Dinosaur
Film information
Directed by	Eric Leighton Ralph Zondag
Produced by	Baker Bloodworth Pam Marsden John Burton
Written by	Ralph Zondag John Harrison Robert Nelson Jacobs
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	David Hardberger S. Douglas Smith
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Language	English
Budget	$127.5 million

Dinosaur is the 39th Disney animated movie. It's the most expensive movie released in 2000. It uses digitally-enhanced live action photography, computer generated characters, and other special effects.

Plot

The film revolves around the life of an Iguanodon named Aladar who is taken from his nest as

an egg and after a long and precarious flight via a Pteranodon, his egg lands on Lemur Island where he is adopted by the family

of lemurs; consisting of Plio, her father Yar, and her son, Zini. Years on, Plio has had a daughter named Suri and the family takes part in mating season which Zini fails to accomplish and goes without a mate. Moments after the mating season ends, a huge meteorite destroys t

he island and leaves only Aladar and his closest family members alive. The family move on and come across a her

d of various dinosaurs, led by an iguanadon named Kron and his lieutenant Bruton. Other herd members include elderly Brachiosaurus Baylene, Styracosaurus Eema, dog-like Ankylosaurus Url, and Kron's younger sister Neera. Aladar and the lemurs accompany the herd across a desert to reach a nearby breeding

ground the herd has visited before. However, they are stalked first by a pack of Velociraptors and later by a pair of Carnotaurus, referred to as "Carnotaurs" in the film. The herd stops at a lake that appears to be dried up, but the water is revealed to be underground, by Aladar hearing it underneath because he had been trying to get Baylene and Eema across. Later that day,Carnotaurs begin stalking the herd, sending the herd into a panicked flurry. Aladar, the lemurs, Eema, Baylene, Url and Bruton are all left behind and regroup in a series of caves. The Carnotaurs attack them, but Bruton sacrifices himself to allow the others to flee, one of the Carnotaurs killed in the process. The group flee to the back of the caverns, then smash down a wall to reveal a path straight into the breeding ground. Eema spots that the usual entrance has been blocked off, prompting Aladar to find Kron and the rest of the herd.

Kron, Neera and the herd are on the other side of the blocked off entrance, Kron ordering that the herd climb impossibly over the wall. Aladar arrives and suggests the route through the caves due to a sheer drop on the other side that would kill the herd, which Kron objects to and accuses Aladar of stealing his role as leader. The two fight until Neera steps in and defends Aladar, deciding to go with him and the herd through his route. The surviving Carnotaur appears, causing the herd to go into a panic. Aladar convinces the herd that the only way they can survive is by standing together. They fend off the Carnotaur and get past it, but the Carnotaur then notices Kron, who had refused to follow Aladar, and decided he would climb the wall to get to the nesting grounds. The Carnotaur begins to chase Kron down. Neera notices this, and rushes to try to aid her brother, soon followed by Aladar. In the fight that ensues, Kron is fatally wounded by the Carnotaur. Aladar forces the Carnotaur onto a cliff edge that collapses, sending it plummeting to its death. Neera comes to Kron but it is too late. The herd reaches the breeding ground, led by Aladar. Aladar and Neera have children as well as the rest of the herd, and the lemurs find more of their kind.

Cast

• D. B. Sweeney as Aladar, a brave and compassionate Iguanodon who's been adopted into a family of lemurs and does what he can to make sure that the old and weak aren't left behind during the herd's migration. He serves as the main protagonist of the film.
• Alfre Woodard as Plio, a lemur (Coquerel's Sifaka) matriarch who cares for her family.
• Ossie Davis as Yar, a lemur patriarch whose occasional gruff demeanor is just a front covering his more compassionate interior. He is the father of Plio and Zini and the grandfather of Suri.
• Max Casella as Zini, Aladar's stepuncle and wisecracking sidekick, Yar's son, Suri's uncle and Plio's brother.
• Hayden Panettiere as Suri, Aladar's stepsister, Zini's little niece, Plio's daughter and Yar's granddaughter.
• Samuel E. Wright as Kron, an Iguanodon leading a herd of dinosaur survivors who is characterized by a strict adherence to social Darwinist theory. He believes in survival of the fittest, which repeatedly clashes with Aladar's merciful manner.
• Julianna Margulies as Neera, Kron's sister, who ends up falling in love with Aladar because of his compassionate ways.
• Peter Siragusa as Bruton, Kron's domineering right-hand assistant. He is betrayed and left for dead by Kron, and ultimately gives his life to kill one of the Carnotaurs to save Aladar, the lemurs, and the weak dinosaurs.
• Joan Plowright as Baylene, an elderly and dainty Brachiosaurus (technically a Giraffatitan due to her identification as B. brancai).
• Della Reese as Eema, a wizened, elderly and slow-moving Styracosaurus, and Url's companion.

Throughout the film, Velociraptors and Carnotaurus make appearances, but are not given voices. Early on, a Carnotaur attack precipitates the events that lead to Aladar's adoption by Plio and the lemurs. Later on, a group of Velociraptors chase Aladar down and later stalk the herd until they are scared away by a pair of Carnotaurs, who consistently stalk the herd in their search for food. The first Carnotaur was killed by Bruton, who sacrified himself to save Aladar and the others during a cave-in. The second and last one was killed during a fight with Aladar on a top of a cliff, where it starts to break under its weight, causing it to fall to its death.

Development

The film was originally supposed to have no dialogue at all, in part to differentiate the film from The Land Before Time, with which Dinosaur shares many plot similarities. Michael Eisner insisted that the film have dialogue in order to make it more "commercially viable." Coincidentally, a similar change was made early in the production of The Land Before Time, which was originally intended to feature only the voice of a narrator.

The film's score was composed by James Newton Howard. Pop singer/songwriter Kate Bush reportedly wrote and recorded a song for the film but due to complications the track was ultimately not included on the soundtrack. According to HomeGround, a Kate Bush fanzine, it was scrapped when Disney asked Bush to rewrite the song and Bush refused; however, according to Disney, the song was cut from the film when preview audiences did not respond well to the track. In Asia, pop singer Jacky Cheung's song Something Only Love Can Do, with versions sung in English, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, was adopted as the theme song for the film.

Dinosaur would be Disney's first major solo foray into computer animation. Dinosaur combines the use of live-action backgrounds with computer animation of prehistoric creatures, notably the titular dinosaurs, produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation's Computer Graphics Unit that was later merged with Dream Quest Images to create Disney's The Secret Lab department.

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