The Land Before Time (1988): A Deeper Meaning

I grew up with The Land Before Time movies, mostly some sequels on VHS that we owned or borrowed from the library. It has been years since I have watched them and my memories are foggy on what they actually were like. But when I watched Jenny Nicholson’s video where she recounted watching all 14 of the Land Before Time Movies, and I realized I might have seen more of them than I thought. After that, I felt compelled to watch the entire Land Before time series also.

If you would like to watch Jenny Nicholson’s Video: I'm on lockdown so I watched all 14 Land Before Times

I don’t have the VHS tapes anymore so I started this experience by searching for where to watch them. At one point the original Land Before Time was on Netflix, probably 2016 or so because I remember watching it sometime in high school, so I started my search there. It was a quick disappointment. Then, I looked on Hulu, which gave me false hope, they have it listed as being a STARS add on. I was kinda grumpy that Hulu listed things it doesn’t have available, but it did save me an extended hunt for where to find these children's movies. So, needless to say, I have STARS and I watched the Land Before Time.

The Basic Plot:

If you haven’t heard of The Land Before Time or it has been a while, let me explain. It is an animated movie from the late 1980’s brought to us by Universal Studios and the famous movie men: Don Bluth, Steven Spielburg, and George Lucas. It follows several young dinosaurs, who are separated from their families, as they all leave their current home and travel to the Great Valley to be reunited. They encounter a number of obstacles and learn to work together along the way. The Land Before Time is as simple as that.

As a kid, this simple message of working together was what I took away from the movie. However, once you get past the quick concept and watch the movie, as an adult, I took away more. Like realizing that Sarah the triceratops’ dad is clearly meant to be racist and the fact that all the dinosaurs stick with just their own kind. The adult dinosaurs do not interact, work, or travel together outside of their own species, even though they are all headed to the same Great Valley from seemingly the same homeland. It is only when the young dinosaur protagonists form a friendship and work together are they able to not only survive the harsh world, but thrive and achieve their common goals. This is a great message for kids and a great reminder for anyone watching.

Digging Deeper:

But a deeper message I took from this re-watch was not just that working together is good, but also that people, children in this case, can learn from their friends and not only understand their differences but also accept those differences, and help better their community. While this might be me looking for a message where one wasn’t really intended, I think it is an idea that could easily be taken away by any adult or parent watching it. Each of the dinosaurs have different skills and each a different perspective that they share with each other when faced with a situation. But the dinosaurs also aren’t perfect; Little Foot laughs at Sarah and hurts her feelings, and Sarah goes the wrong direction in one part, to give a couple examples. There also is a sense of real weight and consequence to their actions, if they don’t work together  it could honestly mean never making it to the Great Valley or even death through starvation or being killed by another dinosaur. So while they might have been forced to work together by circumstance, they and in turn the audience, truly gain a great understanding of each other and why it is important to work together and support one another. This is not just the case for making it to the great valley, but once they are there they remain close friends. The young dinosaurs even seem to influence the adults for the better, especially seen in the later films, the adults get along and work together for the greater good of the Great Valley. 

This idea of respecting differences and moving forward together is a timeless message. Throughout history and today, there have always been groups or people whose differences have made them a target of hate and disrespect. If we all take the perspective of the adult dinosaurs, we will never be able to learn or grow and be able to understand each other, we instead will remain the same with the status quo. But if we take the perspective of the young dinosaurs, willing to interact and understand even if there are struggles and miss understandings along the way, then people will be better able to come together and be able to cultivate knowledge and respect for each other’s differences. This respect and understanding as a whole is then able to change the society we live in for the better.

While I haven’t really given much in the way of evidence to prove my point, I don’t think I need to. This idea is something that arose from watching and thinking about a kids movie from my childhood. It is also unlikely that this fully fleshed out message I’ve thought up was the original intent of the creators but I think it suits it well. And if you have seen the movie, I think that you will be able to see the links. That being said, I didn't research the topic or lessons presented in the Land Before Time that other people have discussed. I simply wrote this based on my own knowledge and experiences watching this film. This article was fun enough to write without diving head first into a full deep analysis and I feel that if you have read this post then hopefully you are introduced to the idea enough to act not as an adult dinosaur, but a young one looking for deeper understanding.

Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think!

Bluth, D., Goldman, G., & Pomeroy, J. (Producers), & Bluth, D. (Director). (1988). The Land Before Time [Motion Picture]. United States: Universal.