The Gang of Five
The Land Before Time => 1988 Theatrical Release => Topic started by: Bruton the Iguanodon on December 22, 2011, 01:21:21 AM
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*'''Continuity:''' Littlefoot's treestar is much smaller when he retrieves it after his mother's death, than it was when she gave it to him.
Is this really true? Does this mean it was a different treestar Littlefoot comes upon later on?
Also, was it necessary for it to be crushed? Littlefoot could have grabbed it before the Sharptooth came. Here from the wiki"
He tried to hold on to the treestar as long as he could, and got angry at Petrie when he started to play around with it. However, when the Sharptooth snuck up on the gang one morning, Littlefoot did not have time to grab it before running. The treestar was then crushed under the Sharptooth's foot.
If you watch the scene you'll see he has plenty of time to actually grab it; he simply should have looked at the Sharptooth in panic after it had put its foot in the footprint
Someone even made a religious comparision to the treestar:
The tree-star represents a material possession, which keeps Littlefoot and his followers bound to their mortal coil. They are incapable of transcending the earthly realm while they are dependent on material possessions for comfort. Symbolically, it is destroyed at the halfway point of their journey.
I don't see how this was symbolic at all. Destroying the treestar did practically zero to move the film along---Littlefoot didn't even seem bothered that it was gone. It's kind of touching when he first gets it, but he ends up being kind of mean to Petrie when he starts to tear it (Petrie didn't know it was a gift from his mom, for godsake---and by the way how the hell did Ducky?)
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It was likely a different treestar. The first treestar was as wide as he was I believe, and then it disappeared after the whole sharptooth+earthquake incident. It would be strange if that one treestar was the same one his mom gave him. But if it is the same, only thing I can think of is he got a growth spurt.
True, Littlefoot could have grabbed the treestar, but he was frozen in fear. He waited too long to react because of that fear, and by the time he could get himself to do anything, it was too late.
As for Littlefoot being mean to Petrie, you have to understand that it reminded him of his mother. Yes Petrie didn't know, but you can't blame Littlefoot for being upset. Petrie wasn't angry at Littlefoot; he felt guilty about it, and even tried to protect it afterwards. Also, Littlefoot didn't know Petrie that well, so he likely didn't know how to properly respond to him as he probably didn't encounter someone like Petrie before.
Littlefoot hadn't had much social experience outside of his family until recently, especially with youngsters around his age. That scene is from a very early part of his childhood were he was starting to learn about friendship and how to behave around others. So if you believe Littlefoot was unfair to yell at Petrie like that, you could just say that he didn't know any better at the time.
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As for Littlefoot being mean to Petrie, you have to understand that it reminded him of his mother.
While he may have thought he was defending his mom, snapping at your friend isn't exactly what I'd consider doing that (With Cera later on it was different---she outright said "Then she was a stupid longneck too" but Petrie didn't even know. How did Ducky know by the way? In the short time she and Littlefoot were together before they met Petrie he obviously didn't tell her about his mother)
True, Littlefoot could have grabbed the treestar, but he was frozen in fear. He waited too long to react because of that fear, and by the time he could get himself to do anything, it was too late.
So really, what the wiki says is wrong. Anyways I hope Littlefoot remembers this if something like this happens again---what if a sharptooth had stepped on the nightflowers to be used to heal his Grandpa, and crushed them to bits, just because he had been forzen in fear? See how wise a decision that was on his part in movie 1? The treestar getting crushed had no point whatsoever (if you're going to make a protest I just wanna say, please leave religion out of the movie)
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I'm not sure if Petrie and Littlefoot were even friends at the time. They barely met and haven't been together that long. Probably at most a few hours. That's hardly enough time to consider a stranger a friend all of a sudden.
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If you watch the scene you'll see he has plenty of time to actually grab it; he simply should have looked at the Sharptooth in panic after it had put its foot in the footprint
I think that is one of the altered scenes in the cut movie. In the Illustrated Story book Littlefoot tries to lure Sharptooth away from his friends with mounted Petrie and the treestar. And Petrie drops the star because Sharptooth almost catches both.
In my opinion that was also the order of events in the uncut movie because in the scene of the cut version at first you can see how Littlefoot runs without Petrie on his head and afterwards suddenly Petrie is on his head.
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I think that is one of the altered scenes in the cut movie. In the Illustrated Story book Littlefoot tries to lure Sharptooth away from his friends with mounted Petrie and the treestar. And Petrie drops the star because Sharptooth almost catches both.
This is a perfect example of what I've pointed out about how there are tons of scenes in the book that aren't in the movie. Will someone pleeeeease list them all? I'm very curious.