49 Fun Facts About The Good Dinosaur

In The Good Dinosaur, Arlo is which long-necked species, lumped together with Brontosaurus for over a century?

Apatosaurus is Arlo's kind. Pixar's notes size him at 18 feet tall and about 6 tons, huge by our standards yet small for the film: they put Poppa at 46 feet and the T-Rexes at up to 50.

In The Good Dinosaur, what does Poppa show Arlo in a field at night to coax him past his fears?

Fireflies, which rise glowing out of the dark grass. Later Arlo chases them again with Spot, a bittersweet echo of those nights with the father he has lost.

Peter Sohn, who directed The Good Dinosaur, later drew on his immigrant parents' lives for which Pixar love story?

Elemental grew out of Sohn's New York childhood as the son of Korean immigrants. He had been handed The Good Dinosaur in 2014, after its original director was taken off the stalled film.

In The Good Dinosaur, what does Arlo do when the critter trap he is guarding catches a wild boy?

Sets him free: told to finish off the thief, Arlo cannot bring himself to do it. A furious Poppa marches him out to hunt the boy down, the trip that changes everything.

What alternate-history twist sets up The Good Dinosaur's world?

The extinction asteroid misses Earth in the opening scene, so the dinosaurs never die out. Millions of years on, the plant-eaters have turned farmer and the meat-eaters rancher.

What crop does Arlo's family grow on their farm in The Good Dinosaur?

Corn fills the family silo, which each child may stamp with a mud print only after doing something big. Arlo is the last one still waiting to earn his.

The Good Dinosaur flips which classic story type, with the dinosaur as the human?

A boy and his dog, with the roles swapped: the dinosaur talks and farms while the human sniffs, growls and tracks. When the troubled film was rebuilt, the story was stripped back to that pairing.

How does Arlo's father die in The Good Dinosaur?

A flash flood roars down the ravine, and Poppa gets Arlo clear before it carries him off. Arlo blames the wild boy for it, and chases him when he comes back to raid the silo.

What sends Arlo and Spot into a wild hallucination partway through The Good Dinosaur?

Fermented fruit does it: the famished pair wolf it down, hallucinate as if drunk, and wake the next morning with sore heads.

How does the wordless Spot tell Arlo that his parents are dead in The Good Dinosaur?

Burying stick figures in sand is how he says it. Arlo plants twigs to stand for his own family, and the boy copies him, then lays two of his flat and covers them over.

In The Good Dinosaur, which veteran of screen Westerns voices Butch, the scarred Tyrannosaurus rancher?

Sam Elliott plays Butch, who uses Arlo and Spot as bait to draw out the rustlers. In the fight that follows it is Arlo who ends up saving him.

Which X-Men film star voices Ramsey, the rancher Butch's daughter, in The Good Dinosaur?

Anna Paquin, Rogue in the X-Men films, plays Ramsey. She and her brother Nash come to the rescue and drive off the pterodactyls chasing Arlo and Spot.

Which Oscar-winning Coen brothers regular voices Momma Ida, Arlo's mother, in The Good Dinosaur?

Frances McDormand, of Fargo, was the only parent Pixar kept when the film was rebuilt, producer Denise Ream said. Almost everyone else was recast, and the story was left with far fewer characters.

Which actor from Daniel Craig's James Bond films voices Poppa, Arlo's father, in The Good Dinosaur?

Jeffrey Wright, Bond's CIA ally Felix Leiter, plays Poppa. Though Poppa dies early, he returns late in the film as a vision, after which Arlo goes back for Spot.

What kind of dinosaur is The Good Dinosaur's Pet Collector, whose critters perch along his spiked frill?

Styracosaurus, whose name means spiked lizard, wore long spikes around its neck frill. Pixar's Pet Collector recruits forest critters to protect him, and director Peter Sohn supplies his voice.

In The Good Dinosaur, what do Thunderclap's pterodactyls really do with the storm survivors they claim to rescue?

Eat them: Thunderclap gulps down a critter moments after Arlo helps free it. Steve Zahn voices the leader, whose flock lets storms do the dirty work and then picks over the wreckage.

In The Good Dinosaur, Thunderclap and the rest of his pterodactyl flock are all named after what?

Weather: Thunderclap flies with Downpour, Coldfront, Frostbite and Windgust. The names suit a flock that worships storms and lives by the mantra "The storm provides".

