The Good Dinosaur, a sweet little story with some nice character moments and both beautiful visuals and music (I'm listening to the score as I'm writing this). Despite being the lowest ever grossing Pixar film, it's by no means terrible, but it clearly didn't quite hit the mark with a lot of people. Pixar films set the bar pretty high, but with a simple story about overcoming fear and hardship the film ended up being somewhat cliché. I think most audiences expected more, especially with the "what if" question that was used to market the film.
The Good Dinosaur was originally pitched with one question in mind, "What if the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs missed?". This question was also present in movie trailers, even after many changes had been made to the film throughout production (I'll get to those in a bit). Audiences would have gone into the film with the "what if" question in mind, but due to the changes, the question doesn't really hold that much relevance in the final film. The Good Dinosaur kind of ended up being a western where the characters just so happen to be dinosaurs... I'm not saying that doesn't still work, but imagine what kind of world we could have seen had the original "what if" stayed relevant.
The film was first pitched by Bob Peterson, and he imagined that the dinosaurs would have developed into farming communities (accuracy pending). This decision was influenced by Peterson's experiences growing up in Ohio, he would often see Amish farmers and decided this would be his basis for the dinosaur society in the film. The film would've seen the dinosaurs living and farming together collectively, serving a specific function based on their species. So a large dinosaur would be good at clearing fields and carrying harvest, whereas a smaller dinosaur would gather stray seeds and plant new ones. I assume it would have been an all herbivore community, carnivores would have most likely been cattle ranchers like the T.rex's in the final film. There was more world building with this early idea compared to the finished product, which is mostly restricted to just Arlo's family. Speaking of Arlo, he still had just as much of a role to play in the early version of the film. Take a look at this poster that was revealed at the Disney convention D23 back in 2013.
(Is it me or did Arlo get taller?)
Having seen this back in 2013, I was a little confused when the trailer came out. I think you can see why. Early in production, Arlo was a young adult as opposed to a child. This was mainly changed due to scaling issues; the team working on the film were having a hard time making a relationship between a fully grown Apatosaurus and a tiny child work on screen. You'll also notice the beetles. Arlo was going to have an interest in studying the insects on his community's farm. This probably wouldn't have made him all that popular considering it wouldn't be beneficial, especially if the bugs were pests. Another notable point on the poster is Spot. When observing the insects, Arlo was going to discover that one beetle was actually a human child in disguise, complete with spots painted on his forehead to mimic eyes, hence the name Spot. It also doesn't look like he would have acted as much like a dog.
Arlo's discovery of Spot was supposed to set him off on an adventure to explore more of the world outside of his little community. Like in the final version, the other dinosaurs may have just considered Spot another pest to be gotten rid of, whereas Arlo would have developed an understanding of him. This is where things get a little blurry, the reason the film went through the changes it did was because the writers were having trouble getting the story to work. The final act of this early version of the film was never finished, so there'll be some speculation here.
The film would have needed a larger threat, maybe something like a famine caused by pests on the farm, possibly more humans in disguise (or beetles Arlo collected?). There may have been a whole human civilisation that were stealing the dinosaur crops due their own hardships. Arlo could have found himself needing to stand up against his own community to protect the humans, or maybe there was an even bigger pest that was eating both of their food. If it were some kind of insect, Arlo's knowledge of the beetles that he studied may have been the only way to resolve the situation. I figure he'd have enough respect for the ecosystem to not just exterminate them, they seem like they could have been a food source for humans. Either way, I feel like the film would have ended with Arlo creating an understanding between the dinosaurs and the humans, either by resolving a larger pest issue that affected them both, or by uniting them in having them all work collectively on the farms just as the dinosaurs did on their own. They would have found a way to coexist, and Arlo would have found his place.
(Some early concept art)
That's just a vague (somewhat crappy) interpretation, and you can start to see why the story was changed. There were probably a lot of ideas they wanted to try, but the plot was getting too complicated. Arlo's age had already been changed due to him being too big, so they needed a story more suitable to surround a child. It eventually became simplified to point of it being a "boy and his dog" story, along with there being fewer side characters. It's a shame the earlier ideas didn't work out, I always like seeing what almost made it in to a finished film, but you can still see a lot of the influences they had on the final product.
You can see the early cast list here. You'll also find you can buy merchandise of unused characters. Hope you enjoyed this entry, even if I'm about a year or so too late writing about it...
