I'm not going to beat around the bush here today.

---

I think X made sense as a series finale - even though it was terrible in a lot of ways and a red-hot stab in the belly of the world set up by the first movie, its premise, its length and even its presentation and score made it feel like like it was supposed to be a sensible end to the decalogy.

Apparently the people behind this movie thought that a sensible follow-up to "Littlefoot saves the world and meets his long-lost father" was "Littlefoot ruins a special day for everyone in the Great Valley, blames tiny sauropods and then befriends said tiny sauropods".

Yeah, I'm not going to waste any time, Invasion of the Tinysauruses is boring. It isn't actually too terribly paced; it flows well enough, I'd say; but it still doesn't move all that fast, and, to be frank, the premise is really, really stupid. At the very least, there is a slightly better B-plot of Topps hooking up with an old romantic partner to the chagrin of Cera that is bolstered by a more interesting premise, but it is bogged down by a fatal flaw, one shared by the first plot that ultimately brings the story down from boring and dumb to outright intolerable: the characters.



Almost every returning character in the movie comes off as a lot nastier and a lot stupider than usual. Cera is the prime example - she physically assaults characters like Ducky and Petrie over slights and even brattier and mean than her typical Grosvenorian self - but Littlefoot's other friends don't fare too much better; Ducky, Petrie and Spike are stupid/at best naive enough to think that the valleydwellers wouldn't crush the tiny longnecks if they tell them where they are and at least two scenes are dedicated to the kids shunning Littlefoot for being honest about the lie that set up the plot and said kids verbally slamming each other for shunning Littlefoot. Even Littlefoot's grandparents, though typically exceptions throughout the movie, have at least one moment of belittling Littlefoot for being smaller than usual - speaking of, though he is frankly kind of annoying - him suddenly being insecure about being small when that has never been an issue before now, him pinning blame on something that was his fault on tiny animals before a crowd of giant, unhinged dinosaurs (more on them later) and him randomly denying that he was at the tree he messed up when he finally confronts the tiny longnecks are weird - I will at least concede that he isn't the one-note bland always nice Littlefoot that has permeated almost all of the sequels before now. The worst of both worlds comes in the form of the Great Valley's anonymous citizens: simultaneously disturbingly bloodthirsty and barely any more sentient than the sharpteeth that graced the last movie.

The B-plot revolves around three characters: the aforementioned Cera, Daddy Topps and the new character of Tria. Getting Tria out of the way first, she's nice, willing to speak her mind and probably the most likable character in the movie (suspicions over what happened to Mama Topps aside...), but she still isn't very interesting. Though I can't stand how Cera is portrayed for the most part, they, at the very least, provide some rationale behind her behavior in that she is frustrated by Tria entering Topps' life. One line from Littlefoot over her being her new mother provokes a reaction from her, which is definitely interesting, but her reasoning given to her father - to paraphrase, "I liked things better when you liked nobody and nobody liked you" - comes off more that she is mad that she is allowing Topps to develop as a character more than anything. Speaking of, Topps is, surpisingly for a movie bent on making characters meaner and stupider, actually a little bit more noble than usual: he starts off just wanting to let the Great Valley have their holiday in peace, he wants to let his new partner have the first serving of food during the celebration and, when those plans are ruined, he takes it upon himself to both exact (decidedly misplaced) justice on those who (supposedly) ruined everything and protect the valley from the (again, supposed) threats. Of course, the fact that he is on edge over tiny sauropods is still a problem, and he's still old Maddy Topps, so he's still not great or really sensible or anything...

The titular Tinysaurus are small, squeaky and forgettable, barring Big Daddy, who has a nice voice and a memorably strange design but is otherwise also pretty forgettable. As for the Deinonychus duo that are in there to provide a cheap, ineffective thrill: they're dopey, worthless, and just as phoned-in as the III raptors, more fodder for the Old Jerks and Lame Villains Retirement Home™ and more proof that V meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. The first song 'Creepy Crawlies', is terrible, its reprise is terrible, 'Girls and Dads' is mediocre but has fun instrumentals and a bad-but-great-by-me message, 'If Only' is vocally and lyrically weak with a good message about learning from mistakes and 'Stupid Stompers' is horrible.



The animation, I would say, continues the downward spiral from last time, and this step down is a pretty sharp one. The movements are like if you crossed the fluidity of X with the jankiness of II, and the animation in general is exponentially more cartoony than last time, and not in a good way - this is most egregious in the climax with the sharpteeth, which is soiled by the characters turning into gelatinous cartoon monstrosities that look like they crawled out of a Nickelodeon cartoon. The art has taken a hit as well; characters' expressions are a whole lot more exaggerated and rubbery, the backgrounds aren't as strong as last time and some of the art looks outright traced from other points in the series; seriously, look at this and tell me it doesn't look just a little bit familiar.



All in all, this was another real stinker; the third 2.5/10 in a row. If the adults decided to drop a rock on this movie, I wouldn't particularly care. Nor would I care if Tria secretly poisoned the movie decades after I hooked up with it and waited a few years to come back into my life.

---

• The music that opens the movie is weirdly beautiful; it sounds like it came out of the town level from Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
• Dinosaurs the size of kittens were probably a lot more common than the big ones, we just don't have too many fossils of them yet.
• "Small things can be very important. The dinosaurs of the Great Valley knew that." Not yet, they don't.
• "Flying pointy-bottomed stinger"; is that a Petrie-ism or a verbose general dinosaur-ism?
• At least Topps has a proper motivation; this is HIS tree and he will DIE for it
• Cera has finally regressed to the point where she sees Littlefoot not being an adult as something to bully him over.
• Littlefoot, if you've stayed this small for all of this time, you're probably never going to grow up, get over it.
  
  Though, I have to say, he looks exponentially smaller than in the last movie (which is canon, Grandma brings up Bron); maybe he's shrinking.
• Littlefoot is insecure about his size because Cera is one-dimensional so he de-flowers a tree and sees a bunch of miniature neosauropods
• There are still some vines on the tree for everyone to enjoy, Topps, they're nice and sweet too.
  
  I get that Cera doesn't like seeing her father in this position, but holy hell, get a grip.
• the valleydwellers collectively have one braincell - only Grandpa understands the worth of little things, even Grandma is against him
• This is a good point of reference for gauging the valleydwellers' intelligence; if they were to be thrust back into the Great Beyond, they would all die within days and would probably be fodder for Red Claw - yes, even Red Claw.
  
  Also, good continuity; a Styracosaurus walks past a root and gets ready to go past one side of a tree, and in the very next shot he is underneath the root he just walked past and gets himself stuck.
• Littlefoot sets Cera off by mentioning that Tria could be her "new mom"; so, something happened to Mama Topps, and she didn't die on the way to the Great Valley... and there was a pink threehorn looking at her funny at the end of the first movie... The case doesn't look that good for Tria.
• There's a good idea here with Topps getting a new partner and Cera feeling alienated, but I don't think they're executing it well; Tria isn't all that interesting, Topps is suddenly a completely different character and Cera is unlikable.
  
  Tria just migrated her after the cold time - alright, that's a hiccup in the theory of her having blood on her horns, but she could have been hiding in the shadows until now, and she could have lied when she told Topps how she came here...
  
  Littlefoot's screams sound ridiculously unenthused.
• wouldn't it have been something else if Littlefoot developed a god complex when he met the tiny longnecks?
• Ducky uttering the word "Topsy" is enough to make Cera threaten to kill her - Christ, the threehorn has reached a new low.
• Is it just me, or is everyone really spiteful towards each other in this movie?
• Remember when Petrie was half Ducky's size in the first movie? Now he's big enough to offer rides to small sauropods.
• this is beautiful contrast to Littlefoot worshipping his deadbeat dad in the last movie; a song demeaning one-note jerk dads!
• "Just because they're bigger, they think that makes them more important, and sometimes they for get about the little details. Like us." Big Daddy single-handedly trashes the opening narration.
• I'm going to wager that the tinysaur burrow is barren, given that they're clearly dependent on the kids for food - they must have been nocturnal foragers before the treesweet tree incident.
• Apparently guard duty is necessary for a few single-digit-pound longnecks that the valleydwellers only know to eat plants.
• Topps sees the aforementioned single-digit-pound longnecks as potential threats to a ten-ton Triceratops cow.
• And they're clearly capable of speaking English, but Topps acts like they're sharpteeth; are treesweets that big a deal to these freaks??
• "Savages, savages, barely even ornithodiran!"
• I appreciate that the newer movies have more original scores; they're not as intrusive as horribly-misused Horner music and they tend to sound good.
• Littlefoot is getting smaller, Grandpa outright confirms it; it's been because he's been holding onto little things like lies and has lost his way.
• The kids are mad at him because he messed up the tree and befriended the tiny longnecks and made the grownups push a rock on them (even though they didn't...); I kind of like the dumb joke of Spike eating all of Petrie's best treestars, though.
• Tria only likes the tinysaurs because they're cute, very deep.
  
