Dinosaur

*For the video game, see Disney's Dinosaur (video game). For the park attraction, see Dinosaur (Disney's Animal Kingdom).*

### **Directed by**

Ralph Zondag
Eric Leighton

### **Screenplay by**

John Harrison
Robert Nelson Jacobs

### **Story by**

John Harrison
Robert Nelson Jacobs
Thom Enriquez
Ralph Zondag

### **Starring**

D. B. Sweeney
Alfre Woodard
Ossie Davis
Max Casella
Hayden Panettiere
Samuel E. Wright
Julianna Margulies
Peter Siragusa
Joan Plowright
Della Reese

### **Cinematography**

David Hardberger
S. Douglas Smith

### **Production company**

Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Feature Animation
The Secret Lab

### **Box office**

$349.8 million

***Dinosaur*** is a 2000 American computer-animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and The Secret Lab. The 39th Disney animated feature film, it follows a heroic young *Iguanodon* who was adopted and raised by a family of lemurs on a tropical island. After surviving a devastating meteor shower, the family move out for their new home and befriend a herd of dinosaurs along the way while on a journey to the "Nesting Grounds". Unfortunately, they are being hunted down by predators such as *Carnotaurus*.

The initial idea was conceived in 1986 by Phil Tippett and Paul Verhoeven where it was conceived as a darker, naturalistic film about dinosaurs. The project underwent numerous iterations with multiple directors attached. In 1994, Walt Disney Feature Animation began development on the project and spent several years developing the software to create the dinosaurs. While the characters in *Dinosaur* are computer-generated, most of the backgrounds are live-action and were filmed on location. A number of backgrounds were found in various continents such as the Americas and Asia; various tepuis and Angel Falls also appear in the film. With a budget of $127.5 million, *Dinosaur* was reportedly the most expensive computer-animated film at the time.

*Dinosaur* was released on May 19, 2000. Critics praised the animation, but criticized the story for a lack of originality. The film grossed $137.7 million in the US and $350 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 2000. It was the fourth best-selling home video release of 2001, selling 10.6 million copies and garnering $198 million in sales.

## Plot

A *Carnotaurus* attacks a herd of dinosaurs, destroying an *Iguanodon* nest. The single surviving egg is stolen by *Oviraptors*, then by a *Pteranodon*, and eventually is dropped on an island inhabited by prehistoric lemurs. Plio; the daughter of their patriarch Yar, names the hatched baby Aladar and raises him alongside her daughter Suri, despite Yar's initial objections. Several years later, a fully grown Aladar and the lemurs take part in a mating ritual, in which Plio's brother Zini is unsuccessful. Moments after the ritual ends, they are interrupted by a meteor crashing into the Earth, creating an explosive shockwave which destroys the island. Aladar and Yar's family flee across the sea to the mainland. Being the only survivors, they mourn the others, before moving on.

While crossing the burnt wasteland, they are attacked by a pack of *Velociraptors*. They escape by joining a crowd of Iguanodon, *Parasaurolophus*, *Microceratus*, *Styracosaurus*, *Pachyrhinosaurus*, *Stygimoloch* and *Struthiomimus* refugees heading for the communal Nesting Grounds. Falling afoul of herd leader Kron, they retreat to the end of the line and befriend the old Styracosaurus Eema, her pet *Ankylosaur* Url, and her equally elderly friend Baylene, the only *Brachiosaur* in the group. They travel for days without water to the site of a lake, only to find it seemingly dried up. Kron orders the herd to move on and let the weakest perish, but Aladar stays behind with a sick Eema, and he and Baylene dig until they find her some water. The rest of the herd follows suit, and Kron's sister Neera, impressed by Aladar's compassion, begins to grow closer to him, while Kron believes he wants to take over.

Meanwhile, two Carnotaurs have been tracking the herd, and Kron's lieutenant Bruton and another scout are attacked - the scout is killed and a wounded Bruton escapes to warn Kron, only for Kron to pick up the pace and deliberately leave Bruton and the elderly dinosaurs behind to be killed. Aladar and the lemurs refuse to abandon them, though Neera is forced to. The group takes shelter in a cave, but are soon discovered and attacked by the pursuing Carnotaurs. Bruton sacrifices himself by causing a cave-in which kills the larger predator, forcing the smaller to retreat.

The group ventures deeper into the cave, but they reach a dead end. Though Aladar briefly loses hope, Baylene uses her strength to smash through the wall, and they arrive at the Nesting Grounds on the other side. Eema notices that a landslide has blocked off the usual entrance to the valley. Aladar rushes off alone to warn the herd. Kron disbelieves his claims of a sheer drop on the other side, and tries to lead the herd to climb over the rocks. When Aladar insists there is a safer way, Kron attacks him, until Neera, fed up with Kron's illogical behavior, intervenes. Realizing Kron's selfishness, the herd follows Aladar, while Kron stubbornly tries to climb the rocks by himself.

