We finally come to the first CGI film in the Disney Canon! Ok, it may not be FULLY CGI (many of the backgrounds are real), but hey, as long as there are no live humans in it, I consider it a CGI film!
And this film is none other than the weakly titled, “Dinosaur”!
Released in 2000, “Dinosaur” is about….well, dinosaurs! Yeah, that’s a subject that hasn’t ever been dealt with before in animation!
Disney’s 39th animated feature is about an Iguanodon named Aladar who ends up living with a troop of lemurs after the egg that he’s originally in goes on a perilous journey to the land of the lemurs. The lemurs take to Aladar and raise him as one of their own.
Everything goes fine until disaster strikes!
The destruction of their home causes Aladar and the lemurs to migrate and find another area to live. On the way, they bump into another migratory herd heading for the nesting grounds and decide to join them. This herd is led by the antagonist (although, not necessarily villain) Kron, voiced by Samuel E. Wright of Sebastian fame!
Kron is a believer and follower of social Darwinism and this causes conflicts between him and Aladar throughout the whole migration. And if that wasn’t conflict enough, there are two hungry, massive Carnotaurs following closely behind the herd looking for some dino chow!
Our forgotten/minor character appears when Kron and the herd reaches a lake to drink just to find that the lake has dried up. Kron then sends his second-in-command, Bruton, along with a scout to scour the perimeter for other sources of water.
“Must you always use that reference, Kron?”
(Aladar ends up discovering that by pressing down in the lake, the groundwater rises up and the water shortage problem is solved. However, this news doesn’t reach Bruton nor his fellow scout seeing as they had already departed when Aladar’s discovery was made and seeing as this was the dinosaur age and texting/tweeting hadn’t been invented yet.)
So, Bruton and his scout are still looking around for water when suddenly they are attacked by Carnotaurs. Bruton is injured, but the scout is eaten!
And…that’s why I decided to choose him as the forgotten/minor character of this film! He’s in the movie briefly, only has 2 lines of dialouge, is unnamed, and dies a painful death! Had Bruton just gone alone, he might have been eaten, and hence wouldn’t be able to get the news to the other dinosaurs that there were Carnotaurs nearby! Had this happened, the Carnotaurs may have caught up with the rest of the migrating herd and indeed have had a feast! So in a way, the scout was important because his life was sacrificed, hence warning the others to move out of danger’s way quickly!
Let’s hear it for the Iguanadon scout!
The Animation Commendation 
This whole film is forgotten
I can somewhat agree with that. It’s definitely one of the most forgettable ones. Every time I watch it, I forget pretty much everything that happened in it.
Yeah, I watched it last month and I can’t remember much about it really. XD
I’m with Kenzie. If I saw this, I blocked the memory. Nothing rings a bell.
And surprisingly, there are some people who LOVE this movie! I don’t get them!
I think all the characters are forgotten. It is just a blob to me.
Yeah, this is one of the most forgettable movies in the Disney Canon, maybe tied with “Bolt”, in my opinion.
My biggest complaint about this movie is that, in regards to which species of dinosaurs are depicted, it’s all over the map, both geologically and geographically. Granted, the dinos in the film are predominantly species from the Cretaceous period (with the exception of Baylene), but they all come from different stages of the Cretaceous (Iguanodon, for example, living earlier in time than most of the other species in the film) and different continents (Carnotaurus from South America; Parasaurolophus, Styracosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Stygimoloch, Pachyrhinosaurus, and Struthiomimus from North America; Talarurus, Microceratus, Velociraptor, and Oviraptor from Asia; Giraffatitan from Africa; Iguanodon from Europe).
Call me a stickler for scientific accuracy…
Seems like paleontology and dinosaurs are your specialty!
Well, truth be told, I’m a great deal more knowledgeable about modern animals, especially elephants, big cats, canids, hoofed mammals, and the primates. But I *am* greatly fascinated with the dinosaurs.
Disney’s DINOSAUR (2000) – Animated Movie/Live Action
Aladar, Plio, Yar, Zini, Suri, Kron, Neera, Bruton, Baylene, Eema. “Voice Actors”
Carnotaurs & The Herd; Iguanodon, Styracosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Microceratops.
Thanks!