  Topps wasn't always so mean... care to elaborate, Tria?
• Tickling, the ultimate way to defeat a sharptooth; Tria, you're a Triceratops, you could kill both of these clowns with no effort, especially with Topps by your side.
• The purple one should have died from Topps ramming it like that - I'll give these things credit for being insanely resilient, but that's all the credit I can give them.
• "Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?" -Big Daddy, immediately before picking on some creatures a hundred times their own size and having his children nibble them like the compies did Dieter Stark
• I'd flee too if I saw all of those giant, potentially dangerous herbivores barging towards me.
• Alright, the sharpteeth aren't going to come back, but where are the tiny longnecks going to live now?
• Who let those two rainbowface-colored fastbiters into the Great Valley?

---

The next movie is the last stop before the main event, let's hope that the streak of awfulness will be broken there.

Without spoiling too much right off the bat, today's review is... er... not particularly glowing.

Before the review, I'll say that, when I watched this in August, I had been awake for 30 hours straight. Make of that what you will.

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So: The Stone of Cold Fire was a breath of fresh air with some dumb-as-bricks ideas and The Big Freeze was bland - but not exactly bad - with some ideas that aren't too out-of-place in the world, and Journey to Big Water... uh... read on.



I will at least say that the story presents interesting ideas - some of which that are stolen from another piece of dinosaur media altogether, but I digress for the time being. The climate chaos introduced in the last movie is at it again: torrential downpours unlike any the dinosaurs have ever seen before are inundating the lands, particularly the Great Valley, while the core children are bored. A couple of creatures are swept over the walls of the valley by the floods; one who Littlefoot befriends and introduces to his friends and another who is not quite as friendly. Concerned about his safety and given incentive to help him after an earthquake, the kids take it upon themselves to bring their new "mud brother" back to the ocean. Though, again, there are decent ideas here - marine life is a welcome addition to the series - once again, the story is boring, and, like in VIII, low stakes because I don't care about the central conflict (in fact, I'm kind of rooting against it...). The first act once again dragging on for almost half of the thing and the second act being a flash in the pan do not help matters, nor does the absolute mountain of filler and fluff that fills the thing. If one were to cut out parts of the movie like the kids being bored, kids accusing Mo of being Littlefoot's imaginary friend, several sequences of the kids travelling and a few botched peril sequences, I'm willing to bet that the movie would only be around a half-hour long.

Though most of the action scenes suck, a few of the ones involving the sharptooth swimmer are bizarrely great - more on him later - and the scenes with the Diplodocus mom are cute; unfortunately, the climax, which is generally the best scene in the movie thanks to the aforementioned sharptooth swimmer, is cheapened beyond repair by a copout - Mo, who is very heavily implied to have died to save his friends and whose death almost sets up a message of accepting failure and looking for the good in bad things happening, inexplicably shows up just fine and explains how he survived by splashing around a whole lot without any of the exciting visuals of the actual climax and all of the annoyance of the character. The songs are weird: 'Boring' (let's call it that) is 2 or 3 minutes of the kids complaining about being bored and is insufferable as a result, 'Imaginary Friend' is a complete abomination of a song and 'No One Has To Be Alone', though great in its own right and the best of the sequel songs, feels very out-of-place and kind of random.

So, before we get to the characters, let's talk influence: as aforementioned, the movie very prominently features marine life, namely an Ophthalmosaurus named Mo and an anonymous Liopleurodon. If you are familiar with dinosaur media beyond Jurassic Park and The Land Before Time, you may recognize these names from somewhere - they are the two primary focus animals of the Walking with Dinosaurs episode, 'Cruel Sea'. Aside from the species choices being suspect in of themselves, matters are made worse by their color schemes being almost identical to their BBC counterparts. It isn't as obvious with Mo, given that he is a mix of very bright yellow, purple and red, but his water-kin - being the same pale yellow and purple/brown that the ophthalmosaurs were in the documentary, or more specifically as they were in a render that the creators of IX must have had easy access to in 2001/2002 through the archaic internet - are far less subtle and frankly kind of dumbfounding. No credits are given to the BBC or Impossible Pictures for inspiration in any way in the credits, so I am going to treat all of these similarities as plagiarism - and, though cool, negatives in the grand scheme of things.



I'm not even going to bother going into detail on how the core main characters are portrayed because they are just as bland and one-note as they were in V once you look past them being bored in the opening, Littlefoot wanting a friend, a few brief, glorious moments of Cera being terrified by a little crab and Cera trying to actually be mature after the could-have-been great climax. The new characters, with the exception of one, are either nothing to write home about - the mother Diplodocus - or a very annoying waste of animation that only exists to appease toddlers and is ever-miserably central to the plot  - Mo. Thankfully, there is one good character - the sharptooth swimmer, who is perhaps the scariest and most interesting of all of the sharpteeth introduced in the sequels. He comes off as a marine equivalent to Sharptooth (not in the sense of him being a ripoff of Monstro, though) in the best possible way.



The animation, I would say, is a bit of a step down from last time. Though the faces aren't as weird and the colors are a little brighter, I think that the animation is cheaper and more stilted, there is some very strange shading in several shots and there is a surplus of very poor-quality CGI. The backgrounds are still good, at least - the underwater ones in particular are very nice - and some of the water effects look alright.



I think that this was pretty easily the weakest sequel so far; even more boring than the already-ruinously boring II. I am confident in saying that the 2.5/10 I last gave this was warranted; harsh, but warranted.

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• Swimmers have a problem with muddy nesting areas?
• "I wish my mom had given me a brother, and then I'd always have someone to have fun with."
  
  She gave you several. It wasn't her fault that they didn't make it past the embryonic stage.
• I think Littlefoot is kind of annoying here, but I'll concede that he's showing a little more character here than usual; he's childlike in how he just wants to have fun.
• It's taken them a really long time to get around to introducing Mo; most of the movie until the 18 minute mark has been dedicated to the kids being bored and everyone complaining about water.
• It would have been interesting if they made Mo distinct from Littlefoot and the others by having him be to dinosaurs what dolphins are to humans (I know ichthyosaurs aren't dinosaurs, bear with me) instead of just another kid; as he is he just comes off as a weird mermaid.
• Ducky accidentally offending Mo leads to like 4 minutes of the kids denying Mo's existence; it doesn't serve the plot and it only gives way to...
• ME HAVE A FRIEND. A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND. BUT NOBOD CAN SEE ORHERE HIM AEVER DAY I SAY HE MAKES ME HAPPY WHEN ME SCARY SHARPTOOTH MUST BE NO HE SHORT AND HE NICE NO TEETH AND BEST OF ALL, HE IMAGINARY? HE IMAGINARY. IMAGINARY. OH IMAGINARY FRIENDS ARE PLAY. HAPY WHEN YOU SAD, THEY ALWAYS BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SAY. NANANANANANANANANANANANANANANAN IMAGINARY. NANANANANANANANANANANANANA IMAGINARY.
  
  WHY WOULD YOU WNT A DUMB FRIEND? HE"S NOT REALLY AIR HOW CAN NOBODY BE THINK BE SMART? THEY NEVER EVER GO THEY GO AND WHATEVER YOU ALWAYS RIGHT. OH IMAGINARY FRIENDS ARE MAGICAL FRIENSS> THE SMALL AND BIG ONES> BAMY FIRNEDS@ EVERYBODY EBERYBOERYB ODBERIRBEOREBRYERO EBROBERY EVEYROBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY RVEYRTOBE OREAFKENFGOIEGF
  
  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASNSNSNSNNSNSNSNSNSnnANSNASKNASNANANANANA
  
  IMAGINARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
  
  Spoiler: ShowHide

  
• The earthquake scene is the only thing that stood out to me about this movie when I first watched it in 2007/2008.
• This is the first serious valley earthshake that the series has ever seen; didn't they come here to get away from all of this? Between this and the climate change trouble that started in the last movie, is the Great Valley starting to fall apart?
• They do not know what to do with the running time; half of the movie up to the 36 minute mark has been fluff and filler.
• Littlefoot, show a little anger over that stunt (where Mo scares the kids by supposedly trapping himself), show an emotion other than "we were worried!" and "yay! The good boy!", please, for the love of God...
• the kids are walking through some distinctly Paleozoic landscapes, it takes them at least one day to get as far as they do in the slow montage of them walking.
• V probably didn't happen in this universe, so I take it that they sang 'Big Water' and went there once some time ago in some never-before-seen adventure.
• The sauropodlets look like Diplodocus versions of Tricia.
• Skywater > heatwaves, according to Petrie; they've reached brackish water.
  
