The Good Dinosaur didn’t really live up to it’s name. But the project was highly anticipated leading up to its premiere, buoyed by its prestigious studio, Pixar, and by its 20-year distance from Hollywood’s last dino craze. There was a stretch, peaking in the mid-’90s, when “just add mega-lizards” was the go-to move for desperate entertainment marketers. That era created a curious layer in the pop-cultural fossil record, a stratum littered with mediocre ideas that got produced simply because they featured a stegosaurus or two.
Watch the video above for some highlights, or read on to get the full story.
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993)
In an Inventory of , We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story was called out for an unsettling scene in which the villain Professor Screweyes is consumed by a pack of crows. It’s frightening, but it’s also the only memorable moment in We’re Back!, which is a loose hodgepodge of goofy ideas that begins at a low point: A T. rex eats space cereal that makes him super-smart and gives him the voice of John Goodman. The story only grows less grounded from there, with a musical number in the middle of a parade, extended prop comedy from a clown voiced by Martin Short, and a strange Great Gazoo-style sprite buzzing around the scene. This is also the film that reportedly soured John Malkovich on Hollywood entirely—he was set to voice Screweyes and left over creative difference with the animators, and since then he’s bashed the project unreservedly on the rare occasions he deigns to talk about it at all. [Les Chappell]
