The Land Before Time > 1988 Theatrical Release

So what attracted you to this movie originally?

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FreckledOne:
I am fairly certain that I saw the original movie first when I was very young, and then the sequels as they were released.
The thing that attracted me the most was the high quality of animation. Yes, even when I was a toddler I was a little animation critic.  :rolleyes While there are a few parts that could have been done better, the overall quality was even better than Disney's to me. I also loved the backgrounds and the settings. I've read on other sites that the movie used too much of the color brown, but when I watch it I see greens, yellows, purples, etc. and it just looks beautiful.  :)

Another thing that drew me in was that there was a quest. I've noticed that I tend to like works that have big epic quests, and a bunch of baby dinosaurs having to find a faraway valley sounded kinda epic to me! I mean, they weren't even sure it existed and they went on anyway!

Believe it or not I really liked the first three sequels as a kid, but mostly when the gang left the Great Valley, again because of the questing aspect.  ;)

Dino-Mario:
The dinosaurs,definitely the dinosaurs.I was born in 1996 and the first dino movie i watched was Jurassic Park.I LOVED it.Then,my parents bought me the original LBT and watched it.IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL!!!full of heartwarming moments and a great story.All its characters were lovely!!!If it weren't for JP and LBT,i wouldn't be the great dino fan i am nowadays.

Cancerian Tiger:
I saw the second film first, and I happened to be learning about dinosaurs in school around the time I first saw the film.  Thus my love of dinosaurs began :DD.

I was also drawn to the Gang immediately.  These guys are unlike any other group of characters I've ever known, and they're all down to earth and fun.  I especially took a liking to Cera, and Ducky is just too adorable ;).

Ducky123:
My first movies were the original and LBT 8, which are still one of my favourites, but I don't know which was the first one I saw. I must have been around 4 or 5 yrs old :D
I like the story in general. The idea is great and it makes happy everytime when I watch LBT
The songs and the background music is pretty awesome and the animation is very good.
Well, I think everything's already said :D

jansenov:
I saw the Land Before Time by accident. I just wanted to watch something dinner. And there it was.


What immediately told me this was not just any old cartoon was the music. And then came the beautiful prehistoric world. I've always had an interest in the distant, long gone and imaginary, an escapist streak, if you will, and I've been familiar with dinosaurs since long I can remember (first dinosaur toys, then Dink, then a booklet about dinosaurs that I "devoured" in one day, and then Dinosaur, which had been my favourite movie until LBT), so the opening scenes (the part until Ducky's family scene) immediately struck a cord.


After that I was melted by the cute dinosaur babies hatching, though I can't recall most of the details from that first watching, like Ducky's first adventure, or the cracked eggs of Littlefoot's siblings. The next scene I can recall from my first viewing is Littlefoot's mother giving him the last treestar from the woods (oddly, I don't remember the break from last scene of Littlefoot the hatchling to the scene where a more grown Littlefoot chews a twig in the company of his mother; every time I watch the movie now, I find this break highly annoying).


Then this world started to become a lot bleaker. The bleakest landscape I've ever seen in an animated movie, but still with this otherwordly beauty. Cera was somewhat of an unpleasant surprise, as I didn't expect her to be so rude. But the true shocker was Topsy's harsh reaction. Although now, after intensive contact with GOF members, I understand this was a part of the movie's anti-racist narrative, back then I understood it as threehorns being warped by the cruelty of the world they lived in, as something the natural world does to you. That it was racism never occured to me, probably because racism has never been a part of my life experience, and only in high school I learned about it (there are very few non-whites in Croatia; in some parts of Croatia you can live your whole life without ever seeing a person of different color).


And then the otherwordly desert morphed into something very dark, with Sharptooth's appearance and the earthquake. Littlefoot's mother's death came as a huge shock, but it wouldn't fully sink in until after the end of the movie.


After this I was fully immersed into the movie, like I was right there with the characters. I forgot a lot of stuff here, but those I can remember I remember very vividly. From Littlefoot's suffering (his mother reminding him to how to reach the Great Valley; the shadow scene was heart-breaking), to Ducky's almost magical ability to cheer you up (the whole berry sequence, something I very vividly remember, but by all evidence shouldn't exist; I decided to leave the issue unsettled and not lose any more nerves over it). I paid particular attention to Littlefoot's treestar, as a thing that binds to his mother, and was greatly angered when the Sharptooth stepped on it. At that moment, in my very emotional state, the Sharptooth was evil incarnate, and this left such a powerful impact on me that to this day I haven't fully accepted Chomper as a member of the Gang.


Petrie was so-so. I didn't give too much thought to him back then. I even forgot his heroic contribution to sharptooth's demise! (nowadays Petrie's apparent death and Ducky's "Poor, poor Petrie!" is the saddest part of the movie for me).

I didn't have a high opinion of Cera back then. She seemed cruel and rude, and while I remember the huge disappointment of the Gang when they saw that they only encountered more desert instead of the Great Valley, I forgot the scene where Cera regrets what she had done.


After the Gang separated came another memorable moment. I remember Littlefoot wandering alone, apparently succumbing himself to doubt, and then his mother helps him again showing the way through the rocks. Littlefoot exits the cave and realises he found the Great Valley, which was still covered in darkness at this point but a river and the green landscape could clearly be recognised. Then Littlefoot's hears Ducky's and Petrie's cries for help, and hesitates. This was the most suspenseful moment of the movie for me, the making or breaking of Littlefoot's character.  But then he turns (I remember him running back through the cave and down the same landscape where he we saw his mother doing a miracle in the form of a cloud). Then he saves the rest of his friends, they kill the Sharptooth (his drowning was an immense relief), and leads them through the cave. At that moment the sun rises and they now finally see the Great Valley in its full glory. This particular memory is also an issue I decided to leave as unsettled.

Then there were the family reunions, paradise scenery of the Great Valley, and the movie ending after the Gang's group hug. I haven't heard Diana Ross' score until rather recently, a few weeks before I joined the forum.

During the movie I was crying, and after it ended I was crying even harder, to the point where my mother asked me what's wrong with me. I guess I was particulary emotional back then. I remembered Littlefoot's mother's death again, and one more thing that made me sadder still: the movie had ended. At that moment I wanted it to go on and on forever, now that the bad days were over and a neverending age of bliss had started for the Gang.

The Land Before Time was such a whirlpool of emotion that no other movie has ever given me something similar.

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