  Speaking of: were marine reptiles capable of surviving in freshwater?
• The Liopleurodon is scary because it's such an alien threat for the series; all of the other sharpteeth before now have been lesser clones of Sharptooth or lame comedy villains, Leo here takes the template of Sharptooth, applies it to a marine animal and has a decent amount of fun with it.
  
  The scene is really effective; probably the best sharptooth "fight" of all of the sequels.
  
  edit 2: I don't buy Mo being able to close the pliosaur's mouth for a second but that's so brief that it doesn't detract from him; this 70ft+ animal can jump like a boss.
• In a perfect world, Mo died here; wouldn't it have been really ballsy and mature if what Cera told Littlefoot on the matter was tied to the moral of the movie and not just garnish for a godawful bait-and-switch of him inexplicably surviving?
• (the sharptooth swimmer) smelled the ocean and just yeeted, leaving a perfectly good meal; he's not on par with Sharptooth, just close, for a few reasons...
• 1:05:44, Cera mentions that the Smoking Mountains are the way home; almost a whole minute later through some fancy echolocation technology, it is revealed that the kids' home is immediately to their left and that this entire journey could have been exponentially shorter.
• I think this is the last time they use the theme with the choir from II; the scene of Littlefoot diving wasn't necessary, but it was a decent showcase of one of the movie's very few strengths.

---

Well that was dour.

Up next is the sequels' biggest milestone: the big 1-0, the big letter X, the great migration of the great longnecks. Will it be a worthwhile venture, or... will it...

 

Strap in, folks; the next couple of movies are going to be bumpy rides.

For a while, very; I listened to some of the songs pretty often, I spent most of my time on the wiki, I made a good bit of fan art, I worked on a fan project that expanded upon the world of some of the earlier sequels...

As I write, the obsession has waned by a lot, but I still dabble in LBT every so often.

Only now do I realize I completely forgot to provide notes for the fifth movie; whoops! I'll have them in the notes section of today's review.

Though I wasn't particularly kind to The Mysterious Island, I conceded that it could have been a whole lot worse. Well, if you needed example of something a whole lot worse, look no further than...

---

Right off of the heels of V, The Secret of Saurus Rock... well, it continues the downward spiral.

Right off of the bat, it's boring. It takes almost 30 minutes for the plot to really get going, that plot is over in ten minutes and the rest of the movie is dedicated to - get this - bad luck being a problem in the Great Valley (not that the initial plot of the kids searching for two idiot babies that like to bounce around and scream was any better). Though it isn't too dragged out or bogged down by filler past the glacial first act, it still suffers because the plot is so unbelievably low-stakes and banal. I mentioned during my commentary (incl. further down) that it feels like an overly long episode of the TV series and I absolutely stand by that. The songs are actually not too bad; only 'Bad Luck' is particularly crappy. 'The Legend of the Lone Dinosaur' is a surprisingly fun tune and 'On Your Own' is simply bland. On a surprising note, I enjoyed a few of the one-liner jokes in the movie - two examples I can think of are Petrie smugly declaring that Littlefoot fell because he isn't a flyer and a scene of Littlefoot threatening the audience.

The cowboy/western theme is something of a double-edged sword. I think that it makes sense to try and blend the concepts of dinosaurs and a western setting, given that a lot of early dinosaur paleontology was tied to the latter days of the American Frontier, and because (purely subjective here...) and because a lot of North American dinosaurs lived in areas that correspond to what is the American west in the Holocene. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, and from the standpoint of the one song, I think it works. From a story standpoint, I think it and all of the aspects tied to it; giant magical monuments coming out of the ground over the span of seconds, magical stone teeth, Lone Ranger-type characters; are incongruous and very strange in the context of the world of The Land Before Time.

The main characters, with one exception, are a little bit dialed back from how they were portrayed last time. Ducky and Petrie really aren't any different, Spike doesn't cause too many problems with his single-minded gluttony and even Cera has a little more to her than just "I am grumpy and bratty". Littlefoot, unfortunately, doesn't do anything but obsess over a new character and fret after something happens at Saurus Rock, and he is very annoying as a result. The new characters are very mixed; on one hand, Doc is an interesting, cool new character with a neat design and a lot of mystery behind him (I personally don't buy that he's the "Lone Dinosaur"; even Cera says that he would be dead by now if he were), but on the other, the aforementioned idiot babies are irritating little farts that only exist to make noise, move, and degrade Cera. The sharptooth threats, which are regular-old starving, unhinged predators, are really nothing worth writing home about: the BMMF Sharptooth is an entity for the Lone Dinosaur to fight in a story and nothing else, the ugly-as-sin Allosaurus (with... two fingers...) is generally just mediocre with a handful of decent moments and there's this random T. rex in the climax that shows up just to get its tail handed to it by Grandpa, kick him over and then die a horrible death alongside the Allosaurus.

Speaking of, I will dedicate a special paragraph to how sharpteeth are treated here. In the context of the series at large, their treatment is relatively typical, if not a little more disturbing than usual; the horrible death mentioned above is them being dazed by running headlong into a pillar and proceeding to be crushed to death by that pillar, courtesy of Doc and Grandpa Longneck, while they are conscious. Had this come after IV, this would have been offputting. But, right off of the heels of V, which went out of its way to try and portray sharpteeth as creatures intellectually and emotionally equal to the leaf-eaters (to... mixed results, read that review), it comes off as kind of horrifying, especially with the very kids who learned all of this cheering after the fact.

The animation really isn't any different than it is last time, maybe a little more polished but still on the same level of badness. However, the art is more appealing; the colors are a little darker and more rustic and some of the backgrounds are quite nice.

We're back in the territory of the first sequel, 3.5/10. With how I lambasted V after finding it enjoyable before today, heck if I know what to expect from Pterano's big movie...

---

Because I forgot the notes last time, this note section will cover both V and VI.

• Grandpa has a point (about how Mr. Clubtail deserved that leaf); the kids are reading as annoying brats six minutes in.
• "Whimsical music! The kids get to eat leaves! Spike is such an oaf that he almost eats his sister!"
• Very explicit reference to the characters having come from outside of the Great Valley.
• Unpopular opinion; I wish they didn't take music from the original movie, it seriously cheapens that score.
• The idea of "another land of plenty" seriously cheapens the special-ness of the Great Valley.
• yes, clearly the swarming leafgobblers are the only reason the lands are barren, it's not like the world is supposed to be ending because of dinosaur-killing drought or anything...
• This movie doesn't know how to handle the first movie and the other sequels, so it's nice to know that it having the kids call the ocean the "big water" is going to be mauled and misinterpreted by the later sequels and the TV series.
• Darn it, Angel Island's fallen back into the ocean, someone call Sonic and Tails.
• This is like 'Return to Hanging Rock' in that it introduces conflicts only to solve them as soon as they bring them up; the kids having to adapt to all of the foreign, unusual island food should have been way more of a point than something that has less than a minute dedicated to it.
• Petrie's fear of flying over a body of water that can't possibly hurt him is really a driving point of the plot, huh?
• I don't like this Littlefoot voice actor as much as the one from the RAS sequels, but he doesn't do half bad; the log briefly not floating is another worthless example of a blink-and-you-miss-it conflict
• I don't think "swimming sharptooth" is a proper term, it's just a term the kids made up to describe this one specific sharptooth that can swim
• Why in the name of Don Bluth can Chomper suddenly talk?
  
  edit: Chomper's charm was him being a small wild animal; obviously, they didn't get that memo...
• I quacked at the way Ducky screams "heeeelllppp"; she doesn't immediately recognize the intimidating, snaggle-toothed pterosaur as a predator.
• Chomper being able to talk because he spent one day with these five is the equivalent of a lion cub in our world being bottlefed for a day after being born and growing into an adult who can speak fluent French.
• I'm still agreeing with Cera and the others, here; Littlefoot, you're going to regret all of this when (Chomper) grows up to bite your head off.
• Plates isn't amazing, but he's in the upper echelon of sharpteeth; I don't like his sounds one bit though.
  
  edit: I think he can understand Leafglish and is actively spiting them
• if the characters stopped feeling like they had weight to them in II, they feel like anti-gravity beings in this movie
• All of that searching for food and a new home for their parents has been invalidated, they found a place offscreen...
• "Because you kids ran off and put yourselves in serious danger, we found food and water! Good on you kids!"

