other outcome was possible. When the world is against you, how are you expected to succeed?
I decided to give the film a fresh re-watch, having both the gift of hindsight and lacking the harsh environment the film was initially presented in, and overall I found it more enjoyable and forgivable than I remembered. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fairly humdrum film (especially paired with the pantheon of Pixar’s previous productions) but I’m not sure it deserves to have been so entirely forgotten. So I come bearing a light defense and some fun insight into a film that got mangled in the coattails of Inside Out. But, if we’re gonna start anywhere, I have to be honest. Light spoilers all around, fair warning.
The disappointing dinosaur: Primary Flaws
The Good Dinosaur received generally mixed to negative reviews, and unfortunately I’m inclined to agree. The story never really escapes or bends the trappings of a standard “hero’s journey,” which leaves most of the film rather predictable and regrettably not so interesting. I mean, we’re talking about a story in which a literal adolescent farmer loses a parent, goes on an amazing life-changing adventure full of danger, and eventually transforms into a hero (kind of). And that kind of story works fine assuming you have nuanced and well-developed characters, but no one in The Good Dinosaur really excels past that first dimension. It’s actually kind of impressive how shallow everyone in the film is outside of Arlo, who’s transition from “afraid of everything” to “still afraid, but willing to act in the face of fear” is good on paper but so sharp a transition it leaves a nasty paper cut.
It’s also quite bizarre tonally speaking. The film is scattered with all manner of unique characters and encounters that are admittedly interesting and some even daring, but almost all of which feel unnecessary and effectively change the genre of the film at each encounter. About half the time we’re getting this emotional coming of age story about learning how to conquer fear, but the other half feels like if aliens made a western. Here’s a list of things that are in the movie: A hermit-like triceratops that surrounds himself in comfort animals, a flock of zealot-like storm-chasing pterodactyl, cattle-rustling Raptors and cowboy Tyrannosaurs. With how bizarre a film this is, it’s almost surprising how easily it’s been forgotten.
As for the visual design, the short is that while neither the character design or world design are problematic on their own, the contrast between them is extremely distracting and a little off-putting. But we’ll talk about this one later.
The key takeaway here is that I largely found The Good Dinosaur to be disappointing. The pitch was solid: a standard “boy and his pet” story with the roles reversed and taking place in prehistoric times, and the amalgamation of genre, setting and approach all felt like new ground for Pixar. Not to mention everyone was still riding the high left from Inside Out, so momentum was in the studio’s favor. When I saw this film the first time, on the back of all those expectations, I think it would’ve been exceptionally difficult for the film not to disappoint. I’m glad I saw it again in the last week with a fresh eye and without unreasonable expectation (which certainly helped me enjoy it more the second time), but it’s still one of Pixar’s least impressive films in the long run.
Still, while I do acknowledge that the film is incredibly flawed, it’s certainly not without merit.
The exceptional dinosaur: Credit where it’s due
There’s actually quite a bit that’s flat out good or even great about this dinosaur. Being a Pixar film, the film is unsurprisingly gorgeous, the scenery so lifelike I swear the theater felt colder whenever it started raining on screen. Even though the visuals get the bulk of this film’s positive reception, I still don’t think it gets enough credit outside of being “incredibly realisitic,” so I’m going to throw a number at you to help bring it into focus: 300 Terabytes. That’s how much space The Good Dinosaur took up on Pixar’s servers, and 250 of that was basically just environmental stuff. Every single character and object in this film was meticulously modeled and rendered with no matte painting or cleanup in post, and the entire setting was lit using an artificial sun the team created to infuse the film with a natural looking light. It was pretty, yes, but I don’t think the film got nearly enough credit for how technically ambitious it was, and the technology discovered in this film alone paved a golden brick road for every Pixar film to follow. So, this is my big shoutout to the Global Rendering Team for answering such a daunting call to action and creating a film that looks absolutely incredible.