Unlike Jurassic Park's scaly raptors, the rustlers of The Good Dinosaur sport what?

Feathers, worn in mullet-like tufts that give the raptors a country look. Butch calls them rustlers, and though each is puny beside a T-Rex, as a pack they are a real threat.

Which Cheers star kept his run of voicing a character in every Pixar feature alive as Earl in The Good Dinosaur?

John Ratzenberger, Cliff in Cheers, voiced Earl, one of the raptor rustlers. His run from Hamm in Toy Story ended after 22 films, when Soul in 2020 used his likeness but not his voice.

What are Butch's family herding in The Good Dinosaur?

Longhorns, which Butch, Ramsey and Nash drive across the plains. The herd has gone missing when Arlo meets them, and it is Spot's nose that tracks it down.

Which co-director of Up dreamed up The Good Dinosaur, only to be taken off the film in 2013?

Bob Peterson just got stuck, producer Denise Ream said. Peter Sohn, his co-director, took over a third act that he recalled had three storylines to pay off.

Which Disney film took The Good Dinosaur's original November 2013 release slot?

Frozen went wide on November 27, 2013, the date first held for Pixar's dinosaurs. When Disney announced that title in 2011, one film site briefly took it for the dinosaur movie's own name.

The Good Dinosaur's final November 2015 release date had first been reserved for which Pixar sequel?

Finding Dory gave up November 25, 2015, and moved to the summer of 2016. Pixar president Ed Catmull shrugged: nobody remembers that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film.

Weeks after delaying The Good Dinosaur in 2013, what did Pixar do at its Emeryville headquarters?

Laid off staff: with no film now due in 2014, Pixar let dozens of its 1,200 people go. The delay made 2014 the studio's first year without a feature since 2005.

Which Shrek voice actor recorded the whole role of Arlo's father in The Good Dinosaur before Pixar recast it?

John Lithgow, Shrek's Lord Farquaad, said in 2014 that he had recorded the entire role before Pixar dismantled the film and completely reimagined it. He expected to record it again, but the final cast left him out.

The Good Dinosaur's makers called which part of its landscape the Yellow Brick Road that leads Arlo home?

The river washes Arlo away in the first act and then guides him home. Production designer Harley Jessup called it the film's visual spine, choppy when Arlo and Spot fight and glassy once they are friends.

What did Pixar's team treat as the main antagonist of The Good Dinosaur in place of a traditional villain?

Nature is the enemy here, with no bully like Toy Story's Sid or Finding Nemo's Darla to outwit. One reviewer called Mother Nature as much an enemy as any of the film's bad dinosaurs.

Which US region did Pixar's team explore to research the landscapes of The Good Dinosaur?

The American Northwest: the crew went riding and rafting through Wyoming, whose Teton range shaped the scenery. They also studied Montana grasslands and the Red Desert, and folded all of it into Arlo's journey.

Pixar built The Good Dinosaur's landscapes from terrain height data published by which US agency?

The Geological Survey posts height data for the whole country, and Pixar downloaded Wyoming and combined it with satellite images. Director Peter Sohn could then shoot in any direction he liked, as if scouting a real location.

Pixar usually paints its skies onto the set, so what did The Good Dinosaur use in every shot instead?

Three-dimensional clouds could be lit like anything else in a shot, which painted skies never allowed. Producer Denise Ream said the effects house ILM called the plan crazy, so Pixar built a whole library of clouds.

Which animals did Pixar's animators film at a zoo to work out how Arlo walks in The Good Dinosaur?

Elephants carry their weight efficiently instead of slamming their feet down, the animators found. They drew over the zoo footage and set a rule: when Arlo's hips go up, his head goes up and his chest goes down.

On a Wyoming rafting trip to research The Good Dinosaur, what did Pixar's crew lose in the rapids?

A camera: the crew's GoPro went overboard, and a mountain-man guide fished it out downstream simply by reading the water. The team kept the footage it had shot on its solo trip.

When The Good Dinosaur's Tyrannosaurus ranchers run, their lower bodies are animated to move like what?

A galloping horse carries each of them, in effect: the legs move like a horse's hindquarters while the top half sits like a rider. An animator said the director wanted the family to be cowboys on horseback.