• the Great Valley was founded by galloping Brachiosaurus that were immediately beset by a Tyrannosaurus
• (SLAP) (TRUMPET) "Let me digest that elephant, dammit!" (SLASH)
• the whole setup with cowboy dinosaurs and bad luck belongs in a different franchise
• Seasons are a thing in this movie, but they're going to forget about them in two movies (either that or climate change is even starting to affect the Great Valley...).
• Petrie strokes his keratinous beak and says that his skin feels softer already.
• If Ducky seriously thought that intruding upon Mrs. Maia's nest was anything resembling a good idea, I don't know what to say...
• I don't like Dana and Dinah whatsoever, but at least the characters care about them; they are toddlers, after all, it would be weird and nasty if they hated them.
• Spike comes off as a lot more endearing here than last time
• No, Littlefoot, that clearly is a tree trunk; seriously though, if I went into this blind, I'd assume that Apharji (yes, I have a pet name for the "useless sharptooth") was an Albertosaurus or something.
• Littlefoot's unhealthy obsession with Doc and Saurus Rock isn't any better than babies being dumb.
• Cera glances behind herself and neglects to notice a sharptooth... and when it's right behind her drooling on her, she also ignores it
• This version of the Mountains that Burn score sounds a little more percussive; honestly, Apharji isn't too terrible, at least not yet...
• I like Petrie's stupid reassurance for Ducky.
• (The Allosaurus) biting the log for some reason leads to what could have been his death, dummy.
• What are the chances that everything here is a result of the nocebo effect and not actual bad luck?
• "This valley's nice, but there are others just as nice somewhere out there." I think I heard the first movie dying in the background, sorry.
• I always forget about the tornado scene whenever I watch the movie.
  
  edit: The dinosaurs' comfort must be dropping like crazy.
• This feels like an overlong TV series episode.
• another decent line - "I wonder if all of the other lone dinosaurs talk out loud to themselves like this..."
• Doc is the best thing about this movie by a long shot.
• Apparently Littlefoot doesn't check the sharptooth for it breathing; sharpteeth naturally smell like death.
• Okay, so Apharji is clearly awake and bothered by what Littlefoot is doing inside his mouth; why does he let him screw around in there for so long?
• "Hey, I'm in this too!" - random T. rex
• (in response to how the sharpteeth are disposed of) Well that's (stinking) horrifying, especially with the last movie in mind
• "You never know when we might need a hero! We might need a hero holding out for the... something"
• There's no harm in making sure bad luck is vanquished. Actually, wait, no, you just killed two wild animals to harvest a tooth from one of them to prove your stupid point.

---

I'm sure you're sick of me trashing the series up to this point, so I will leave you with a tease for next time: my thoughts on the next movie are not going to be nearly as vitriolic as they have been for the last two installments. In fact, they might end up being... I'll stop myself there.

See you then

I wonder if your rating for Wisdom of Friends is still going to be 1.5/10.

We'll see when I get around to that movie.

---

Consistently with all of my other viewings of the movie, I thought that The Land Before Time IV: Journey through the Mists was alarmingly strong.

I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first: the animation has once again improved but still isn't good, it levels out to about mediocre - the character animation is about on par with last time (bad) and some of the prop animation and effects work, namely tied to the flower, are decent, especially for a DTV work. There are also some instances of characters being stupid, namely Grandma, who seems way too okay with Littlefoot and Ali going off into a dangerous territory to find night flowers and foolishly believes that telling Littlefoot's friends that their friend did this won't spur them into action themselves.

Most egregious are some positively botched villains/antagonists; a smart-aleck seabird and a cranky old lady Deinosuchus with terrible eyesight that can inexplicably talk. Had they been silent, they might not have been perfect, but they could have at least been cool and a little scary, but them constantly bickering and spouting one-liners absolutely ruins whatever potential for scary villains was there with them - worse yet that not a single thing up to this point in the series has suggested that sharpteeth even have the capacity to speak, let alone display the level of anthropomorphism that these two do (Chomper was a tiny animal who had his bright moments but was otherwise just a baby predator; he didn't seem to understand too much of what characters said to him and he definitely didn't seem like the type to be able to talk, so he gets off in that regard. More on that next time.) Also, 'Who Needs You?' sucks.

However, those don't detract from the experience too much, and there is a lot more to like here than to not. First off is the simple but reasonably effective plot - Littlefoot's grandfather is sick and Littlefoot must find him the only cure before it is too late. There is a lot of emotional stake in the story, and the scenes that directly address it, such as Littlefoot finding out about his situation, finally managing to cure him and even a very small line when he and his friends find the night flowers ("we've found them, Grandpa!") are unusually powerful. Suffice to say that I think that it was well-executed, especially with the (criminally unmentioned but still-) underlying detail of Littlefoot already having lost a family member, the most important person in his young life, some time ago and him going neck over tail to save the life of one of the very few he has left. The other facet of the plot, Littlefoot's friendship with Ali, is alright; easily its greatest merit is that it continues to explore the theme of interspecies racism that was integral to the original movie, though not nearly as viscerally or necessarily as elegantly. The story in general is much more brisk than either of its sequel predecessors; very few scenes go on for longer than they must and it doesn't waste too much time getting to the main conflict. I think that the other two songs - 'The Circle of Life' (as the credits call it, we at the wiki used to call it 'Grandma's Lullaby') and 'It Takes All Sorts', are good and okay respectively.

On a side note, I feel like this movie and the third movie were trying to set up some sort of overarching story that would have been followed by the following sequels; an overarching story that was dropped as soon as the very next sequel...


Again, the core five characters are mostly not handled remarkably and stay true to their selves as established in the last two movies. However, Littlefoot, Cera and Spike stand out in a couple of ways:

1.) Littlefoot strikes me as a little more similar to his original self here in that he doesn't feel quite as bland; for one thing, his determination is back in full force with his mission to save his grandfather, and shades of him being determined to a fault show with him being willing to leave his friends without notice to save him.

2.) I don't love how Cera is handled; though she isn't bad by any means, a decent amount of her screentime, mostly prior to her being rescued by another character, are her being extremely jealous of Littlefoot playing with that new character.

3.) Spike gets a sudden gasp of character development that never gets brought up again... he learns how to talk!

Two new characters stand out; Ali is imperfect (in a character sense, which is good) and pretty likeable and I absolutely do not condone shipping her with Littlefoot, and Archie is a pretty fun character. Tickles is worthless. 


Though I listed the animation as a negative, it is important to say that I think it has again improved since last time, and the art has improved pretty sharply; the backgrounds in particular are very good, particularly in a far shot of the Land of Mists and in a scene of the night flowers blooming.


This will probably stand as the only Land Before Time sequel I will give this score: 7/10. It isn't a huge, amazing, beautiful thing like the first movie, but I think that it is good in its own right.

Aaaaaaand it's all downhill from here, isn't it?

---

• Some regions of the world went through dramatically different changes than what was shown in the first movie; some parts became too wet for even the dinosaurs.
  
  Or the world is starting to improve and this is a prologue to either The Good Dinosaur or The New Dinosaurs.
• Grandpa calls his mate 'Grandma' - is that her name?
• The dinosaurs are being driven to extinction by general climate change, not just worldwide drought - I guess even the swamp-dwelling dinosaurs of this world have wetness limits
• If Grandma's tear hadn't fallen on Littlefoot, this movie would have gone way differently.
• The tree reptile can be interpreted as some sort of ornithischian; the Triceratops eating water plants has sharp teeth.
  