The hungry Carnotaurus arrives, but Aladar rallies everyone to stand together in defiance against it. The Carnotaur is frightened off, and goes after Kron instead. Aladar and Neera rush to save him, but fail to get there in time, though they avenge Kron by forcing the Carnotaur over the sheer drop to its death. Aladar then leads the herd back to the Nesting Grounds. Sometime later, a new generation of dinosaurs hatches, among them Aladar and Neera's children. Zini finds more lemurs, including some females interested in him. Plio muses on how they do not know what will come next, but hopes that their legend and struggles will be remembered in ages to come.

## Voice cast

* D. B. Sweeney as Aladar, a young brave, determined and compassionate *Iguanodon* who is adopted by a family of lemurs, and helps the herd of dinosaurs migrate and survive. He is the adoptive son of Plio, the adoptive nephew of Zini, the adoptive grandson of Yar, and the adoptive brother of Suri.
* Alfre Woodard as Plio, a lemur matriarch who cares for her family. She is the daughter of Yar, the older sister of Zini, the mother of Suri, and the adoptive mother of Aladar.
* Ossie Davis as Yar, a lemur patriarch whose occasional gruff demeanor is just a front covering his compassionate nature. He is the father of Plio and Zini, the grandfather of Suri, and the adoptive grandfather of Aladar.
* Max Casella as Zini, Aladar's adoptive uncle, best friend and wisecracking sidekick. He is the uncle of Suri, the younger brother of Plio, and the son of Yar.
	+ Evan Sabara voices Zini as a child.
* Hayden Panettiere as Suri, a sweet, fun-loving young lemur. She is Aladar's adoptive younger sister, Plio's daughter, Zini's niece, and Yar's granddaughter.
* Samuel E. Wright as Kron, a merciless, selfish, and short-tempered Iguanodon. He serves as the leader of the dinosaur herd survivors. He is the brother of Neera.
* Julianna Margulies as Neera, a young female Iguanadon who takes Aladar's interest. She is Kron's sister.
* Peter Siragusa as Bruton, Kron's lieutenant Iguanodon. He is harsh and sarcastic, but eventually repents when Plio shows care for him.
* Joan Plowright as Baylene, an elderly, dainty, and kindhearted *Brachiosaurus*, who is the last known of her kind after the meteor.
* Della Reese as Eema, a wizened, elderly, and slow-moving *Styracosaurus*. Her snarky attitude and dry humor serve as comic relief during the film.

## Production

### Development

> The reason why I wanted to do it was because it had this cosmic vision about evolution. That sounds a bit over the top but it would have been really good...There was a gigantic battle at the end as a comet moves closer and closer to Earth. The fight was between the sympathetic *Styracosaurus* and the antagonist *Tyrannosaurus rex*, and although the good guy wins, there's nothing to win any more because the comet hits Earth, and all the dinosaurs die. The lemurs survive because they are small enough to hibernate. The end of the film was the beginning of the human race.
>
> Paul Verhoeven on the original idea

The initial idea for the film originated in 1986 during the filming of *Robocop* (1987) in which Phil Tippett recommended to director Paul Verhoeven that they should produce a "dinosaur picture". Verhoeven responded positively to the idea and suggested an approach inspired by *Shane* (1953) in which "you follow a lead character through a number of situations and moving from a devastated landscape into a promised land." Veteran screenwriter Walon Green was then brought in to write the script. Verhoeven then drew two storyboards and calculated the project's preliminary budget to be $45 million. When the idea was pitched to then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, he suggested that the project should be budgeted at $25 million.

In 1988, the project began development in Disney's live-action division in which Verhoeven and Tippett had originally planned to use stop motion animation techniques such as puppets, scale models, and miniatures. The film's original main protagonist was a *Styracosaurus* named Woot and the main antagonist was originally a *Tyrannosaurus rex* named Grozni, with a small mammal named Suri as a supporting character. The film was originally going to be much darker and violent in tone, in a style akin to a nature documentary. After Woot defeats Grozni in a final fight, the film would end with the *Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event*, which would ultimately result in the deaths of the main dinosaur characters. In 1990, producer/director Thomas G. Smith became involved in the film and briefly became the director following Verhoeven's and Tippett's departure. Reflecting on his tenure, Smith said that "Jeanne Rosenberg was still writing the script, but it was in trouble. Disney wanted a cute story of dinosaurs talking, and I didn't like the idea. I thought it should be more like Jean Annaud's *The Bear*. I wanted to have actual lemurs in it. They actually existed at the time of dinosaurs...We actually located a guy who trains them." However, Katzenberg called Smith to help on *Honey, I Blew Up the Kid* (1992) in which he was replaced by David W. Allen who had just finished directing *Puppet Master II* (1990).

