Contradicting Popular Opinion
Intro
Short this week?
An easy target?
Why not?
The problem with Littlefoot
I don’t particularly care for The Land Before Time, but it seems to evoke a certain nostalgia in generation Y. That being said, there are a lot of troubles with the Land Before Time series. Namely, the fact that its plethora of sequels has now outpaced parody. Seriously, check out this list:
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure
The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving
The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists
The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island
The Land Before Time VI: The Secret of Saurus Rock
The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire
The Land Before Time VIII: The Big Freeze
The Land Before Time IX: Journey to Big Water
The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration
The Land Before Time XI: Invasion of the Tinysauruses
The Land Before Time XII: The Great Day of the Flyers
The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends (in production)
And a TV series, and a couple of “Sing-along” tapes, and half a dozen video games.
The public perceives a lack of dignity when a cash cow is so thoroughly milked. It makes Disney look downright restrained.
And I say again, those are all real movies. I didn’t make any of those up. I will, however, make up the following Land Before Time sequels and crossovers-
The Land Before Time: Jurassic Boogaloo
The Land Before Time: Die, Sharptooth, Die!
The Land Before Time: Land Before Timer
The Land Before Time with a Vengeance
In the Land of Women Before Time
The Land Before Time: The Quickening
The Land Before Time 15: Petri Goes to Hell
The Land of the Dead Before Time
The Land Before Time Bandits
The Land Before Time: We’re in Outer Space, Why the Fuck Not?
Littlefoot Cooks! – The Land Before Thyme
Tideland Before Time
The Land Before Time: The Great Longneck Erection
The Land Before the Time Traveler’s Wife
The Land Before Time 65: The Land Concurrent with Time
Beyond this absurdity, though, The Land Before Time is BAD SCIENCE! Sure, I understand that Dinosaurs probably couldn’t sing and dance, and that it is a cartoon, and yada yada yada. But the dinosaur selection was done haphazardly with regards to the fossil record.
Littlefoot is an Apatosaurus and Spike is a Stegosaurus. These species lived in the late Jurassic Period over 140 million yeas ago.
Sharptooth is a T-rex, Cera is Triceratops, and Ducky is a Saurolophus. These creatures lived in the late Cretaceous period. The first of which to show up was Saurolophus, which debuted around 70 million years ago.
It may seem like nitpicking here, but 70 million years of difference is quite significant. At that point you might as well throw in some cavemen.
Hell, The Land Before Time even features some Dimetrodons. Dimetrodons went extinct 265 million years ago. Basically, the animators had a 200 million year window from which they picked their animals.
Bad science! Bad Movie!