  Nice to know that Cera is completely over her racism.
• What is a sea turtle doing in a cave that may or may not be really far from the Western Interior Seaway (what's left of it in the Maastrichtian, anyway)?
• Can Archie and the others understand what (Ichy and Dil) are saying, and if so, why do they not question talking sharpteeth?
• an obligatory cute mammal who is more sapient than the average sharptooth in the context of this point in the series
• I like Ichy contemplating hitting Dil; not everything about them is awful, at least.
• Idea: Dil kills Ichy after he "bites" her tail and the rest of the climax is the kids facing a crazed sharptooth who is flying blind.
• Spike talking strikes me as a natural evolution; he's really young and he's finally learning to talk, stress is just the push he needed.
• Ichy could move to the ocean and live like a normal seabird, but yeah no Dil is completely screwed - if the plesiosaur didn't get her, something else must have.
• I think there was a plan for a continuing story that was executed only through III and IV; the land continually changing as the characters grew up and eventually ending with all of the heroes together.
• I don't think the plan was for Ali to come back in an episode of a janky TV series with an obsession with a Ronno-type character, and to only appear in that one episode.
• I want to see someone try and continue the story that was set up by this movie and the last movie and subsequently completely thrown aside when Grosvenor stepped in.

---

And that's that; a surprisingly high-quality entry in the Land Before Time saga.

Instead of teasing whether or not The Mysterious Island will keep the improvement ball rolling even further, I will instead say that I didn't expect myself to feel the way I did about the movie when I watched it during the marathon. I'll leave you to deduce whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing.

In my case, animation/graphics is LAST THING I'm looking at when I watch/play something.
Especially when I know it was made not for for big screens but for VHS.
Of course, I mean cases when it is not that bad, for example. XD So generallly, all LBT movies, even TV series that has the lowest animation quality don't hurt my eyes with animation.

On the other hand, LBT2 is first movie after great LBT1 with its animation, so it's fair to list animation quality as one of main movie's problems, and it's fair to give it so low mark, especially COMPARING TO LBT1.

The reviews from here on out will mostly be comparing their subjects' animation with that of its immediate predecessor, though comparisons with the first movie are going to be a constant; in the case of III, most of the comparisons will be with how the animation quality has changed since the last movie (I won't say whether or not I think it improved or degraded just yet).

Also, since I put the II review here, the UCP dropped on the site the reviews were originally posted on... 

The review of Hyp's big movie should drop here at some point later today.

What's bugging you on Fandom, assuming that's the fan site your referring to?

Long story short, the Unified Community Platform.

I've always liked this exchange from the seventh movie:

Pterano: (after physically reprimanding Rinkus for knocking Petrie out of the sky) If there's one thing I will not tolerate, it's violence.

Rinkus: Then why are you hitting me?

Pterano: Right, make that two things. Violence and stupid questions. (hits Rinkus again)

I mentioned in the thread for the "useless sharptooth" that I've spent 70% of my time - probably more now that I think about it - in the TLBT fandom with my head buried in the sharptooth aspect in the series. Of that 70%, I would wager that up to 20% of that time has been spent mocking "the biggest and meanest sharptooth of them all".

Yeah, I'm not gonna beat around the bush, I think Red Claw stinks; for as much as they try to build him up - I've already mentioned Chomper's description of him but there's also the fact that the reason Chomper and Ruby are in the Great Valley in the first place is because their parents want them to be safe from him - he doesn't really do anything more than roar, try to look intimidating and miserably fail to catch a few little kids six times over (his last appearance isn't even him threatening anyone, it's just him out for a stroll in the vicinity of Hanging Rock). His minions don't fare a lot better; Screech and (usually) Thud are no more interesting than any of the other bland post-art shift sharpteeth are outside of 'Escape from the Mysterious Beyond', which gives spotlight to Thud and is actually sort of interesting.

1.) Because the TV series doesn't elaborate on the sharpteeth's personalities too much past that welcome glimpse at Thud, I'm going to veer into headcanon territory here: I don't think Screech shares his honor and I'm certain that, if they ever tried to pull anything like what happened in that episode and Red Claw found out, the tyrannosaur would have their heads in a heartbeat.

2.) I see their failures as a blend of both... mostly incompetence, though 



I actually have a little something for this (I say "little"); something I started in May that was/is still intended as the opener for a larger story about what happened to Red Claw after the events of 'The Hidden Canyon'. Unlike the other unfinished story I've shared here, I think this works on its own as a silly, short one-shot; have you ever wanted to read 833-word description of what was going through Red Claw's mind when Topps launched that one treesweet down his windpipe?

---

Red Claw could only handle so much.

"He-hey, that looks like fun! Toss me a piece," an unintelligible voice had grunted before this moment.

There were a slew of words that could have been used to describe the sensations that ran through Red Claw on that fateful day. Anger, frustration, humiliation, bewilderment...

None embodied what was surging through him quite as well as "disgust".

Treesweets, especially of this kind, were never meant to be be eaten by sharpteeth. They were tuned to entice leaf-eaters to eat them, digest them and pass along their seeds after all was said and done - these fruits in particular were loaded with sugars and acids and had a smooth, creamy texture that greatly appealed to herbivores, bolstered by an intensely powerful, pleasant aroma.

Sharpteeth were different beasts, with dramatically different tastes from their flat-toothed cousins and ways of taking in senses such as smell and taste. To the carnivores, the smell of the treesweets alone was enough to deter them from wherever they grew - what the leaf-eaters regarded as a delectable precursor to a heavenly meal registered as unbearably sweet to the carnivores, so strong that it could make even a young one's nostrils feel as if they were burning if they were present in great enough numbers. Just the Great Valley's luck that there so happened to be an entire grove of these aromatic fruits' trees growing in the adjacent Hidden Canyon, and just Red Claw, Screech and Thud's luck that the valley's resident seven children had stripped the canyon of the majority of its deterrents.

That "luck" had ultimately led to this point. A rain of treesweets upon Screech and Thud and, in Red Claw's case, a once-in-a-lifetime sample of one of the accursed things.

The taste of the treesweet was difficult for Red Claw to comprehend. In fact, it had taken a moment for his mind to register that the big threehorn had launched one down his gullet in the first place. For the ever-brief period of time that its taste was the only thing that struck him, he, having only ever consumed the flesh and body parts of other animals and having spent a good portion of his early life fighting for scraps of varying quality, could best liken the texture to that of an eyeball - unpleasantly soft with a vague gelatinous feel - and the taste itself to the stomach of a yellowbelly - too sweet for even the most hyperactive fastbiter chick.

If the taste were not repulsive enough, the following sensation of the treesweet's scent filling his mouth, overloading his nostrils and sabotaging his hyper-sensitive olfactory bulb would have been enough to send a smaller sharptooth into a coma. His split-second decision to swallow the thing only sealed his fate.

Tears streamed down the tyrannosaur's cheeks as his face began to pale and his lower jaw trembled. He could barely even curse inwardly at himself, his tiny brain too wracked by the agony wrought by the fruit. Before he had the chance to collapse by himself out of sheer shock, the longneck that accompanied the threehorn in his fight against he and his fastbiters - all but forgotten in his moment of weakness - lashed his thick tail at the sharptooth's ankle, sending him tumbling to the canyon floor with a resounding crash.

Lying on his side, Red Claw had a chance to recuperate slightly. His face was slathered in vivid, pink, pulpy juice from the treesweets, products of the barrage that had preceded the incident that had fried his brain and forced his fastbiter subordinates to retreat, but the feeling in his head was starting to fade, albeit barely. Though his vision was typically quite acute for a sharptooth with impaired binocular vision, at the moment, it was difficult for him to make out much more than vague shapes and tiny, floating "stars". A horrid, indescribable aftertaste lingered inside his his mouth. Tucking his scarred arm under his multi-ton bulk and not raising his head from the ground, he opened his eyes and made an effort to look out in front of himself.

Oh, treestars, what did I just...?

Even with his vision blurred, he could make out blobs of yellow soaring towards him from the direction of the longneck and the threehorn, and even in his dazed state, the sight was enough to make his heart drop into his stomach.

With all of the strength he could muster, Red Claw rolled himself onto his belly and pushed his huge body off of the ground with all four of his limbs, turning to face his attackers one last time.

This won't be the last you see of me! I swear it! he bellowed, before lumbering off in the opposite direction, his words falling upon all of the victors of the battle but one as a meaningless roar. Many yards ahead, Screech and Thud bolted towards the canyon leading back the Mysterious Beyond. He growled to himself and picked up his pace to keep up.

