The Land Before Time 30th Anniversary Retrospective Part 3 · 12:49pm Nov 5th, 2018

With the second movie not reaching the standards of the first, with my suggestions being a White Fang like story commandeered by Spielberg’s Amblimation Studios. We now reach over to the third movie in the franchise

Or perhaps the Fourth. Production work never lies.

As with the second movie, we begin in the cosmic reaches of space before going through evolution in brief. It’s in this film we get introduced to a few new types of dinosaurs, especially with dromaeosaurs.

We see the children playing kickball with some rocks before stumbling across a trio of older dinosaurs Hyp, a Hypsilophodon voiced by Whit Hertford (you’d probably know him best as that boy who called raptors six foot turkeys in Jurassic Park), Mutt, a Muttaburrasaurus voiced by Jeff Bennett, and Nod, a Nodosaurus voiced by Scott Menville (Robin of both Teen Titans shows). For some undisclosed time now, the three have messed with the kids a little. But this banter is cut short when rocks start falling from the sky. But no one dies and turns in for the evening.

But they might be. The next day, the dinosaurs find that the Thundering Falls has stopped flowing. Faced with the decision, the adults decide to ration what’s left, with each species getting a turn on different times of the day. But the stress does cause them to be irrational, especially Cera’s Father, voiced by John Ingle as from the previous movie, keeping Cera away from the group.

The effects of this drought have taken its toll. The valley is becoming drier, the vegetation becoming inedible, even with the rationing, water is getting harder to find. After her father argues with an acoustic rock song, Cera gathers up the gang to try to find more water. The trio of bullies catch up with them and threaten not to tell them about their discovery. They give chase anyhow but are chased away by a hornet.

But the chase does bring over a startling discovery. The meteors that fell a while ago caused rockslides that block the river to the falls. They try to make it back when a fire breaks out. Cera’s Dad stupidly takes his daughter with him in the direction the fire would spread. While Littlefoot would lead the others to safety (he’s been reminded of the safety routes earlier in the film), Grandpa rescues the two Triceratops.

Even when telling the adults of the clogged pipe in the Mysterious Beyond, they still bicker and argue. The three bullies decide to go into Sharptooth Territory and come across a small pool of water. It turned out to be a tar pit (in the more accurate sense than in the first film). The grownups find the children after saving Hyp. Seeing the child’s father berate him just as he did to his daughter, the old Threehorn comes to his senses and reminds everyone about the bigger picture.

Remember how I mentioned Hyp’s voice actor was in Jurassic Park? Well, the six-foot turkeys have come to call. Without a sacrifice to the Water Gods, the dam is broken and the water is brought back to the valley. But the fire has done its damage, and so the Dinosaurs resort to sharing what’s left, ending with the title of the movie.

So how does this movie fair after the previous one? Well, it’s somewhat better than the second movie. It’s nice that the conflict occurs in the Great Valley, the one place supposed to be peaceful and plentiful. The bushfire scene is certainly one of the best scenes in the franchise. But there are still problems with the film. One is the bullies being there for the sake of having an antagonist. And two, just how mean-spirited Cera’s father is throughout the drought. And lastly would be how the adults still bicker when they are told about the cause of the problem; they’re a big herd, I wouldn’t think even the hungriest of T. rexes would think about attacking the entire Valley’s populace.

If I were to change the story as I’ve done with the previous film, there are quite a few I could go around. With the added time of cutting the songs again (though I’d save “Kids Like Us” for the end credits), I would expand on the trio of bullies; what we got today explains who they are, what they are, and where they live. I want to expand on when the Gang of Five met the trio and why they consider them bullies.

Two is that when the drought comes, don’t let it just let Cera’s father be the only one who’s rugose. There would still be the rules, but for how long when it becomes each herd for itself like in the first film? This does happen to us and to animals when there’s very little of a precious resource involved. It would make the conflict stronger that when the fire breaks out and burns most of the valley, everyone loses.