At long last I finally watched the land before time XII. The following review may include repetitions of what has been written in this thread before. I don’t know, for I wrote it in word and copy pasted it in this thread without reading the previous posts. My intention is to give a first hand account of just my own impressions without any influence from reading the thoughts of others before posting my own. After posting this message I shall read the thread and see if I just repeated what others said before, or if I brought up something new, if there are any disagreements on some points, or if I am in complete accordance with everybody else. We shall see.
First of all my overall impression of LBT XII is mixed. It is better than some, worse than some, contains nothing that would make me “rant” against it as much as I did in case of a certain other sequel, but also contains nothing that would secure the movie a place in my heart (or however we want to call it) as much as is the case with many other LBT movies.
One thing I realized was how much the attention is shifted away from Littlefoot and towards the others, Cera and Petrie in particular. We have had previous movies in which the others got more of the spotlight that they had had in even earlier movies, but I think in this movie Littlefoot got less screen time than in any other LBT movie and he for the first time he did almost nothing of any real significance. I welcome attempts to put the others more in the spotlight, but I don’t hope for Littlefoot to become negligible. This fear is rather unfounded I suppose considering the fact that he got a good deal more spotlight than the others in the sequels preceding LBT 12.
I avoided reading spoilers during the last months, but couldn’t help learning about the idea of the day of the flyers as a day on which they fly in close formations. Ever since, I have been wondering why they would do that. There is nothing really to be gained for the flyers by flying in such formations while the very “freedom of flying” is kind of limited. In a way the outcome of the day of the flyers supports this view. Littlefoot’s grandpa mentioned the need to fly in herds. I don’t know why, but I had always pictured flyers to be sort of loners if it came to travelling, just because they have so much more freedom of movement than anyone else. Then again even the original movie showed large flocks of flyers. It would make sense for them to work out a way to ensure there are no stragglers when flying over hostile land to ensure that nobody has to land on his own if landing is necessary. While even a large flock of flyers is not likely to scare off any sharptooth, they are less likely to be surprised by one the more eyes (that is flyers) are around. Close flying formations occur in nature (wild geese are the best example), but somehow the degree in the movie seemed a bit exaggerated. Above all however they were a bit inconstant. Considering the emphasis they had put on the necessity of formation flying earlier in the movie they (Petrie’s siblings in particular) were surprisingly ready to abandon it towards the end.
During the scene in which Petrie was carrying Guido I was somewhat sceptical about the possibility of little Petrie carrying the larger Guido. In LBT 2 we have a scene in which he is barely able to soften a fall when carrying Ducky. But I guess with the effect of will power (after all Petrie and Guido had grown very good friends), the risk of death, and the degree of exhaustion Petrie showed I thought this was alright. When Petrie kept both Guido AND Tricia in the air I found this was too much.
Guido is a character rather different from those we’ve seen so far. He does follow the “tradition” of keeping many new character mysterious (as in case of Doc and the rainbowfaces). We never learn about how he really got to the Great Valley. It is very likely that he was sleepwalking / -flying and ended up in the Great Valley, but why didn’t he remember anything at all? And what about his family? Wouldn’t they look for him? Or did perhaps their fate (assuming that they were killed by predators or the like) cause a shock and Guido’s apparent amnesia? The voice of Guido was a little difficult to get used to as far as I’m concerned. His way of talking was interesting though. Did you realize he told all of Petrie’s siblings in a most uncontroversial manner that they were buttheads?
There were several funny statements not only from Guido but also from Cera and her family.
The other new character, Tricia was less spectacular than Guido I think. Of course she wasn’t meant to be much of a character but more of a “device” to put Cera and her folks in particular moods. I have a bit of a problem with this part of the story’s lack of coherence with reference to earlier movies and LBT 6 in particular. There were threehorn hatchlings around in LBT 2 and 3 (who didn’t play any role) but most conspicuously in LBT 6, Dinah and Dana. We were never told where Dinah and Dana were coming from (or where they have gone to since LBT 6). From their experiences with them one could expect a little more practice from Cera and her Dad with hatchlings around. Dinah and Dana also were an example of hatchling characters who played a much more active and interesting part in their movie than Tricia did. Well, she may yet get something more to do. I expect her to become a permanent character in future LBT movies and is probably involved in TV series sequels (I still have to see many of them) too.
LBT 12 addressed several interesting points. More than in any previous movies it struck me that none of the main characters seems to take much interest in their siblings or just members of their own kind. While in the original movie Littlefoot is looking forward to the Great Valley longnecks to play with (under the impression of the claim that one shouldn’t do anything with members of another kind) we’ve seen him interact with longnecks of his age only twice (not counting possible cases in the TV series I have yet to see), in LBT 4 and LBT 10. Cera never interacts with threehorns of her own age and in LBT 5 she admits other threehorns are too bossy for her. Up to now we never saw Petrie interact with his siblings (and showing a little more of Petrie’s family is one of the very positive points of LBT 12), and Ducky (as the other main character with many siblings) is only shown to interact with her siblings in the original movie and LBT 8. Spike is actually the only one who (having grown up apart from any member of his kind) shows a particular interest in his own species in LBT 8.
As for the music of LBT 12 I found “Everything changes” to be the best of the three.
On several occasions I had the impression that the creators of LBT 12 were somewhat “testing” the possibilities of whatever software they are using. There were scenes in which the grass background appeared smooth as it does in previous movies while in other scenes you could see every single blade of grass. Personally I’m inclined to prefer the simpler version as the other somehow doesn’t seem to fit to the way the characters are drawn. The grass is just one example of several computer elements they are involving sometimes for a good, and sometimes for a too artificially looking effect. There seems to be a certain fondness for letting water sparkle in the sunshine. Water reflection effects employed at the beginning of LBT 12 strongly reminded me of similar effects at the end of LBT 9.
In one scene there was a kind of Matrix effect. They had Littlefoot leap across a ravine, then his movement turned into slow motion all of a sudden, the camera was moving around a bit, then the tempo turned back to normal and Littlefoot only just made it to the other side. Somehow the effect didn’t seem to fit in. There was nothing particularly special about that leap or its outcome so the special effect seemed a bit out of place to me.
They also used a few camera moves along the lines of Petrie’s route of flying, something I don’t remember from any earlier movie.
I’m almost certain that I forgot to mention some important points, but I want to post this message still today and may be reminded of whatever I have forgotten when I finally read the thread.