After multiple months on auditioning lemurs to portray Suri and creating visual development, Allen's version also fell into development hell. Smith stated, "The thing that ultimately killed it is that Disney knew that *Jurassic Park* was coming along pretty well, and they knew it was being done digitally. They figured, 'Well, maybe, we should wait until we can do it digitally.'" In late 1994, Walt Disney Feature Animation began development on the project and they began shooting various tests, placing computer-generated characters in miniature model backdrops. The idea to use computer-generated backgrounds was considered, but rejected with the earliest proof-of-concept animation test being completed in March 1996. Ultimately, the filmmakers decided to take the unprecedented route of combining live-action scenery with computer-generated character animation. The filmmakers then approached then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner about not knowing how much the project would cost or how long it would take to finish, but that they could fully complete it. Trusting the filmmakers, Eisner decided to green-light the project. However, at his insistence, it was decided early on that the dinosaurs would talk during the film. To accommodate this change, Aladar would be given lips in contrast to actual *Iguanodons* who were duck-billed.

George Scribner was selected as the director, and he was later teamed with Ralph Zondag as co-director. Storyboard artist Floyd Norman stated that Scribner envisioned the film "to be more than just a struggle for survival. He wanted this dinosaur movie to have elements of fun and humor...Our director wanted to explore the fun elements of dinosaurs, such as their size, shape, and texture. George also knew that since dinosaurs come in all sizes—what wacky relationships might I come up with? What funny situations might plague a critter of such massive size?" Scribner left the project to work at Walt Disney Imagineering, and Eric Leighton was brought in as co-director. The new script had an *Iguanodon* named Noah as the protagonist wandering with his grandparents and a lemur companion named Adam, and a group of *Carnotaurus* as well as a rival *Iguanodon* named Cain playing the antagonists. The story dealt with Noah, who had the ability to see visions of the future, foreseeing the coming of an asteroid and struggling to guide a herd of other dinosaurs to safety. Further into production, Noah, Cain and Adam were renamed Aladar, Kron and Zini, and certain aspects of the story were altered further into what was later seen in the final product.

### Animation

On April 17, 1996, the Walt Disney Company announced they had acquired the visual effects studio, Dream Quest Images. The studio was merged with the Feature Animation department's Computer Graphics Unit in order to form The Secret Lab. Vision Crew Unlimited provided the live-action visual effects. At the time, the Secret Lab's initial studio was reconstructed from a former Lockheed building in Burbank, California. Most of the computers were used from Silicon Graphics and additional machines were installed to create a render farm in order to provide workstations for artists, software engineers, and technical directors. The production team eventually re-located to the Feature Animation's Northside building in January 1997, and animation officially began eight months later, although some preliminary work had already begun.

To ensure realistic CG animation, 3D workbooks were created using Softimage 3D software. 48 animators worked on the film, using 300 computer processors to animate the film. Having aspired to be a paleontologist, David Krentz supervised the character design and visual development teams. He had an orthographic view of the dinosaurs, and his character designs were drawn on paper and scanned into the PowerAnimator software for the modelers to rig in the computers. In the character animation department, the dinosaur characters were first visualized in the computer in skeletal form. The rough character animations were then transferred into three software programs to strengthen the visuals of the characters. The programs were "Fur Tool," which was used for the lemurs and to create feathers and grass; "Body Builder," which was used to create skin and muscles for the dinosaurs; and "Mug Shot," a shape blender that works within Alias Maya for facial animation and lip-synching.

Headed by David Womersley, live-action photography units shot on actual jungle, beach, and desert locations including California, Florida, Hawaii, Australia, Jordan, Venezuela, and Samoa. In total, two live-action film crews shot more than 800,000 feet of film, although one scene, which takes place inside a cave, utilized a computer-generated background. In order to approximate a dinosaur's perspective, visual effects supervisor Neil Krepela invented the "Dino-cam", in which a camera was rigged on a cable suspended between two 72-foot-tall towers. The computer-controlled camera allowed for panning and tilting on 360 degrees and moved at up to 30 miles per hour across a span of 1,000 feet. With the live-action elements shot and the character animation reaching completion, the footage was moved into the Scene Finaling department. Under Jim Hillin, the effects-compositing team blended 80–90 percent of the live action plates against the computer-animated characters. The lighting department then adjusted the final lighting of the shots by changing the lighting conditions and replacing the skies.