The Good Dinosaur's composer Mychael Danna came to Pixar with an Oscar for scoring which survival tale?

Life of Pi won Mychael Danna his Oscar. He wrote the score with his brother Jeff, who said they set folky string instruments inside the orchestra to turn the expected a little sideways.

Compared with most Pixar films, The Good Dinosaur is notably short on what?

Dialogue is scarce, so the scenery and the score do much of the talking. Composer Jeff Danna summed up the soundtrack as a lot of wind and water, and producer Denise Ream gave her animators extra time because of it.

In The Good Dinosaur, how does the wild boy come to be called Spot?

Arlo wins a naming contest against the Pet Collector, who wants the boy for himself. The collector tries names like Killer and Violet and gets no reaction, then Arlo yells Spot and the boy comes running.

What did The Good Dinosaur's crew build from card and foam core, then go outside to photograph?

A full-scale Arlo, all 18 feet of him, was built so the crew could grasp their hero's true size. Production designer Harley Jessup said the team dug deep into what is known about the real animal to get him right.

Which European capital hosted The Good Dinosaur's premiere in November 2015, two weeks before the film reached American cinemas?

Paris saw it first because the Grand Rex cinema makes one family film its Christmas event each year, with a fountain show before every screening. In 2015 it picked this one and ran it ahead of the national release.

The Good Dinosaur made 2015 the first year with two Pixar features, arriving five months after which film?

Inside Out opened in June 2015 and The Good Dinosaur followed at Thanksgiving. Pixar normally released one film a year, but the dinosaurs' slip left 2014 with none and landed them on a date first held for a sequel.

At the box office, The Good Dinosaur became the first Pixar film to do what?

Lose money: with production and marketing put at $350 million, a worldwide gross of about $332 million left Disney in the red. One trade paper headlined it Pixar's first box-office disaster.

Which franchise's final film kept The Good Dinosaur off the top spot over its Thanksgiving opening weekend in 2015?

The Hunger Games signed off with Mockingjay Part 2, which ruled the holiday in its second week. Pixar's brand-new film took about $55 million over the five days and still finished behind the holdover.

Around the campfire in The Good Dinosaur, Butch says the scar on his face came from a fight with what?

Crocodiles: three jumped him at a pond after five days without water, and one bit his face. He keeps a tooth from the fight lodged in his gums, and tells Arlo that anyone who isn't scared of that isn't alive.

What did critics praise most about The Good Dinosaur, even in reviews that called its story derivative?

Its visuals: The Hollywood Reporter called the film visually breathtaking but let down by a derivative script. The Guardian's Mark Kermode said why: the film bears the scars of its troubled production.

Sanjay's Super Team, the Pixar short that played before The Good Dinosaur, reimagines which figures as superheroes?

Hindu gods turn superhero in the daydream of a boy bored by his father's daily prayers. Director Sanjay Patel based the seven-minute short on his own childhood, torn between TV cartoons and his family's traditions.

Peter Sohn, who directed The Good Dinosaur, made his directing debut with which Pixar short from 2009, the year of Up?

Partly Cloudy played in cinemas ahead of Up, and Sohn wrote it too. A stork is stuck delivering the far-from-cuddly babies, among them a porcupine and a baby shark, that one lonely grey cloud creates.

Which character in Up was modelled on the looks of Peter Sohn, later the director of The Good Dinosaur?

Russell took his look from Sohn, then working in Up's story department. Director Pete Docter said the first concept borrowed Sohn's effusive personality too, until casting calm young Jordan Nagai changed the character.

Where on the family silo does Arlo finally make his mark at the end of The Good Dinosaur?

Between his parents' marks is where Arlo presses his muddy print once he is home. Poppa had told him a mark must be earned, and crossing the wilderness to get back to the farm did it.

At the end of The Good Dinosaur, whom does Arlo reluctantly urge Spot to go and live with?

A family of humans turns up within sight of the farm, and they and Spot take to each other at once. Arlo had meant to keep the boy, but nudges him their way before a tearful goodbye.

In The Good Dinosaur, the Pet Collector says his critter Dreamcrusher protects him from what?

Unrealistic goals are Dreamcrusher's department, the Pet Collector explains in deadpan. His other guardians include Fury, against creatures that crawl in the night, and Destructor, who handles mosquitoes.