It didn’t deserve to bomb

>Peterson “basically took it as far as he could.” The choices to replace directors on films, as Pixar has done a handful of times, “are serious decisions,” adds Ream.

>“It’s given a lot of thought and care. Bob still works at Pixar [and] he’s a beloved member of the studio. He helps out on a lot of the movies. We care about him, but he just needed help getting the movie done. And Pete was sort of the obvious person to do that.”

>“I love Bob,” Sohn said, adding that he had been really glad that “he allowed me to help develop this thing and become his co-director.”

>In the final version of The Good Dinosaur, it’s a classic “boy and his dog” story, in which the “boy” is a dinosaur named Arlo, who’s gotten separated from his family. And the “dog” is a human child named Spot, who can’t talk but is pretty intelligent. They travel together as Arlo tries to get home.

>After the film changed creative teams in mid-2013, “we changed the characters quite a bit,” said Ream. “They went from older to younger.” Arlo the dinosaur had been about 17 years old, but now he was 11. His siblings also became younger.

>Also, said Ream, “we got rid of a lot of characters that were there before. The story was dramatically simplified.” The earlier version was “really complex,” with too many extraneous characters, Ream added. “There was villages of people, [and] it was really convoluted.”

>In particular, said Sohn, the original third act of The Good Dinosaur really showed the problems with the film as a whole. “We had three different storylines going on,” all of which needed to pay off in the end, said Sohn. They weren’t sure if it was a father-son story, or a story about a whole community, or something more personal about Arlo.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (2).jpg (750x400, 28K)

>“Pete just sort of stopped and said, ‘What is it we always liked about the movie? We liked the boy-and-dog concept,’” said Ream. “And so basically, [we ended up] focusing just on that relationship.”

>“[Disney exec] John Lasseter would always say, ‘It’s a very simple story. There’s nothing to hide behind. And that got everyone excited,” said Sohn. “You can’t hide behind the plot. You can’t hide behind [extra clutter]. Because the story is so simple, it really focuses on the character.”

>“We literally started over,” added Ream. “We changed locations. We went out on this research trip in a different part of the country, and we redid the sets to take place in the Northwest.”

>“We work really, really fast,” Ream added. “And honestly, it’s only been recently that we’ve seen all these parts come together.”

>Why is this film called The Good Dinosaur anyway?

>Why the heck is this film called The Good Dinosaur, anyway? Is there an evil dinosaur or something? Not exactly.

>Sohn told us this is sort of related to the idea of “the good son,” something Arlo struggles with being. In the movie’s first act, Arlo is living on a farm where doesn’t quite feel capable, and he wants to do more for his family. So it gets into his insecurities about being a good kid, and Arlo trying to become his own person.

>They also liked playing with the fact that dinosaurs actually existed, and everybody loves dinosaurs—but it was fun to imagine how the history could have unfolded differently. And also, Sohn said he was attracted to the metaphor of a dinosaur as someone who is stuck in the past—because the film’s main character, Arlo, is stuck in the past and unable to move forward after he suffers a loss.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (3).jpg (750x400, 50K)

>One thing that they added in retooling the film was the death of Arlo’s father, early on in the first act. Ream said they didn’t take this potentially tramatizing step lightly. “We tried so many different versions of this movie,” Ream said, and this was the version that worked best. She recently talked to a colleague who’d lost her husband and has two small children, and she felt that it was important to keep exploring these difficult subjects.

>Sohn said he did worry that this might freak out little kids, but he also grew up with films like Bambi and Snow White, which “do tip into these places that are scary and hard.” But with those movies, “you start to understand loss, you start to understand growth. I thought it was [important] for Arlo’s journey, that it was a part of it. It’s a part of life.”

>“That’s part of the ‘boy and his dog’ story,” said Ream. “Usually there is some hole that the boy has, and the dog kind of fills that hole.”