## Release

In conjunction during its theatrical release, the film was accompanied by an exclusive interactive dinosaur exhibit center adjacent to the El Capitan Theatre titled *The Dinosaur Experience*.

### Marketing

Disney began the promotional rollout by attaching a teaser trailer consisting entirely of the film's opening scene to the theatrical release of *Toy Story 2*. The same trailer was also included on the home video release of *Tarzan* and the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection DVD release of *The Aristocats*. A second trailer was later released in March and attached to the theatrical release to *The Road to El Dorado*.

To promote the release of *Dinosaur*, the Animal Kingdom theme park ride "Countdown to Extinction" was renamed after the film, and its plot, which had always prominently featured a *Carnotaurus* and an *Iguanodon*, was mildly altered so that the *Iguanodon* is specifically meant to be Aladar, the film's protagonist, and the plot of the ride is now about the riders traveling through time to a point just before the impact of the meteor that caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, to bring Aladar back to the present and save his life. A "Dinosaur Jubilee" was held at the Animal Kingdom's DinoLand U.S.A. It ran from May to July 2000 and included interactive games, music, and a display of the replica of the dinosaur Sue.

### Home media

Main article: Dinosaur/Home media

*Dinosaur* was released on VHS and DVD on January 30, 2001. It was also released on 2-Disc Collector's Edition DVD that same day. In December 2001, *Variety* reported it was the fourth best-selling home video release of the year selling 10.6 million copies and garnering $198 million. It was re-released on VHS in 2002. The film was released on Blu-ray for an original widescreen presentation on September 19, 2006, becoming the first animated film to be released on the format. It was re-released on Blu-ray on February 8, 2011.

### Video games

On May 16, 2000, Disney Interactive released a video game based on the film on a Microsoft Windows/Mac CD-ROM as part of the *Activity Center* series. Additionally, Disney Interactive released a tie-in video game on Dreamcast, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64, PC, and Game Boy Color.

## Reception

### Box office

During its opening weekend, *Dinosaur* grossed $38.8 million in its first weekend from 3,257 theaters, for an average of $11,929 per theater beating out *Gladiator*. The film grossed $137.7 million in North America and $212.1 million overseas for a worldwide total of $348.8 million.

### Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 64% based on 123 reviews and an average score of 6.1/10. The website's consensus reads, "While *Dinosaur*'s plot is generic and dull, its stunning computer animation and detailed backgrounds are enough to make it worth a look." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, praising the film's "amazing visuals" but criticizing the decision to make the animals talk, which he felt canceled out the effort to make the film so realistic. Ebert wrote, "An enormous effort had been spent on making these dinosaurs seem real, and then an even greater effort was spent on undermining the illusion". On the syndicated television series *Roger Ebert & the Movies*, the film received two thumbs up with guest host Michaela Pereira from ZDTV's *Internet Tonight* additionally praising the vocal performances for the characters. Todd McCarthy of *Variety* called it "an eye-popping visual spectacle", but later wrote, "somewhere around half-way through, you begin to get used to the film's pictorial wondrousness — to take it for granted, even — and start to realize that the characters and story are exceedingly mundane, unsurprising and pre-programmed." A.O. Scott, reviewing for *The New York Times*, praised the opening sequence as "a visual and sonic extravaganza that the rest of the movie never quite lives up to. Those scores of animators and technical advisers have conjured a teeming pre-human world, and the first minutes of the film present it in a swooping, eye-filling panorama." Summarizing the review, he later wrote that "[t]he reason to see this movie is not to listen to the dinosaurs but to watch them move, to marvel at their graceful necks and clumsy limbs and notice how convincingly they emerge into sunlight or get wet."

Kenneth Turan of the *Los Angeles Times* wrote that the film "astonishes and disheartens as only the most elaborate, most ambitious Hollywood products can. A technical amazement that points computer-generated animation toward the brightest of futures, it's also cartoonish in the worst way, the prisoner of pedestrian plot points and childish, too-cute dialogue." Mark Caro of the *Chicago Tribune* wrote "The action is easy enough to follow, and the screen is never dull. But for a story that takes place some 65 million years ago, *Dinosaur* is awfully reliant on recent recycled parts." Desson Howe, reviewing for *The Washington Post*, felt the movie "was somewhat derivative and lacked a narrative arc" and claimed it was too similar to *The Land Before Time*.

### Accolades

**List of Awards and Nominations**
 Individual Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature Production
 Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Feature Production
 27th Saturn Awards
 Best Music

## Notes

1. ↑ *Dinosaur* is considered to be the 39th animated feature film in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon. However, this ranking differs in Europe as *Dinosaur*, along with *Winnie the Pooh* (2011), are omitted from the canon with *The Wild* (2006) being included instead.