Sixty-five million years ago, a giant asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. The impact’s debris, most scientists agree, choked off the sun’s energy—throwing a proverbial wrench into the planet’s food chain and killing off gigantic dinosaurs that roamed its lands. But what if that asteroid missed our planet completely? It’s a thoroughly intriguing idea… and it’s the notion behind The Good Dinosaur, Disney•Pixar’s newest animated film.
With The Good Dinosaur, Pixar Animation Studios introduces us to an Apatosaurus named Arlo (voice of Raymond Ochoa), whose life is forever altered after a tragic accident. Young Arlo learns the power of confronting his fears—and what he is truly capable of—while searching for his family through harsh, mysterious landscapes, making an unlikely human friend (voice of Jack Bright) along the way. Joining the improbably duo is a host of gentle—and not-so-gentle—giants, voiced by the likes of Anna Paquin (True Blood), Sam Elliott (The Big Lebowski), Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge) and Jeffrey Wright (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1). D23 sat down to chat with The Good Dinosaur’s director, Peter Sohn, about bringing Arlo’s big adventures to the big screen.
The Good Dinosaur has always been about taking the classic “boy and his dog” story and flipping it on his ear. As Peter explains, “When I got a chance to pick up the movie and move forward with it, it [became] about trying to honor Bob [Peterson]’s original pitch… where the ‘boy’ is the dinosaur and the ‘dog’ is this little kid.” That small human, “Spot,” grows to understand Arlo—and winds up accompanying him through what’s become another of the film’s characters: nature itself. “The ‘survival’ aspect of the movie really was always there, since the beginning of this process,” Peter says. “So, how do you make a dinosaur feel like a boy? We really wanted it [to feel like] an 11-year-old boy stuck in the wilderness. That aspect of a ‘kid’ learning how to survive out there with the help of his ‘dog’ has become the movie.”
Fate, it seems, brought longtime Pixar animator Peter (directing his first feature-length project after helming the 2009 short Partly Cloudy) to The Good Dinosaur, a film (and a story) that mirrors his own life in ways both large and small. There’s the art of animation, a universal language that drew Peter and his family closer together. “We grew up in a grocery store in New York City,” Peter explains, “and if there was some money left over at the end of the week, our mom would take my brother and me to the movies. She loved American movies, but she grew up in Korea—so she would ask us questions in Korean, and I would sit there trying to translate as best as I could. I remember seeing Disney movies with her and not having to translate anything, it was so visually clear. Those movies affected me a great deal when I was a kid. There was something so universal to all of it that was so inspiring.”
Then there’s Arlo and his family (both blood and chosen)—sharing a bond not unlike the one between Peter and his fellow Pixar artists who worked on the film. “Growing up, I only found a couple other friends that could share my love for animation,” Peter says. “When I got to California, I found people who were the same, who believed it doesn’t matter what background you’re from or what language you speak. I’ve now been at Pixar for 15 years. This is going to sound like a cliché, but the people here—how they’ve put forward their talents [during the production of this film]—is very emotional for me. It’s been one of my favorite things about this whole process.”
Ultimately, Peter hopes Arlo and Spot’s story speaks to young and old alike. “We’ve been trying to make a world that is huge in scope, both beautiful and dangerous at the same time,” Peter points out. “Trying to find that duality in this film is something of a great challenge, [and] it’s something that we’re very proud of. For Arlo, he lived a life of fear—and finding a way to get through that is something that I hope my own son and daughter can one day appreciate. It’s about really understanding that there are ways to get through, and that love can be the answer.”