The Land Before Time was one of my favorite films when I was a kid. I mean, it had dinosaurs. How could you go wrong with dinosaurs? Sure, it had one of the most traumatic scenes in children’s cinema of the time, but head animator Don Bluth believed that children could handle these kind of scenes as long as there was a happy ending. Unfortunately, the studio and co-producers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas didn’t share this view, resulting in about 10 minutes being cut and making The Land Before Time the shortest animated feature of Bluth’s career.
Most of the scenes cut seem to involve the Tyrannosaurus Sharptooth. The fight between him and Littlefoot’s mother was toned down significantly to make it less violent and allow the movie to receive a “G” rating. Other scenes involving Sharptooth were trimmed or changed to make less frightening to the younger audience. This was on the advice of Spielberg and Lucas, the former telling a very reluctant Bluth, “It’s too scary. We’ll have crying kids in the lobby, and a lot of angry parents. You don’t want that.” While it could be argued they had a point, remember this is coming from the people who had Federal Agents carrying walkie-talkies as side arms and having Greedo shoot first.
About the latter third of the film received some editing as well, though these edits are badly done and defy explanation of why they were even needed. Instead of immediately going to rescue his friends after they choose to follow Cera like he does in the final cut, Littlefoot keeps going on his own and discovers the Great Valley just when he’s about to give up. Despite having finally reached his destination, he goes back and rescues his friends so they can complete the journey together. I honestly feel this would have been a better conclusion to the film as it would have been great character development. Not to mention it leaves in an awkward bit of narration in (“Cera was still too proud to admit that she’d gone the wrong way“) and leaves the rock used to defeat Sharptooth in a scene after the final encounter.
Fans of The Land Before Time have been wishing for an uncut version of the film to surface. Rumor has it that this version may have aired on Finnish TV, though nothing has surfaced to back up this claim. The other hope is that maybe Universal or Don Bluth have the full cut locked away somewhere, though its more likely that this was lost to the cutting room floor. All that currently remains of original The Land Before Time are trailer scenes, unused music and stills, and some recently released storyboards for fans to gather what could have been.
Related Links
Lost Media Wiki’s Page
Discussion on deleted scenes from The Gang of Five Forum
Mark Pudleiner’s Blog – Source of the released storyboards
