The Land Before Time is a 1988 animated adventure drama film directed and co-produced by Don Bluth from a screenplay by Stu Krieger and a story by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. Its executive producers are Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall. The film stars the voices of Judith Barsi (posthumously), Burke Byrnes, Gabriel Damon, Bill Erwin, Pat Hingle, Candace Hutson, Will Ryan, and Helen Shaver. It is the first film in the Land Before Time franchise. It was produced by Amblin Entertainment and Sullivan Bluth Studios.
The plot features a young brown Apatosaurus named Littlefoot, who ends up alone after his mother dies protecting him from a villainous Tyrannosaurus rex. Littlefoot flees famine and upheaval to search for the Great Valley, an area spared from devastation, where the adult dinosaurs have moved on to. On his journey, he meets four young companions: Cera, an orange Triceratops, Ducky, a green Saurolophus, Petrie, a brown Pteranodon, and Spike, a green Stegosaurus. The film explores issues of prejudice between the different species and the hardships they endure in their journey as they are guided by the spirit of Littlefoot's mother and forced to deal with the Tyrannosaurus rex that killed her.
The Land Before Time is the only Don Bluth film of the 1980s in which Dom DeLuise did not participate (instead, he starred in Disney's Oliver & Company released that same day), and the only film in the Land Before Time series that is not a musical, as well as the only one to be released theatrically worldwide. It was also the last film that Bluth directed that was scored by James Horner, executive produced by Spielberg, and distributed by Universal Pictures.
The film was released by Universal Pictures on November 18, 1988, to generally positive reviews from critics and was a box office success, grossing $84.5 million against a $12.3 million budget. Its success, along with An American Tail and the 1988 live-action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, led Spielberg to found his animation studio, Amblimation. The first film spawned a franchise with thirteen direct-to-video sequels, a television series, video games and merchandise, none of which had Bluth, Spielberg nor Lucas' involvement (though Amblin Entertainment was involved in the television series like it was for Fievel's American Tails). It is currently Don Bluth's second highest-grossing animated film, only behind Anastasia (1997).
Plot During the Mesozoic, a famine forces groups of dinosaurs to look for an oasis known as the Great Valley. A "longneck" dinosaur hatches a single baby named Littlefoot. While traveling to the Great Valley, Littlefoot encounters and plays with Cera, a young "three-horn" dinosaur until her father sends him away, citing the belief that dinosaurs should keep to their own species. In the evening Littlefoot plays with Cera again until a large "sharptooth" dinosaur pursues them. Littlefoot's mother eventually comes to their rescue but is fatally wounded. During the struggle, an earthshake strikes and splits the land, swallowing up the sharptooth and dividing Littlefoot, Cera, and other dinosaurs from their herds; several die in the process. Before dying, Littlefoot's wounded mother gives him some words of advice about finding the Great Valley: "let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen closely". Confused, and in-grief, Littlefoot meets Rooter, an old "clubtail" who is initially grumpy towards him, but proceeds to console him after he opens up about his mother. Littlefoot is then guided by his mother's voice telling him to follow the sun to the Great Valley. First, he must pass several landmarks, such as a rock formation that resembles a Longneck and the "Mountains that Burn".
Later on, Littlefoot meets a young "bigmouth" dinosaur named Ducky and a young "flyer" pterosaur named Petrie who has yet to learn to fly, themselves separated from their families during the earthshake, who accompany him on his journey. Looking for her own kind herself, Cera finds the unconscious sharptooth inside a ravine and, believing him to be dead, rams him until she wakes him up. She escapes and bumps into Littlefoot, Ducky, and Petrie. While describing her encounter, she accidentally flings Ducky in the direction of a lone hatching "spiketail" egg, from which a male emerges; Ducky names the hatchling "Spike" and inducts him into the group. Seeking the Great Valley themselves, Littlefoot and the others discover a cluster of trees, which is depleted by a herd of longnecks. Searching for remaining growth, they discover a single leaf-bearing tree, and obtain food by stacking atop each other and pulling it down. Cera remains aloof, but at nightfall, she and everyone else gravitate to Littlefoot's side for warmth and companionship.
The next morning, Littlefoot and the group are attacked by the sharptooth but manage to escape through a tunnel which is too small for him to follow. They discover the landmarks mentioned by Littlefoot's mother. At the Mountains that Burn, a clash between Littlefoot's intention to follow his mother's directions and Cera's insistence on leaving the group results in a fight between them which causes the others to follow Cera, forcing Littlefoot to continue alone. When Ducky and Spike become endangered by lava, and Petrie gets stuck in a tar pit, Littlefoot returns to rescue them. Cera gets ambushed by a group of "domeheads" who live in the Mountains that Burn; the rest of the group pose as a tar monster, scaring away the domeheads and frightening Cera. After realizing who it really is, Cera angrily leaves the group and breaks down in tears, ashamed of her selfishness. Later, while crossing a pond, Petrie overhears the sharptooth nearby. The group devises a plan to lure him to the pond and drown him in the deep side using a nearby boulder. During the ensuing struggle, a draft from the sharptooth's nostrils enables Petrie to fly for the first time.