This is something that I think might garner a bit of interest here; this is a (regrettably unfinished - changes to the platform this was being written on prematurely killed it before it could be given a conclusion) roleplay/collaborative story that was being worked on on the Land Before Time Wiki between myself and fellow user nate56mate (though this is the first time I've shared a me/Nate roleplay here, I would like to mention that this isn't the first wiki roleplay that has made its way here; a few of Mr. Clubtail's fanfictions are mirrors of stories he spearheaded). I feel no need to go into further detail as I think the opening paragraphs describe it well enough; barring a few spelling tweaks and how some paragraphs are formatted, the below text is unchanged from how it was originally written (get ready for inconsistencies and questionable pacing, none of this was written with being shared with an audience in mind). Enough stalling, TLG:R:

---

It is the end of the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, just over 66 million years ago and long after the days of the Gang of Five. Though dinosaurs still continue to plod across the lands, ever-worsening conditions are very slowly beginning to take a toll on their survival. Not even the Great Valley has been spared; the area is now much drier, less floral, and, though still hospitable and free of carnivores, not nearly as friendly to its herbivorous inhabitants as it was in the days of Littlefoot and company.

In the once-Great Valley, there are five children playing: Louis the longneck (Apatosaurus), Harriet the threehorn (Triceratops), Ron the flier (Pteranodon), Liliana the swimmer (Saurolophus) and Kent III - call him Kent - the spikeback (Kentrosaurus - though Spike never bred, his adoptive family's lineage has a knack for taking in orphaned thyreophorans).

The Gang of Five 10.0 Are Playing Kick The Acorn

Lilliana runs along a patch of bracken ferns. She whips around and raises her arms in the air.

"Pass the crunchy to me!" she calls.

Kent Uses His Tail in an Attempt to Swing The Crunchy, But He Ends Up Breaking It

Bits of the acorn fall onto the ground. Kent looks at it sadly, and, like his ancestor, silently.

"It's okay, Kent, we can find another one," Louis says. They are very close to a grove of oak trees, after all.

Harriet Growls "The Closest Crunchies Belong to Aziz, He'll Never Give Them Up"

"Aye'm shor'ell lettuce awva feew," Ron drawls. Harriet looks at him funny.

"Aziz and His Wife Mrs. Bigcrest are Very Grumpy" Liliana Says "They'll Never Hand Them Over"

"What's the harm in trying?" Louis says, before stretching his legs and walking in the direction of Aziz's grove.


Once he reaches the grove, he is swiftly greeted by an Olorotitan, who gets in front of him and blocks his path.

"What Do You Think Your Doing?" Mrs. Bigcrest Asks

"Hi, Mrs. Bigcrest," Louis greets, smiling. "I'd like to ask if I could take a few tree crunchies. My friends and I are playing a game."

The rest of the Gang of Five, having followed their longneck friend, look on from some dry bushes with bated breath.

"Go Get Your Own" Mrs. Bigcrest Yells

Louis glances away and puffs his cheeks, eyes wide. He wasn't expecting that, against all reason.

"Okay," he says, slowly trotting back into the bushes. All of his friends breathe sighs of relief; crisis averted, hopefully.

"HEY" Harriet Shouts "GIVE US THOSE CRUNCHIES, OR I'LL KICK YOUR BUTT" Ron's heart drops into his stomach, passes through his intestines and falls onto the floor.

Mrs. Bigcrest looks over at the bushes; she sees a decidedly pissed-off pink threehorn calf glaring daggers at her, stumbling out off the green. She narrows her eyes threateningly.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY" Bigcrest Growls

"Give me the crunchies," Harriet reiterates, gesturing her tail at her own rear end. "...or I'll kick your butt!"

Mrs. Bigcrest rears up, pupils tiny and teeth gritted. "Insolent girl!" she roars, before charging the much smaller threehorn. Ron, Kent and Lilliana scatter.

Then Louis' Grandparents Put Themselves Between The Threehorn and The Hollowhorn

The bigcrest skids to a halt. She shakes her head to regain her composure.

"What's going on?" Louis' grandfather booms. Both offending parties start loudly talking over each other, giving their own heavily biased sides of the story.

"Talk Slowly" Grandma Longneck Tells

"We were coming to ask if we could get some tree crunchies for a game we were playing," Harriet explains. "but she won't let us have any."

"They're my husband's crunchies, you little--" Mrs. Bigcrest snarls, being stopped by a gentle, scolding smack from Louis's grandfather's tail.

"They Can Have 'Em" Aziz Says As He Walks Up

"We can?" Lilliana gasps.

"They can?" Mrs. Bigcrest does much the same.

Aziz walks over to a low-hanging branch and plucks a few acorns with his beak. He takes the nuts with his claws and wraps his arms around them before proceeding towards the kids.

"YOU CAN'T GIVE THEM TO THEM" Mrs. Bigcrest Shouts

To his mate's chagrin, Aziz pours the acorns on the ground in front of the kids.

"Go crazy," he says. He turns his attention to his fuming wife. "What?" He Asks

"They're our nuts! No one else's; why did you give the crunchies to them!?" she blares, as the kids and their grandparents walk back to where they were playing.

"Sharing is Caring" Aziz Tells His Wife

As the couple argue over Aziz's nuts, Louis and the others return to their neck of the woods. The sun is a substantially lower in the sky than it was earlier. Suddenly...

"Burp ba-durp-durp ba-durp burp-burp" Kent scats, robotically.

"Good Times, Good Friends" Sings The Gang "Take a look at what we've found

Good times, good friends"

Lilliana tosses the acorns into the air. They shower all around her and the rest of the gang before harmlessly falling onto the soft ground.

"All these crunchies all around!"

"Think They Look Good to Eat"

"Say it Lily"

Lily pops an acorn into her mouth, chews and swallows.

"Heck yeah, dawg!" she hollers.

"Look at Those Children, Their Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandparents Would Be Proud" Grandpa Longneck Says

"Whatever Happened to The Descendants of The Sharptooth and The Fast Runner" Grandma Asks

Grandpa furrows his brows, thinking.

"I'm not sure, dear," he says.

The kids are capping off their little song. "Good times, good friends

Glad we've had this time to spend

Good times, good friends

We hope today will never end!" they sing, before rolling onto the floor and laughing.

---

Meanwhile in The Mysterious Beyond, A Small Tyrannosaur and an Oviraptor are Roaming Around

The Oviraptor scratches at the sandy ground with one of her legs; she finds a tuber. She thrusts her head down and grabs it with her beak, eating it very quickly.

"Did you find anything?" the tyrannosaur asks.

"Nothing you would have eaten."

"Opal, I Want to Live Up to My Many Times Great Uncle's Legacy of Being a Fierce Monster" Stinger Says

"Those are some pretty big footmarks to fill," Opal remarks.

Stinger Growls at His Partner in Crime

A Trio of Flyers Located on a Near-By Tree are Looking On, Their Leader is Butch, a Harpactognathus Who Likes to Draw pictures in The Ground With Sticks

One of the flyers, a Scaphognathus named Twigg, perches next to his Eudimorphodon compadre, Koehler.

"Oy, whadd'a you wanna do today?" he asks, bored. They've just eaten, and today's been a slow one.

"Well Guv'na, We Could Eat Flies" Koehler Says

"Maybe w'could try 'at," Twigg grunts. He and Koehler launch off of the branch and start flying around and chasing flies as their crested leader tends to his own affairs.

Butch Rubs His Chin "I Can Make My Drawings Come True, If i Try" He Thinks to Himself

Butch flits down from the tree, takes a stick and scribbles in the dirt; he draws a bigbiter chick, circled by two Sordes with gemstones floating above their heads. He Then Draws a Picture of a Ghostly Longneck Kid Flying Around Trees While Chasing a Ghostly Deinonychus, followed by a few ticklyfuzzies posing dramatically, ready for action.

Unfortunately, the wind starts to pick up, and his drawings slowly fade. Butch sighs.

Butch Then Looks Up and Notices Stinger and Opal

"Ohh!" he frets, before he launches up and flies off to reconvene with Koehler and Twigg; he'd rather not end up in the jaws of a T. rex, no matter how young it is. As he flies off, a few tiny streaks of light race across the sky, illuminating the reds, purples and oranges of the dusk sky.

"Hey Flyers" Calls Stinger "Do You Want to Join my Crusade"

Butch's two companions start to circle. None of the flyers are willing to land with Stinger and Opal right there.