>And Arlo’s cartoony face is really designed to make you identify with him more, and see the “boy” inside the dinosaur, so you don’t just think of him as an animal, said Sohn. When Arlo gets lost in the wilderness, you need to worry that he’s out of his element and in danger of getting killed, rather than just thinking “You’re an animal. Why don’t you just turn around and eat some leaves?”, according to Sohn.

>In a lot of Pixar movies, there’s a “buddy” thing where the two main characters start out not liking each other, and then they slowly learn to understand each other and finally they like each other. But with a “boy and his dog” storyline, the boy doesn’t really like the dog early on—but the dog is just a dog, and doesn’t have such complicated feelings about the boy. “The dog becomes a catalyst in a way, where it becomes to fill something in Arlo, and teach Arlo” about himself, said Sohn.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (4).jpg (750x400, 35K)

>For Arlo’s journey, “I kept looking into my own life,” Sohn added. “I was a chubby kid, a minority, and [I wondered] what are those things that stopped me from being what I wanted to become? Those fears and those incapabilities really start to fuel the growth” of the character.

>With a concept of a world where dinosaurs never went extinct and they’re still around 65 million years later, it would be tempting to go with off-beat concepts like, “Dinosaurs live in the city!”, or “Dinosaurs wearing spacesuits!” said Sohn. “But for me, it started to lose the elements that I felt was really heartfelt about Arlo and Spot’s journey.” So instead, he went with subtler shout-outs, and flipping them—like, the T-Rex cowboys look partly like horses.

>They also tried to nod to actual scientific discoveries—like we meet raptors that have feathers.

>This was always a huge risk

>Even after they retooled Good Dinosaur, Ream said, she always had “days of doubt” about whether such an off-beat concept could work, but she generally felt good about it. “I was always excited about the concept of trying to tell a simple story elegantly,” she explained. “That was something that really appealed to me. I loved the idea that we were going to try to not have as much dialogue, that we were going to create this immersive environment. But you know, it’s risky. [I felt like] if we could pull it off, it’s going to be pretty special.”

>Pixar actually had a version of The Good Dinosaur to show people in 2013, added Ream, “and it just wasn’t ready. And so, yeah, John Lasseter and Jim Morris and Ed Catmull and Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich were all like, ‘It needs more time.’ It’s a company decision, and Disney supported us.”

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (5).jpg (750x400, 20K)

It was a tech demo disguised as a movie, it did deserve to bomb

Literally the only great part of the movie was the backgrounds. Everything else ranged from okay to unmemorable.

>“It’s scary” to take such a radical step back and rework a project completely, added Ream. “We were supposed to come out [with the film] in 2014, and we didn’t. But I’m ultimately really grateful to Disney” for agreeing to give them more time to rework the film completely. “There’s not too many places that would do that,” said Ream. Most studios “ would make us hit the date.” But the top people at Disney and Pixar “want us to make movies that are worthy of people who love Pixar.”

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (6).jpg (2400x3419, 1.35M)

youtu.be/F-zxbsAKBHw

>he did worry that this might freak out little kids
Now I recall the story about how the director or writer or something for Shazam had an exec call him and ask if he could change up the script so that Billy finds out his mother fucking dumped his ass
>He loves it and rolls with that plot point

This movie calms my sister's kid down more than anything else, and it isn't pozzed. So I appreciate it.

huffpost.com/entry/by-thinning-the-good-dino_b_8738842
>"And why is that?," you ask. It has a lot to do with the way The Good Dinosaur was retooled after Pixar veteran Bob Peterson was pulled off of this project back in the Summer of 2013. You see, Bob was the guy who initially came up with the Big "What If" that drove this movie's story. As in: What if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had actually missed Earth?

>You see, Bob put a very personal spin on The Good Dinosaur. Given that he had grown up in Ohio's Amish Country ... Well, that's how Peterson thought the dinosaurs would have evolved after another 65 million years on this planet. They would have eventually become this Amish-inspired agrarian society where all of the farmers worked together for the collective good.

