What? Another one already? That’s right, Pixar, the studio known for releasing just one magical film per calendar year, has two for us this year. Fresh off Inside Out's success, Pixar will release The Good Dinosaur this fall (November 25, to be exact), and it, too, has all the feels. A sort of boy-and-his-dog tale flipped, the touching narrative follows Arlo, a little dinosaur lost in a big world, as he journeys home. Read on for a handful of things to know before you go.
The movie is a product of failure.
And that’s a good thing. Director Peter Sohn has a really great lesson for kids: Fail fast. That way, you can get to the gold sooner. "Learn to be vulnerable. Be scared – just put it out there. Maybe they hate it, but it’s okay,” Sohn says. As a Pixar animator, Sohn (who was the model for the Boy Scout in Up) worked on Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and The Incredibles, but it’s that pitch-fail-repeat mentality that finally scored him The Good Dinosaur, his first feature-length directorial project.
The movie asks big questions. The biggest being, What if?
What if …
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed Earth?
Your world as you knew it was over?
You were forced to face your fears?
Nature is a character.
Mother Nature gets a supporting role here. And the film deals with her evil-vs.-nurture balance: One second she’s beautiful (rolling mountains, vast skies), the next she’s terrifying (violent storms, danger around every corner). Not to mention the film shows off her wicked sense of humor: Velociraptors sport mullets and feathers, there’s a T. rex with a Southern drawl, and the humans play the role of pet.
Arlo is not a brontosaurus.
He’s an apatosaurus. Though they’re actually the same genus, “apatosaurus” is today’s technically correct term – just a little trivia for all those gentle-giant enthusiasts out there. So meet Arlo, a li'l long-necked green guy who speaks English and befriends a human critter named Spot who speaks “dog.” Though the pair don’t understand each other’s languages, Spot fills a hole in Arlo’s heart, and the two embark on a remarkable journey together. (Fun fact: Spot’s mop of hair is actually modeled after Sohn’s daughter’s infinite bed head.)
You will cry. They will cry. Everyone will cry.
No sugarcoating here: this movie plays with your emotions. Pulling from his own personal experience, Sohn weaves themes of death, loneliness and misunderstanding to craft his story. Growing up, he and his Korean-speaking mother were constantly lost in translation. But there was one thing the two universally understood: the “Baby Mine” scene in Dumbo. Sohn applies a lot of what he and his mom felt to the beautiful relationship that is Arlo and Spot. And it’ll simply bring tears (sad and happy) to your eyes.
