Land Before Time Retrospective #10
Released: 2003
Just watched The Great Longneck Migration for the first time recently. After being somewhat let down by Journey to Big Water (#9), this one was thankfully pretty good. In fact, it’s probably tied with Journey Through the Mists (#4) as my favourite sequel. 🙂
I haven’t seen #11-14 yet and will report in once I have seen them. However…
Quote from bestariana1girl: I suppose the downfall of the movies was either a lack of coming up with good ideas, or a writer’s slump situation.
That’s my feeling as well. At this point in the series, there’s already been some interesting ideas explored. You have the gang leaving the Great Valley because of a food shortage and discovering a strange island, a western-themed film, aliens and a mysterious asteroid, a winter-themed film, etc. Eventually, I think many writers/creators would simply start to run out of good ideas and/or would get burnt out, especially if they were making new films almost every year. While I can’t speak for #11 myself just yet, I have to say that the title alone makes me wary. Invasion of the… Tinysauruses? That sort of smells like a franchise running out of ideas.
It might also have been that #10 was a tough act to follow, as it featured an emotional and touching story where Littlefoot reunites with his long-lost father, his concerned friends journey after him, but ultimately Littlefoot doesn’t go to live with his father because he already has a family now. It kind of feels like it could’ve been the finale of the whole series. After that point, it’s like, where do you go from there?
As an unrelated side note, I noticed that this is the first film that didn’t use any of James Horner’s music. Which I was mildly disappointed by, as I always love hearing his musical cues, although I guess it makes sense that eventually they’d stop reusing the music from the original film.