>And to Bob's way of thinking, five different dinosaur species would have come to occupy very specific roles within this farming community. Triceratops would have used their sharp horns & bony frills like bulldozers to first clear the land. Then massive apatosauruses would have come along to furrow the soil and plant seeds. Once that crop was fully grown, stegosauruses would have used the sharp spikes on their tails to mow things down. Parasaurolophuses would have followed right behind those stegosauruses and gathered up what had just been harvested. And then the parasaurolophuses would have piled those crops on the strong backs of the ankylosauruses. Who would have then hauled that harvest back to the barn.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (8).jpg (800x380, 46K)

>That sounds like a well-ordered world, don't you think? One that could perhaps have been tipped on its ear one day if one young apatosaurus farmer decided to do something different. Like -- say -- instead of automatically killing all of the bugs that regularly attack their crops in the field, studying these insects instead.

>This is what Arlo was supposed to be doing as the original version of The Good Dinosaur's storyline was unfolding. This is why -- if you look closely at the very first poster for this Pixar film -- you'll see two giant bugs.

>And speaking of giant ... Take a look at Arlo's enormous puss. Why does this early version of The Good Dinosaur's title character have such a long face? Because Bob Peterson envisioned this apatosaur not as an 11 year-old who gets lost in the wilderness. But -- rather -- as a man-child in his late teens / early 20s. A literally big-hearted lug who longs to abandon his rigid role on the farm and perhaps do something different with his life. Like -- say -- go off on an adventure.

>"And what was supposed to send Arlo off on this adventure?," you query. You remember those large insects that this Good Dinosaur has been studying when he should have been protecting all of those crops? One day, Arlo notices that one of these bugs isn't actually an insect. But -- rather -- a boy who's crafted a crude disguise for himself that then makes this small human look like a bug.

>Because of the little three spots that this boy has painted on his forehead (which are supposed to mirror / mimic the spots that he sees on all of the enormous insects that are attacking the crops which the dinosaurs have planted) ... Well, that's why Arlo winds up calling this small human Spot.

Attached: good dinosaur poster.jpg (350x499, 34K)

Visually it didn't. Story wise it did.

>There were a lot of intriguing story ideas & character concepts like this that can only be found in Bob Peterson's version of The Good Dinosaur. The only problem was that all of these elements never coalesced into a single emotionally satisfying / overall entertaining storyline. And as The Good Dinosaur's original release date of May 30, 2014 drew closer & closer and Pixar's story trust had yet to come up with a third act for this film that actually worked, something obviously had to be done.

>So when John Walker (i.e., The Good Dinosaur's original producer) stepped away from that project in 2013 so that he could then go work with Brad Bird on Walt Disney Pictures' Tomorrowland, that's when Denise Ream (i.e., The Good Dinosaur's new producer) made her move.

>"I came onboard this project in June of 2013. Shortly after that, Pete (Sohn, Bob Peterson's original co-director on The Good Dinosaur) took over the story," Ream recalled in an interview with the Huffington Post. "We just shut the production down. And it was the hardest professional thing that I've ever done. But when you're swirling in the story murk, you have to do something. And Peter ... While he still wanted to honor the world and the characters that Bob had originally created for this project, he also wanted to tell a far simpler story."

>So rather than make a movie that showed how ankylosaurs, apatosaurs, parasaurolophuses, stegosauruses & triceratops came together to form an Amish-inspired farming community, Sohn & Ream decided instead to focus on a single family of apatosauruses. Not only that, but Peter & Denise decided to pare back Arlo's family. Reducing his number of siblings from two brothers & a sister to just a brother & a sister.

Attached: spot three spots good dinosaur.jpg (300x428, 17K)

>And speaking of paring things back, given that the character of Arlo (as Bob Peterson originally envisioned him, anyway) had been this 70 foot-tall man-child ... Well, that then made it challenging for Pixar's artists to stage scenes where this apatosaurus could then connect with a 3 foot-tall human boy. Which is why Sohn & Ream opted to not only reduce Arlo to 15 feet in height, they also reduced this character's age as well. Making him just 11 years-old when Arlo & Spot (SPOILER ALERT AHEAD) wind up getting swept downstream and then have to join forces if they're to survive their time in the wilderness.