"Wot crusade?" the Scaphognathus inquires.

"To Kill The Leafeaters and Take Back What is Rightfully The Sharpteeth's" Stinger Preaches

Koehler and Twigg are immediately swayed. They swoop down and stand beside Stinger.

"Yeah, mate!" they say in unison. Butch starts to fly lower; he isn't sold just yet, but he's getting there.

"Listen Mr. Bigbiter, Let's Strike a Deal, I Get a Cave, Where i Can Draw in The Ground Without The Drawings Fading Away and I Will Help You" Butch Says
"Deal."

Butch comes down from the air and lands; he shakes forelimbs with the young tyrannosaur.

---

Back at The Great Valley, Doctor Moonhorn and His Assistant, Mr. Spikecrown, are Collecting Treestars

A not-particularly-happy threehorn; Harriet's father, Papa Cusp; storms into view.

"What are you doing with me and my family's treestars?" he barks.

"Collecting Them for Scientific Purposes" Moonhorn Explains

The threehorn sulks.

"Don't take many, and don't dawdle," he growls.

After Cusp Walks Away, Mr Spikecrown Growls "That Threehorn is Awful, I Hate Him"

"Just respect his orders, friend," Dr. Moonhorn says.

Both of the dinosaurs take a few treestars and take them to a shady spot on the side of a hill to analyze them. Mr. Spikecrown raises one up and eyes it intensely.

"Moonhorn, This Treestar is 10 Days Old, Way Past The Usual Lifepsan of a Treestar" Spikecrown Says

"Hmm..." Moonhorn looks over the rest of the treestars he and Spikecrown have collected.

"All of the others in the batch appear to be of typical treestar age, though this one" Moonhorn replies, drawing attention to a specific one; "is substantially drier than the others."

"Hi, Dr. Moonhorn, Hi Mr. Spikecrown" Calls Louis

"Why, hello Louis," Dr. Moonhorn greets. He briefly shoots a glance at Mr. Spikecrown, who doesn't particularly like Louis; don't say anything!

Louis trots over and drops an acorn at the Einiosaurus's forefeet. "We were playing, and we had a few crunchies left over, I thought I'd give this to you."

"Seems to Be At Least 20 Days Old" Moonhorn Enquires

Moonhorn sniffs the acorn; it smells fine, even though it's pretty old. He picks it up with his beak and puts it on a rock slab with the treestars for further investigation.

The Kids Decide to Pay a Visit to Old Man Erik, The Wisest Man in The Valley


Erik is perched atop a smooth, shiny rock, on a hill at the very edge of the Great Valley. Louis and the others look at him; he's in the middle of one of his stargazing sessions again.

The Erlikosaurus can tell that, though the night is clear and the small streaks of light are beautiful, something isn't quite right - especially worrisome is that it isn't near time for the Flying Rocks of Many Nights.

"Man-Old Erik? You there?" Ron asks, slowly flitting towards him.

"It's Time" Erik Says

"For what?" Harriet grunts. "A few flying stars?"

"It's Time for Dinner" Erik Says as He Serves The Kids Treestars with Sap

The faces of all of the kids light up; they start cheering and jumping up and down.

Not long after, everyone has settled down on a flat section of cliff, eating their supper. Louis is telling Erik what happened earlier today.

"...so we went to Aziz's crunchy grove for a few more, but Mrs. Bigcrest wouldn't let us have any..." he said, before taking another bite out of his treestar.

"And Then Harriet Yelled at Mrs Bigcrest" Louis Adds

"I didn't yell," Harriet says defensively. "I just asked her if we could have some and she got all huffy for no reason." She promptly "hmph"s; like ancestor like descendant.

"No, you yelled-ed very loud, you did," Lily recalls.

"And Then My Grandparents Intervened and Told Off Mrs. Bigcrest" Louis Says. He takes another bite out of his treestar. "...and then Aziz came out and said that we could have some crunchies," he continues, mouth full. "I don't think Mrs. Bigcrest was very happy about that."

"And Then We Went to Dr Moonhorn and Mr. Spikecrown" Harriet Says

"Yeah, we did," Ron affirms. "They be look at tree stars and say Louis' crunchety was real old. Then we come to you."

"Alright" Erik Said "Anyways, Have I Ever Told You About Your Many Times Great Grandparents"

"A long time ago, I think," Louis replies. "What about them?"

"Gahh," Kent vocalizes.

"Well, The First Thing They Did Together, Was Fight Against The Sinister Sharptooth" Erik Tells

"Yeah, I think my dad told me about that," Harriet says, sitting up. "They used teamwork to get to the Great Valley and fight off the sharptooth, right?"

Erik Then Tells The Kids Of The Rest of The OG Gang of Five's Adventures

"...and after that, they stayed together," he concludes; he has just finished describing the Gang of Five's last escapade, which climaxed with a rogue Chomper infiltrating the Great Valley - alongside his mate, Ruby, and several individuals of many other breeds of sharptooth - and being sent back to the Mysterious Beyond by Littlefoot, his mate Ali and all of their friends. "Generation after generation, each passing on to the next... the tales of the Five's great adventures, long ago."

A couple hours have passed; the sky is a deep, dark blue. The only lights are the Night Circle and a surplus of stars. The flying rock showers have ceased, for the time being.

---

Stinger, Opal, Butch and His British Henchmen are Sleeping At a Dead Tree

Twigg is awoken by Koehler accidentally rolling over onto his foot; the Scaphognathus jolts up and winces, barely surpressing a call that would wake up the whole group. Thankfully, everyone else is asleep... the problem is that, now, he isn't.

Twigg leans against the tree and sighs. He looks up at the night sky, scowling. Bugger, he thinks.

Suddenly, he notices something in the vast sea of blue, black and purple. His eyes widen and his jaw goes agape. "Koehler Wake Up" Twigg Motions His Buddie to Wake Up

"Wot's th' mattah?" Koehler quietly groans, raising up and rubbing his eyes.

The Two Pterosaurs Proceed to Witness The Most Terrifying Thing They've Ever Seen

A truly humungous, flaming rock - it must be the size of great big mountain - whizzes a mile or two overhead, making an indescribable sound; it is out of sight as soon as it first appeared, disappearing over the horizon. It leaves a trail of thick, gray smoke in its wake.

The flyers exchange utterly flabbergasted and terrified looks with each other as the rest of the posse wake up, having been disturbed by the noise.

"What was That?" Butch Wonders

"T' world's biggest threehorn jus' tossed a smoking mountain," Twigg explains, trying to articulate what just happened to his best ability.

"It's Could've Been a Flying Rock" Opal Says

"Whatever it is, it turned on the bright circle," Stinger points out; he and the others look over the mountains. A light, slowly intensifying in brightness, is starting to peer over the horizon.

---

Back in The Great Valley, The Kids are Drinking from The Waterhole, when a brash call greets their collective ears.

"Harriet! Kids!"

The fact they're up awfully late has caught up to them. The Kids Start to Head Back Home

Louis eventually makes it back to his grandparents and his little nest. Per usual, the elder longnecks are not angry with him, though they aren't happy either.

"It's quite late, little one," Grandpa gently scolds. "You should be asleep."

"Me and My Friends Were Out Drinking from The Waterhole" Louis Explains

Grandpa nods his head.

"I see;" he says. "Where did you and your friends go off to after you had finished your crunchy game?"

"We visited Dr. Moonhorn and Mr. Spikecrown; they were looking at food to see how old it was," the boy explains. "After that, Old Man Erik told us a long story."

"About Your Ancestors?" Grandpa Asks. Louis nods.

"Littlefoot, yeah."

"He Was a Great Man Littlefoot, Helped Defeat The Sharpteeth and Make Sure Leaf Eaters Could Live On" Grandpa Said

Louis nods his head sleepily and yawns. He smiles, before curling up in his little nest.

"Good night, Grandma; good night, Grandpa," he says, before lowering his head.

...before raising it back up when he notices that, apparently, the bright circle is coming up while the night circle is still high in the sky; it isn't even midnight yet.

"What The Hell is That?" Louis Yells

"Louis, language!" Grandma Longneck scolds, before she looks up over the mountain range surrounding the Great Valley herself; there's a bright glow starting to peer over the horizon. She squints her eyes, confused...

