Dinosaur - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Dinosaur or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Dinosaur

[beth]

During production of the computer graphic effects, Baylene was referred to by the animators as "The Wall of Meat".

[leo]

The movie originated from Phil Tippett's short film Prehistoric Beast (1985), featuring realistic stop-motion dinosaurs. He suggested the idea of adapting it into a feature film to Director Paul Verhoeven. The proposed movie would have similarly been mostly animated via stop-motion and would have been a dark, gritty, and violent silent movie, very much unlike what the eventual movie became. The story would have involved a Styracosaurus fighting against a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and at least one mammal (called "Suri", same as in the finished movie) would have appeared as well, live-acted by a human in a suit. It would have had a dark and sad ending due to the asteroid impact, and none of the dinosaurs were to be anthropomorphized (i.e. no talking). Under Disney, the production of the movie took a drastically different route: the stop-motion was replaced with advanced CGI, the animals talked, the dinosaur species were changed, and it was a much more family-friendly and lighthearted movie. This movie's opening scene, which features no talking and involves a Carnotaurus brutally killing a Pachyrhinosaurus, was the only surviving remnant of the movie's originally intended tone.

[linda]

Aladar's story is similar to the title character of Tarzan (1999)'s story. Both have adopted families (Aladar by lemurs; Tarzan by gorillas), and both lose their biological mother's when they were babies because of a predator (Carnotaurs in Aladar's case; Sabor in Tarzan's case). However, both end up killing their enemies during their adulthood, where they meet their love interest (Aladar: Neera; Tarzan: Jane Porter). They also have male figures in the family who initially don't want them (Yar with Aladar; Kerchak with Tarzan, although Yar is less resentful and comes around quickly).

[kenzi]

The second Disney animated feature film to have dinosaurs after Fantasia (1940).

[frederick]

The Pteranodon catches Aladar's egg by snatching it out of the water, and afterwards it takes it to its young. While thought to be accurate at the time of release, it is now known that this animal caught its food by swimming instead of grabbing it during flight, and also that its offspring most likely didn't require much parental care and were able to fly very early on.

[gabriel]

Bruton's facial designs were partly based on Clint Eastwood.

[ivan]

One creature that was designed but cut from the final film was a Mosasaurus, a large, sea-dwelling reptile that would have been used in a scene where the Herd goes to a river to drink and encounters the Mosasaurus. In some video game versions of this movie, however, the Mosasaurus makes an appearance.

[veronica]

The film's score was composed by James Newton Howard with vocals by Lebo M, who did vocals for The Lion King. In September 1999, it was reported that pop singer/songwriter Kate Bush had written and recorded a song for the film to be used in the scene in which Aladar and his family mourn the destruction of their island. Reportedly, preview audiences did not respond well to the song. The producers recommended that Bush rewrite it, but she refused. Ultimately, due to complications, the track was not included on the soundtrack. In Asia, pop singer Jacky Cheung's song "Something Only Love Can Do", with versions sung in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, was adopted as the theme song for the film. The soundtrack album was released on May 5, 2000, by Walt Disney Records. Newton Howard would later compose the scores for the Disney animated features Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet. One track, "The Egg Travels", was heard in many trailers following the release of Dinosaur including Lilo and Stitch, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Wild Thornberrys Movie.

[bessie]

The original planned opening shot, showing the meteor moving through space, was cut when an identical opening shot was used in Armageddon (1998).

[bryan]

The second computer animated movie rated PG by the MPAA. The first being Antz (1998).

[darrell]

The initial idea for the film originated in 1986 during the filming of Robocop (1987) in which Phil Tippett recommended to director Paul Verhoeven that they should produce a "dinosaur picture". Verhoeven responded positively to the idea and suggested an approach inspired by Shane (1953) in which "you follow a lead character through a number of situations and moving from a devastated landscape into a promised land." Veteran screenwriter Walon Green was then brought in to write the script. Verhoeven then drew two storyboards and calculated the project's preliminary budget to be $45 million. When the idea was pitched to then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, he suggested that the project should be budgeted at $25 million.

[sylvia]

The fourth Walt Disney Animation Studios movie to not feature any humans, after Bambi (1942), Robin Hood (1973), and The Lion King (1994).

[wesley]

The beginning and end of the movie mirror each other in the arrangement of the nest, the view from inside the broken eggshell, and Yar's Urine Trouble problems with baby iguanodons.

[lena]

A meteor that size would have not only vaporized everything within twenty miles, but caused waves 100 feethigh, set the entire world on fire, and would have started a winter that would have lasted a decade - not to mention flash-fried everything from that distance with two hundred to seven hundred mile-per-hour winds at seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

[aaron]

In order to separate this from the similar movie The Land Before Time (1988), this movie was intended not to have any dialogue at all, but Michael Eisner, head of Disney, insisted they include it.

[wallace]

The third Disney animated feature film to have a PG rating in the UK after The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Mulan (1998).

[kim]

The shots between the Carnotaurus' legs is a nod to the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park (1993) where the Velociraptors tries to attack the children in the kitchen.