>"And when we pitched this new, simpler story featuring a far younger version of Arlo, John Lasseter said 'This is great.' But he then warned Denise and I -- if we were to go ahead with this version of The Good Dinosaur -- that we'd really have to bring these characters and the world that they live in to life. Because with this simple a story, you can't hide behind the plot. Which is a very vulnerable place to be when you're a filmmaker," Sohn recalled.

>"And I have to tell you that -- on the day that we pitched John & the Pixar Brain Trust the new simple version of The Good Dinosaur and they totally got on board with that idea -- I went into the bathroom and wept. Because I so desperately wanted to make a movie like this. One where it was going to be the smaller, more character-driven moments that wound up having the biggest impact on the audience," Ream concluded.

>Changing apatosaurs in mid-stream like this was obviously an enormous gamble. Thankfully, it was one that paid off in the end, given that the critics wound up raving about The Good Dinosaur. With Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal saying that this Peter Sohn film was " ... heartfelt and endearing, as well as visually splendiferous" while Sandy Schaefer of Screen Rant stated that this new animated feature " ... boasts a touching story and gorgeous animation."

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (9).png (1106x300, 179K)

>And speaking of giant ... Take a look at Arlo's enormous puss
say again

>Now as for Bob Peterson ... Look, this wasn't this Pixar veteran's first walk in Jurassic Park. Given that Bob had worked on the story team for the story team for such challenging projects as A Bug's Life & Toy Story 2 (Not to mention being the story supervisor on "Monsters, Inc."), he already knew how tough creating a new full length animated feature could be. Which is why -- rather than exiting the Emeryville operation after being taken off of The Good Dinosaur -- Peterson just sucked it up and then moved on to his next assignment at that animation studio. Which was helping to craft a satisfying story for Finding Dory, the long-awaited sequel to Pixar's 2003 hit, Finding Nemo.

>Which, as it turns out, has proven to be a far tougher nut to crack than anyone had ever anticipated. Thanks -- in large part -- to SeaWorld's Blackfish problem and how that controversial documentary has helped reshape the public's perception of how animals should be treated in captivity. But we'll get to the behind-the-scenes stories associated with this new Andrew Stanton movie in a future Huffington Post article.

>But for now, those of you who are curious about what Bob Peterson's The Good Dinosaur would have been like at least have this handful of toys to check out. I mean, it's not like all evidence of the earlier version of this new Pixar Animation Studios film has been wiped from the planet, has gone entirely extinct.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (10).png (551x480, 133K)

Puss is slang for face.

variety.com/2015/film/festivals/annecy-pixar-reveals-evolution-of-troubled-the-good-dinosaur-1201521429/

>“At Pixar, we ask a lot of ‘what ifs,’” the studio’s Pete Sohn told a crowd of cartoon devotees (a mix of animation students, professionals and fans) at France’s Annecy Intl. Animated Film Festival: “What if the toys come to life when we leave the room? What if the monsters really were real inside the closet? What if a rat became a world-famous French chef?”

>So far, those hypotheticals have yielded “Toy Story,” “Monsters Inc.” and “Ratatouille,” respectively, but according to Sohn, “With (‘The Good Dinosaur’), we would ask the biggest ‘what if’ of all.” With that, he cued a clip in which a gigantic asteroid misses the Earth, narrowly averting a mass extinction event: What if instead of being wiped off the Earth, dinosaurs had continued to evolve?

>That’s the hypothetical that audiences will see answered when the film opens later this year, just in time for Thanksgiving, on Nov. 25. But internally, Pixar was asking another question: What if you scrap the original director of your upcoming dino movie and plug someone new in his place? In this case, Peter Sohn replaced “Up’s” Bob Peterson — the similarity between their names providing an added irony to the swap.