Breathtaking, especially in motion
Secondly, the film is actually pretty solid on paper. It’s true that the standard “hero’s journey” narrative is a bit lacking in creative subterfuge, but the formula doesn’t automatically impart badness. Like I said before, the pitch is solid: boy and his pet story with role reversal and set in prehistoric times. On top of that, they played a solid opening hand for their hero’s journey approach: instead of having a kid with wide-eyed wanderlust and a deep need to really “adventure,” they give us Arlo, a scared, vulnerable youth that just wants to “make his mark on the world” but doesn’t know how. He’s set off on a crazy adventure by circumstance, not by choice, and must learn to accept fear and struggle through it. All of Arlo’s encounters throughout his quest reflect the theme of fear to some degree: a triceratops that becomes basically non-functional by letting himself by ruled by fear, fanatical pterodactyls that have completely abandoned fear and have basically lost their humanity (or the dinosaur equivalent) in the process, and a trio of tyrannosaurs that carry scars from all the times they’ve answered fear and thrived despite it. The film doubles down on that opening hand with a strong visual contrast between innocent and vulnerable Arlo and the beautiful but brutal world around him. And honestly, despite the visual contrast ultimately not working out (again, more on that later), its easy to stand behind their decision.
See, a couple years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a Siggraph panel from people that worked on The Good Dinosaur. Most of the talk was about the particular lighting and rendering techniques that went into the film, but there was one general statement that really illuminated the film’s intention to me. The jarring contrast between the mostly cartoonish characters and the hyper-realistic setting was an active creative choice done so specifically for the sake of the story. While there are antagonistic characters in The Good Dinosaur, the harshest and cruelest of the films forces are that of the environment; Arlo’s journey is all about him learning to overcome forces that are bigger than him, and nothing could be bigger and more threatening than the world itself. The hyper-realism is intended to add an extra sharpness to the world, and a natural distance and coldness with the characters that inhabit it. These realizations didn’t suddenly erase the film’s flaws, but it did leave me with significantly more respect for the artists and what they were trying to accomplish. For all its failings, The Good Dinosaur was definitely a film of positive artistic intent and ambition, and those are worth celebrating even when they don’t entirely work.
And, since we really can’t avoid it any longer, let’s talk about why it didn’t work.
The mishandled dinosaur: Intent vs Execution
All of The Good Dinosaur’s failings can be chalked up to creative disparity of intent vs execution, which is to say there’s a disconnect between what the film was trying to do and what it actually did. I’m of the belief that no one goes out of their way to intentionally make a bad film, in the same way that no one goes out of their way to write a bad story. Sadly, intent ends where execution begins, and what may have been a great idea on paper doesn’t always translate in other forms, and there are two specific thorns that stick out of The Good Dinosaur’s side: the environment contrast, and the pacing of the story.
We’ve already talked a little about the contrast between the films characters, all of which are fairly colorful and simple in appearance (especially Arlo and his family with their bright green skin), and the world around them, with its realistic hues and incredibly sharp details. In trying to create a world that is “dangerous, but beautiful once you look closer," they instead created a world with which the characters didn’t belong.
Now I don’t want to make it sound like The Good Dinosaur’s creative decision here was inherently bad, because there are films that do succeed at what this film is attempting. A recent example that comes to mind is Ankama and Studio 4C’s Mutafukaz, a film in which characters are highly stylized but largely simplistic in detail, while environments are absolutely filled with dirt, grime, dents, scratches, graffiti, and tons of wear and tear.
Taking a similar page out of The Good Dinosaur’s book, Mutafukaz’s stark environments are charged with creative intent; the film’s setting of Dark Meat City is intended to be oppressive and heavy, and is supposed to impart a sense of powerlessness to the main characters. In both films, the general rule is “the more detail it contains, the more dangerous it is to the protagonists.”
Here’s the key difference: Mutafukaz presents a cast of characters and a story that feel especially attached to their environment. They were very clearly “made” by this place, chiseled into form from its rough edges. For this sort of corrupting, black hole of a city, the stylistic intent that comes through is that the kids are less detailed than the adults and city because they haven’t been completely worn down by it yet, but you feel like they definitely will be. On this front, Mutafukaz is a success of execution in which you believe in the coherency of its elements. The Good Dinosaur doesn’t quite get past intent, with the film failing to bridge the gap between the characters and their world; at no point do I believe that these characters really feel like they belong in this place, or that the setting has really shaped them, creating a division of cohesion.
On your left: Really nice trees, lots of branches and leaves, carefully detailed.
On your right: A well detailed Play-doh creation.
The second thorn is the story pacing, and surprisingly this one is a little less obvious because again, it works on paper. The story lays out a pretty basic three-act structure with moving parts that aren’t complicated.
