Being a huge fan of this film, and always being eager to hear what people think about the first LBT movie, I've heard some pretty odd thoughts in discussion. Here are the choicest:
1. It's all a reference to the Divine Comedy. One person claimed that different parts of the story all alluded towards different parts of the Divine Comedy. We get Littlefoot and his friends being separated from their families (death), traveling through the post "earth-shake" wasteland (Purgatory), passing through "the Mountains That Burn" (Inferno), defeating The Sharptooth (Lucifer), before finally being allowed to enter the Great Valley (the Kingdom of Heaven).
As one TVTroper said:
"...dude, you blew my mind."
But then again, this is the basic formula for the dark family film with the happy ending: The protagonist undergoing some sort of loss or separation, travelling through a crapsack world that slowly gets worse and worse as they go, then undergoing some big final confrontation, and only then getting their happy ending, sometimes only after having given up on life altogether.
2. They actually all die at the ending. I've heard this one going around alot. It claims that Littlefoot and his friends did defeat Sharptooth, but died in the process. The scene of Littlefoot and his Mother's spirit was his "passing over", with her leading him to the Great Valley, or the afterlife.
And a little misinterpretation, and possibly simply memory-decay: For some reason, I always used to think the death scene with Mama-longneck happened in some sort of cave, and perhaps underwater. I have no idea why, I just used to think that... But then again, I also used to remember Strut as a female for some reason...
Anyone else got any others? Either something you used to think, still think, or heard from another person?