>Of course, “The Good Dinosaur” is hardly the first Pixar movie to get a massive overhaul in production (“Toy Story 2,” “Ratatouille” and “Brave” were all repair jobs of some sort, losing their original directors along the way), but it could be the riskiest. Sohn’s only previous helming credit was 2009’s “Partly Cloudy” short, and though the Korean-American animator is a favorite among his Pixar peers, inspiring the character of Asian boy scout Russell in “Up,” this project put an enormous responsibility in his relatively untested hands.

Attached: john lassester foreward art of good dinosaur.png (570x363, 191K)

>Naturally, Pixar is trying to offset that gamble with notes and ideas from the studio’s “brain trust” (the top-level feedback committee made up of John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, etc.), unveiling hints of the new direction the film has taken at a press conference last month at Cannes and now for an even bigger audience at Annecy.

>In this new-and-improved version of “The Good Dinosaur,” instead of being wiped off the face of the Earth, dinosaurs have survived. The magnificent creatures have learned to farm, co-existing with humans, who have no language and still run on all fours. That premise inspires an inverted “boy and his dog” story, where the main character is an orphaned Apatosaurus named Arlo (yes, here’s another Disney film in which a parent dies at the outset), and his best friend is a boy named Spot who tags along like his trusty pet.

>Earlier this week, Pixar revealed an all-new voice cast for the film, led by Raymond Ochoa (a child actor with a long list of credits) as Arlo, and featuring Jack Bright (from “Monsters University”) as the wordless Spot, illustrating just how drastic the changes to the original concept have been. Still, judging by what Sohn presented at Annecy, the film delivers on a couple different levels.

>First, visually, Sohn and his team have pushed the Pixar tools as far as possible toward rendering photorealistic environments, against which their cartoonishly stylized main characters will perform. Fifteen years after Disney’s live-action/CG hybrid “Dinosaur,” wherein plausible-looking virtual dinosaurs interacted against a series of practical background plates, Pixar is flipping the equation. But it’s an odd choice as well: When the driving question asks “what if dinosaurs continued to evolve?” shouldn’t the movie’s dinos look more sophisticated than the “Jurassic World” variety, rather than cute and cartoony, with simplified features, dopey expressions and big, Aardman-style teeth?

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (11).png (404x240, 69K)

>Second, in terms of emotion, Sohn may have cracked the project. Growing up with a mother who didn’t speak English, Sohn recalls a childhood screening of Disney’s classic “Dumbo,” in which the scene between the baby elephant and his mother (who extends her trunk to embrace little Dumbo from behind bars) made Sohn’s own mother cry. Normally, Sohn would have to translate the movie, but with “”Dumbo,” he said, “I remember my mom slowly but surely feeling this moment. It really got her. It hit me so hard. I didn’t have to explain anything to her. She saw it, and it was told visually so well. It really inspired me.”

>Instead of showing a multitude of clips at Annecy, Sohn focused on a key scene from “The Good Dinosaur” in which he aimed to achieve a comparable emotional moment to the one in “Dumbo”: Arlo and Spot bond over the discovery that both have lost parents. Lying side-by-side in the sand, unable to understand one another’s words, they use broken sticks to communicate their feeling toward their missing parents, arranging the wooden figures to represent their families, then sadly knocking over those who have died. It’s a beautifully animated bonding scene, which ends with the two characters howling mournfully at the sky.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (12).png (519x417, 110K)

startribune.com/how-pixar-s-the-good-dinosaur-escaped-extinction/355876391/
>Two years after its original release date came and went, "The Good Dinosaur" is back from the brink of extinction.

>The second movie to come from Pixar Studios this year, following the summer success of "Inside Out," "The Good Dinosaur's" evolutionary path proved to be bumpy — with the original director, producer and much of the voice cast being replaced and the movie reconceived by a new team.

>Director Peter Sohn replaced Bob Peterson, who remains credited (with Enrico Casarosa) for original story, and producer Denise Ream replaced John Walker.

>One of Ream's first tasks as producer was to shut the movie down.