The plan nearly fails when the sharptooth begins attacking the boulder while the group attempts to push it onto him. However, Cera, having overcome her sorrow, reunites with the group and headbutts the boulder, causing the sharptooth to fall into the water, the boulder crashing into him in the process. The sharptooth momentarily takes Petrie down with him, but Petrie emerges unharmed while the sharptooth has drowned. Littlefoot, alone and about to give up on the search, sees his mother as a cloud; she guides him to the Great Valley, and Littlefoot is then joined by the others, who realize he was the same person who met them before. After arrival, the five are reunited with their families: Petrie impresses his family with his newfound flight; Ducky introduces Spike to her family, who adopt him; Cera reunites with her father; and Littlefoot finds and rejoins his grandparents. The group reunites at the top of a hill and embrace each other in a hug.
Cast
Gabriel Damon as Littlefoot Candace Hutson as Cera Judith Barsi as Ducky, Spike's adoptive sister Will Ryan as Petrie Pat Hingle as Narrator Hingle also voices Rooter, a "Clubtail". Helen Shaver as Littlefoot's mother Burke Byrnes as Daddy Topps, Cera's father Bill Erwin as Grandfather, Littlefoot's grandfather (credit only, cut from the final edit)
Production Development During production of An American Tail, talk began of the next feature with Bluth and executive producer Steven Spielberg. Bluth and Spielberg wanted to do a film similar to Bambi, but with dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg's longtime friend George Lucas was also brought in on the project after being interested with it. The three persuaded An American Tail writers Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss (both of whom were also prominent writers for Sesame Street) to write the screenplay for the film. Their initial draft was based on their early ideas, but when it was felt the story was too juvenile, Stu Krieger was brought on to revise their draft.
Early into story development, the film was about a group of young dinosaurs looking for a wise, older dinosaur. Later on, Bluth explained, "...we came up with another idea that none of these dinosaurs get along with each other, they all hate each other. They're taught from the time they were born not to associate with each other, that's racism". An early working title for the film was The Land Before Time Began. Bluth, Spielberg and Lucas originally wanted the film to have no dialogue, like The Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia, but the idea was abandoned in favor of using voice actors in order to make it appealing to children.
Animation As work on the script continued, Bluth delegated some of the animation staff to begin creating concept art. As with his previous films, Bluth handled the storyboarding, but with final revisions by Larry Leker. Production was initially delayed by several months as the studio moved to Ireland. Production would eventually begin in spring 1987, a few months after the release of An American Tail.
The production was preceded by extensive research, including visits to natural history museums in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Skeletons, fossils, and paleoart from the turn of the century were consulted to help create a credible landscape and animals. Further research was conducted using live-action footage of quadrupedal modern animals, including elephants and giraffes.
Editing
Late into production, The Land Before Time underwent a severe cutting and editing of footage. Spielberg and Lucas thought that some scenes in the film would appear too dark and intense for young children. At a screening in Soho Square, London in late April 1988, six months before the film was completed, Spielberg told Bluth while looking at the scenes from the film: "It's too scary. We'll have kids crying in the lobby, and a lot of angry parents. You don't want that".
19 fully animated shots from the sharptooth attack were cut from the final film. Examples can be seen in the storyboards of the chase sequence in the briar patch. POV shots of sharptooth's snapping jaws were deleted, and shots were rearranged to shorten the sequence. This results in continuity errors, depicting the Tyrannosaur with his right eye still open after it had been blinded.
Perhaps just weeks before the film's release, more than 10 additional minutes of footage was cut from the film by Spielberg "to be sure it would not disturb parents or their children", according to producer Gary Goldman, reducing the runtime from 80 to 82 minutes to just 69 minutes. Much of the cut footage also consisted of sequences of the five young dinosaurs in grave danger and distress. An extended scene involving the introduction of Spike was deleted, as was some of the "Green Food" sequence.
Petrie's apparent death scene originally went longer, and was followed by a group hug where Littlefoot says "Now we'll always be together". This line survives in the form of a Pizza Hut promotional advertisement for the film. The film's final act was also heavily altered and rearranged; originally, Littlefoot was to find the Great Valley on his own before turning back to rescue his friends, kill sharptooth, and enter the valley as a group. This ending survives in multiple book adaptations, and the music accompanying it still exists in the official soundtrack release. Some screams were re-voiced using milder exclamations.
The scenes are believed to be destroyed, but some did make it into multiple advertisements and trailers created before the release of the film, and multiple stills can be found in storybook adaptations and press kits for the movie. Much of the unused music from the film score was meant to play over the deleted scenes. Many animation cels and drawings from the deleted scenes have surfaced on the internet.
Music