Act 1 establishes Arlo and family on the farm, as well as his general fear of everything (character flaw). Poppa gives Arlo a chance to prove himself: kill the human critter that’s been stealing their crops. When Arlo is given the opportunity to eliminate the boy, he instead decides to free him and let him go (inciting incident), prompting his poppa to drag him into the wilderness to finish the job proper. Things go badly, poppa dies (character flaw creates problem), and it’s established that the remaining family has to finish the farming or the family won’t survive the winter (stakes/timer). Arlo runs into the kid, gets angry at him, and chases him with intent to kill, accidentally falling into the nearby river. Arlo gets funneled into a rock, which knocks him out and carries him to a mysterious location (end of Act 1).
Act 2 is really simple: Arlo needs to get home before the first snowfall. He spends the entirety of Act 2 following the river to get back home, running into the human child and a number of bizarre encounters with other dinosaurs on the way, all of which generally change his perception over time and lead to him learning how to cope with fear (addressing character flaw), and also leading to him developing a relationship with the human boy not dissimilar from a parent and child (understanding poppa’s point of view). Act 2 eventually ends with the kid being kidnapped by fanatical pterodactyls that have completely abandoned fear (primary antagonist, literal opposite of Arlo’s starting point) and Arlo falling off a cliff into some kind of vine trap. He gets knocked unconscious and has a dream about reuniting with his poppa, at which point he realizes that despite his fear he needs to go and save the human kid since he acknowledges the kid did nothing wrong. He creates a degree of closure with his dad’s death, and we go spiraling into a rather short finale.
Act 3 involves Arlo confronting the pterodactyls to save the human, and despite his fear Arlo’s actions ultimately beat the fanatics (protagonist has outgrown the antagonist by changing positively) and leads to the boy’s rescue. Arlo lets the child go before returning home, so that the boy could reunite with his kind (emotional closure), and Arlo returns home, having learned to conquer fear (character learns how to live with flaw). The end.
Everything is there; the beats, construction, planting and payoff, general pacing, it’s all there. Act 1 is a little slow and uneventful, Act 2 drags a little long and Act 3 runs a little short, but those problems aren’t killers on their own. So what went wrong?
Well, there’s one critical element of the story that is more absent than it needed to be: the relationship between Arlo and Spot (the human). In terms of where their relationship needs to be at each stage of the story, the placement is correct: Arlo hates him for Act 1, learns to trust and love him over the course of Act 2, and does everything he can to save him in Act 3. But the problem is that these moments are fairly isolated, and refused to mesh together.
This is the story they want you to take away, but it just doesn’t come together.
Act 2 needs to balance Arlo and Spot’s relationship with the long journey home and bizarre encounters on the way, and unfortunately there’s not a lot of blending in-between. Each moment is isolated in its execution; Arlo is journeying home and the environment scares him (usually due to a storm or steep cliffside or wild animal), OR Arlo encounters a bizarre dinosaur with a unique viewpoint that help teach him about fear, OR there’s an bonding moment between Arlo and Spot. But almost no scene manages to be more than one of those things, but it seems to think that it is.
I mean, it’s a funny scene, but was it really necessary?
The result of this is an Act 2 where Arlo seemingly goes from hating Spot to almost randomly loving him, but the scenes necessary for that transition are absent. When we get to those especially emotional scenes, it doesn’t quite feel like the film has earned them (which is a shame, because two of those scenes should be really darn good).
It’s sad, because all the pieces are there, but they can’t ever seem to mesh together, whether it’s the development of the story, the visual elements and the characters, or the larger sense of tone and cohesion. The Good Dinosaur is a wonderful work of artistic intention that can’t seem to find footing in its execution.
The good(?) dinosaur: Final Thoughts
I get that the last section really doesn’t leave this film in a good light, and hardly feels fitting for a “light defense” of The Good Dinosaur, so here’s a quick turnaround. I get that this film isn’t amazing, but I do think there’s still value in watching it, especially as a point of study. In re-watching the film, the overall experience was still a bit underwhelming, but it was much easier to see all the effort and willpower thrust into it. From a purely analytical standpoint, The Good Dinosaur is a small treasure trove of interesting contraptions, all struggling to form a whole, and in the process of trying manages to be clumsily charming. I pay my respects to the film about the dinosaur with the whole world against him. It tried as hard as it could, and I’d say that’s at least worth something.