>"Once Pete had come on because Bob was stuck, everyone came to the realization that the movie needed more time," Ream said. "That was in 2013, and we spent the rest of that year going all the way back to research and to focus on the story. It turned out that the research part was a big turning point for Pete."

>Research trips to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone — filled with hiking, horseback riding and white-water rafting — persuaded the creative team to set the movie amid the vastness of giant mountains and plains of the American West.

>"Once we started to simplify the story — a simple boy and dog story where the boy is a dinosaur and the dog is a boy — we realized there wouldn't be a lot of dialogue," Ream said. "It would be kind of quiet out in the wilderness.

>"When we pitched that concept to the Pixar brain trust, the moment they said yes, I can't tell you how relieved I was. I went into the bathroom and wept. I was so happy because I really wanted to make this movie. It really felt like our movie. That's why I came to Pixar, to make movies like this, movies that feel risky."

>For screenwriter Meg LeFauve, who also worked on "Inside Out," that level of simplicity was a true challenge.

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (13).png (402x380, 91K)

>Story supervisor Kelsey Mann said the challenge of simplicity, where there's nothing to hide behind, was exciting. "I feel like a lot of animated family fare is full of stuff," he said. "It's very challenging to do the opposite. Fewer elements need to do a lot more. As Meg described it the other day, this story has the profound simplicity of a poem."

>Sohn is credited by his creative team as being the vision behind that simple and direct approach to storytelling. For him, it all comes down to fear. "My own fears as a child, as an artist and later as a father are all still there," he said. "That was the therapy of making this movie. You have to find a way to get through fear.

>"I can't tell you how scared I was to step up and direct this movie. This is a huge film, and Pixar makes amazing movies. Could I do that? I had to find what I loved about the movie and let that keep pushing me through."

>Sohn said he hopes that "The Good Dinosaur," Pixar's 16th feature film, has a similar effect on audiences.

>"I would love it if my 5-year-old daughter, if she was going through something scary, has something she loves enough in her life to help her. It's as simple as that. Arlo the dinosaur discovers what he loves, and that's what gets him through."

Attached: art of the good dinosaur book (14) jp vine Jean-Philippe Vine pixar.png (431x449, 97K)

Yes it did

The articles lead credence to what user from previous thread was talking about in another thread about how the brain trust insist on RETOOLING the entire film instead of fixing story issues

boards.fireden.net/co/thread/101004164/#q101013372
boards.fireden.net/co/thread/101004164/#q101013385

Attached: art of good dinosaur.png (476x328, 97K)

>what if the meteor missed
Isn't this the plot to Super Mario Bros. The Movie?

Why would a society of dinosaurs not have hands while feral humans have them?

Humans shouldn't even exist in that scenario

This, it was just boring as hell, and nothing of interest happens at all
I remember the water looking absolutely amazing. Really my big take away from the film

...

Beautifully rendered, but the plot was from the 50's.

I didn't remember this movie existed. A Puxar film bombed?

All this hammering about how important the "what if" element of the movie, and all the final product had was, iirc:
>the apatosaurus family of farmers
>t-rex cowboys
>storm-chasing pterodactyls
The original community idea in the first draft of the film sounds a lot more interesting

yes. they lost money on it

>community based on the director's personal experiences with an Amish community
>main character who is an intellectual and not a rural worker like everyone else he knows
>spot's name actually made fucking sense
>scrap this for a boy/dog homeward bound story
I'm glad it's considered the weakest Pixar movie, they threw the gold down the well and polished a rock.

I liked that pterodactyl that didn't bother to eat whole that raccoon thing. So we didn't know if it was chewed or swallowed.

It didn't deserve to bomb

Attached: images (1).jpg (455x674, 79K)

It’s also slang for other things.

>They also tried to nod to actual scientific discoveries—like we meet raptors that have feathers.
Some half-assed shit on its back doesn't cut it. Lets not pretend an attempt was made.

Yes it did.

I loved both of these movies. Meanwhile Shazam was the one of worst movies I've seen in quite some time.

Am I out of touch or is it the children's fault?

The former.