This vs. The Land Before Time & Disney's Dinosaur

A lot of people (including myself) have been comparing Walking With Dinosaurs 3D negatively to The Land Before Time and Disney's Dinosaur. The main point of criticism is the use of dialogue in this film. But many of us don't seem to mind the dialogue in The Land Before Time or even Disney's Dinosaur. An interesting fact is that these two movies were also originally conceived as basically silent films, but then the studios decided against it to make them more suitable for children. Both films were to a certain extend criticized for that decision.

- Siskel and Ebert on The Land Before Time:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDu_lZNRei8

- Nostalgia Critic on Dinosaur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80-6xXqrpzI

The Land Before Time is obviously the superior movie. While it would've been interesting to see it as a children's film with no dialogue, this film does a great job in creating a universe in which it seems logical for dinosaurs to talk. The dinosaurs look cartoonish, they have antropomorphic facial features and they have real family or friendly bonds. You can also tell by the design of the landscapes that it's a fantasy story.

WWD 3D doesn't work because it has one foot in reality and one in fantasy. For starters, it's still called WWD. The original show was a semi-fictional natural history documentary, so it's misleading to use the same name. The moment they decided to turn it into a children's film they should've changed the title. It was also produced like the original series. We see actual landscapes and the design of the dinosaurs is photorealistic. The pop music and cartoonish dialogue clash horribly with the images. It's as if you would replace the audio track from The Dark Knight with audio from the 60's Batman. The fact that the animals don't move their mouths when they talk makes it even more disjointed.

Apart from being just weird, the dialogue doesn't seem to add anything to the story. If you turn down the volume, you will still understand 95% of what's ging on in the film. WWD 3D also makes the same mistake as Disney's Dinosaur with trying to make the story more modern through an occasional pop culture reference. Nostalgia Critic has a great point when he says that the dialogue in The Land Before Time is more timeless. When you want to create an immersive environment for your characters to live in, modern dialogue only serves as a distraction.

One scene in particular that seemed really weird is when Patchi is banished from the herd by his brother. His brother then sort of steals his girlfriend from him. This wouldn't be all that shocking in a real animal herd, animals fight over mates all the time. But when you establish an antropomorphic monogomous relationship, it's completely out of place that Patchi's girlfriend would consent with such a turn of events. I don't even think this scene is suitable for children that way.

I think this movie would've worked great with an animation style like How To Train Your Dragon. They should've worked on their own universe to accompany the kind of story they wanted to tell. Personally I would still have preferred an actual WWD movie. I hope we could one day have our dinosaur movie with no dialogue. The movie that sparked my interest in dinosaurs as three-year old was after all Fantasia. I think adults underestimate the natural appeal dinosaurs have to children.