Suddenly, pterosaurs overhead are blasted out of the sky by a powerful burst of air, and the mountain walls in the direction of the light start to collapse. The stars in the sky slowly fade.

"What's Going On?" Screams Aziz

Mrs. Bigcrest stumbles out from the cover of the trees around her and her mate's territory.

"Why should I know?" she honks. A very strong gust of wind suddenly knocks Aziz off his feet and nearly does the same to the Olorotitan.

"AZIZ NOOOOOOOO" She Screams

Aziz immediately rolls over and gets back on his feet. "I'm fine," he assures. However, screams of panicked valleydwellers start to fill the air; whatever is going on, they don't like it one bit, and the ever-brightening glow over the hills isn't helping matters.

Of similar alarm is the fact that it's starting to heat up.

Dr. Moonhorn and Mr. Spikecrown Look On

"Well, There Goes The Neighborhood" Spikecrown Groans

Louis, already on his feet, runs over to Dr. Moonhorn and Mr. Spikecrown's neck of the valley as fast as he can. By the time he is at their hill, he is panting.

"What's happening to the valley!?" he yelps.

"I Dunno" Says Moonhorn

Louis looks at Moonhorn funny; of all of the times for him to not know something...

Suddenly, at the far end of the valley, opposite to where Louis, his friends, his family and the two "scientists" live, something starts to rise over the mountain walls; a dark, cloudy wave starts to spill over the ridges and into the valley. The "bright circle"'s brightness has plateaued. Some of the dinosaurs at that end look at the wave exasperatedly, not knowing the Hell they're about to be in for.

"Great, now what!?" a threehorn snaps.

"I Think The Great Eclipse is Happening Again" Says a Longneck

"Alright, we know the drill, just stick our heads towards the bright circle and..." another longneck says, before it realizes...

"Wait, I haven't had any sleep stories--"

No one at that edge of the valley knew that wind could feel so much like fire before now. The shrapnel and debris don't help.

"MY BUTT, IT'S BURNING" Yells a Hypsilophodon as He Dives Into a Lake

The fastrunner doesn't stay underwater for long before it needs to resurface for air.

"AGHHHHHHH! MY FAAAAAAACCCCEEEEEE--" it shrieks, before succumbing.

The screams from all of the dinosaurs being burned spread throughout the valley; a cacophony of "run!"s reach the opposite end, where Louis and the others are, in very little time.

"What's Going On" Yells Cusp

"THE END IS NEAR" Erik Yells. Given everything that's happening, for once, Cusp is inclined to believe the crazy old man.

"Is there anywhere we can hide?" a Parasaurolophus asks, cradling her two calves in her arms.

"We Must Flee to The Mysterious Beyond" Erik Says

Lily and Kent's mother gasps, shocked. "The Mysterious Beyond! But out there, th-there are sharpteeth, and smoking mountains, and--"

Suddenly, the trees in nearby groves start spontaneously combusting.

"But Even Those Pale in Comparison To The Apocalypse Around Us" Harriet Says

The adults all look at each other, and nod their heads. It's time to leave.

"Come, everyone!" Louis's grandfather calls, getting everyone in the vicinity's attention. The enroaching wall of destruction is a little less than halfway across the Great Valley, and tiny streaks of fire slowly fall down from the dark red and black sky.

The Valley's Remaining Population Leaves The Borders and Heads Into The Beyond


"Is There Any Specific Place We Should Go?" Ron's Mother Asks

"We'll think about where we should go once all of this subsides," Cusp says as low rumbling sound - accompanied by the sound of something the dinosaurs can't quite describe - starts to become audible.

"Now where we hide!?" Ron squeaks.

"I Heard There's a Large Cave Home Near The Top of a Mountain, Populated by a Wise Man" Erik Says

"And where is that?" Cusp asks, before Erik points to a mountain a decent distance away. They're probably not going to make it there before the doom wall spills over the valley walls. Louis looks at the mountains around the valley, which they're right next to; though it isn't quite a cave, there is a hemisphere-shaped depression in the border that everyone could potentially squeeze into.

The Valleydwellers Sneak Into The Depression

While In The Cave, They See a Sharptooth Skeleton Laying on The Ground

"What happened to it?" one of the valleydwellers' kids says, hiding behind one of their parents' legs.

"I Think It Died of Starvation" Spikecrown Says

As they look at the skeleton, the wave clears the valley wall and goes off into the Mysterious Beyond. The cries of all sorts of creatures echo are muffled by the sound of the destructive force itself. After glancing outside for a bit, they turn their attention back to the skeleton.

"Whatever happened to it, we'd have met it in person if we stayed outside any longer," Harriet thinks out loud.

"There's About 50 of Us and Only One of Him" Cusp Says

"No, as in he's dead, and we'd have been dead too," Harriet explains.

After what feels like an eternity, the conditions start to die down outside, though it's still on the hot side. The former valley residents step out into a dark, dusky, ash-dusted world.

"If Only Aziz Was Still Alive" Mrs Bigcrest Cries

"I'M STILL ALIVE WOMAN!" Aziz Shouts, He was In The Cave Along With The Others, But Since He Is One of The Smaller Adults There, She Didn't Notice Him

"Sometimes, I can still hear his voice."

"Well... this is better than facing the inferno, I suppose," Spikecrown grumbles, leaving deep footmarks in the ash as he surveys the area.

Spikecrown Looks Up and Notices a Large Giganotosaurus (Imagine a 2D Animated Version of The One from JWE), Spikecrown Runs Back To The Cave

"I guess somethings will never change," one of the former valley residents says, looking outside at the sharptooth. The predator looks at them spitefully.

Come Out Here So I Can Eat You The Sharptooth Says in His Language

"Sometimes I Wish We Could Understand Their Language" Louis Says

I haven't eaten anything in days, I need to eat you! the sharptooth begs. The leaf-eaters stay in their hole.

While this happens, they neglect to notice that dark clouds are creeping in from the direction the "bright circle" was coming from; this is especially hard to notice given that the sun hasn't risen yet.

"I Think I Can Speak a Little Bit of Their Language" Erik Says

I'm Sorry, We Can't Let You Eat Us Erik Says in Sharptooth

The giganotosaur flares his lip. That figures, he mutters.

The Giganotosaurus Leaves, However He Notices The Sky Turning Dark

Good, we could use some sky water after all of that, the sharptooth mutters to himself, naively.

The Sharptooth Smells Something Burning

Before he can make some quip about especially needing sky water now that he smells something burning, he turns his head to see that his tail is on fire!

Cue the rest of the Giganotosaurus spontaneously combusting while the valleydwellers look on from their hollow, bewildered and horrified.

"So much for heading to that mountain," Cusp grumbles.


-


Meanwhile, Stinger and Butch's posse are taking shelter in the shade of a rocky overhang. Shrubs exposed to the sky act as natural lamps.

"I'm Hungry" Opal Says

"I hate to say it, but I'm hungry too," Stinger says. Butch, Koehler and Twigg slowly step away from the two.

Opal looks outside and notices a high and dry snapping shell, displaced from the (now-boiling) water after the asteroid hit. It's cooking in the heat.

Opal Sticks Her Arm Out

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH" She Screams in Pain

Opal jerks her arm back into the shade and starts blowing on it. No serious damage has been dealt, thankfully, but she's not going to get any food just by shoving her arm in the oven like that.

"We Could a Use a Stick to Grab It" Butch Says

Stinger shrugs. Why not?

Opal takes a stick with a bunch of little branchy things on it and sticks it outside, to try and drag the shell inside.

Then The Stick Catches on Fire

"Drag it in! DRAG IT IN!" Stinger cries, as Opal desperately tries to get the shell into the shade before the whole stick burns up.

With enough effort, Opal manages to drag the shell into the shade. After discarding the now-flaming stick, she opens up the smoked shell to find that the inside is hot and a little brown, but not burnt like she feared. The oviraptor takes a whiff of the shellfish; to her surprise, it actually smells quite pleasant.

The Three Pterosaurs Then Eat All of It

"Hey!" Opal squawks, as she grabs the mollusk from Koehler and tries to lick out what little they could possibly have missed.

"This'll have to stop sooner or later," Stinger says, looking out from under the rock and at the toasting world outside.

---

Well, it stopped, but not in the way that I had in my head when writing that last line; that was the last full scene that was done in the roleplay, the last few posts after that were the herbivores complaining in their little hollow.

I could continue this in the future to make this something more than an ending-less oneshot, but the chances for that are slim.