MarzGurl Discusses The Land Before Time VII

(Clips from the movie are shown)

MarzGurl (vo): So we finally reached the seventh, the dead center, of this long-running series of direct-to-video sequels, and with this story, it's as if Universal was saying,"Yep, we've made seven of these now, and we're not going anywhere anytime soon". For starters, just look at this animation, notice anything different? Oh yeah, it surprisingly looks a metric ton better than the last five sequels of the series. What's that all about, huh? Anyway, I kind of miss those old narrated introductions; that was one of the last things tying the sequels to the first movie, but the last movie destroyed that similarity. Now, we have Petrie giving us some strange narration, and of course, he isn't a great speaker to begin with, so it just plain sounds dumb.

Petrie (vo): Long, long time ago, when little blinky lights in big darkness even more shiny.

MarzGurl (vo): Petrie spouts some nonsense about how awesome the flyers were, including his Uncle Pterano, but nobody's buying his story, not exactly hard to believe, right? Anyway, a large group of migrating dinosaurs stumble into the Great Valley from a colder climate and places outside. Yep, again, the Great Valley is wide open to, like, everybody. While everybody's sleeping that night, a meteor falls from the sky, or rather, it just kind of goes in a straight line through the sky. Yeah, cause meteors do that. It's also all blue and shiny and makes funny sounds, and of course, Littlefoot is the only one in the entire Great Valley who sees it. After all, he wouldn't be the main character of the series, otherwise. He tells everybody the next morning, but nobody believes him. Nobody but a suspicious pair of rainbow faces, that is. These guys didn't even belong to any of the herds in the Great Valley or from the migrators. In fact, they seem to know quite a lot about what's going on. They offer up the idea that this is a Stone of Cold Fire and that it might contain a message from beyond the Mysterious Beyond. Yep, quite a ridiculous idea. So ridiculous, in fact, that there just has to be a song made about it.

Female rainbow face: (clears throat; singing) Beyond the Mysterious Beyond, out where the darkness is the scariest / out where the wonders are the rariest, past the edge of dawn

MarzGurl (vo): So if you can't tell, they're suggesting alien contact. Right, because that's the one thing this direct-to- video series is missing, aliens. Anyway, the idea that a rock has landed with a message from space sends everybody into an argumentative tizzy. Littlefoot wants to go and find it, but nobody seems to want to. No one, that is, except for Petrie's Uncle Pterano, who migrated into the Great Valley with the migrating herd. Pterano seems particularly interested in scheming and carries two other flyers at his side (Sierra and Rinkus), one of which is voiced by Jim Cummings.

Sierra: Them brats wouldn't fall for your little act. I say we go find that cold fire thingy on our own!

MarzGurl (vo): Oh, Jim, I'm so, so sorry. Anyway, the goal of these flyers is to get Littlefoot to talk about where exactly the meteor came down. Littlefoot is main character smart and doesn't buy into Pterano's cunning, but Petrie is dumb and naive and wants Pterano to be everything he ever dreamed of. You know, Petrie, you're just kind of dumb, that's all there is to it. In fact, in every movie thus far, you've proven yourself to be the most useless. You occasionally say a broken sentence or two and then make your decisions based on who looks the most correct and never make decisions for yourself. Even throughout the course of this entire movie, when this movie would appear to be Petrie's chance to shine, he never really does, but of course, you'll see that as time goes on. Anyway, Pterano gets Petrie on his side and gets Littlefoot to spill the beans on where the rock fell, but he's not great at keeping a secret. Littlefoot warns Petrie that Pterano is trouble, but Petrie takes off in a huff, good riddance if you ask me. The middle of the night happens and the flyers talk about going after the Stone of Cold Fire and using it to take over the Great Valley, despite the fact that they do this very loudly in the middle of a bunch of much larger dinosaurs sleeping around them. Ducky is the only one that hears any of this. Does Ducky have good ears or do all the other dinosaurs just sleep like death? Anyway, they catch her and take off with her. Her screams wake everybody up, and despite all of this, Petrie still believes that his uncle wouldn't do anything wrong. Oh, Petrie, you poor, simple creature. So the next morning, they have to explain the situation to him very carefully.

Grandpa Longneck: This all began not long after you little ones were separated from us in the great earthshake.

Grandpa Longneck (vo): We, too, set out to find the Great Valley. Then, as now, we made our decisions as a group, no one opinion outweighed the others. (During this, a message appears: CONTINUITY ERROR: You refused to do anything with anyone who wasn't your own kind at the time) Pterano didn't like being part of the herd, he wanted to be in charge of it. For some reason, he felt that he always knew more than the rest of us. For some reason, some of the herd believed Pterano. Soon, he led them away from the rest of us. They were sure that he had all the answers, they were sure he would never lead them astray. They were wrong.

Dinosaur: (off-screen) Sharpteeth!

(A swimmer struggles and falls off a cliff, screaming)

Grandpa Longneck (vo): He never told us why it happened, only that it wasn't his fault, and we never saw any of the others again.

Petrie: But he right! It not his fault others not know how to fly away!

MarzGurl (vo): You see? Even when faced with the truth, Petrie still won't believe that his uncle is anything but awesome. Dude, you're just kind of dense. So the adults stand around for hours on end trying to decide how to go about getting Ducky back and nobody really doing anything, which is when Littlefoot, again, just as always, states that it's up to them to get the work done, and yet, he's not the one that gets the search party started. Of all the kids, it's actually Spike who gets pissed off enough to take off into the mountains. You see, this is why Spike is at least a little more useful than Petrie. He may only ever say one word and mutter a bunch of honking garbage, but at least he's motivated enough to know when something's gotta get done. So off the kids go after the flyers, how are those guys doing, anyway? Well, they've stopped for a rest and let Ducky slip away, good job. But oh, look, the movie has to go and show us that not even Pterano is all bad.

Pterano: Poor thing, so young, so full of life.

Sierra: So what?

Pterano: I was responsible for that little swimmer, and now I've lost her!

MarzGurl (vo): They give up on finding her while Ducky finds herself trapped in a cave all alone. Doesn't this seem to happen to this group a lot? The four other kids are looking for Ducky, and the only way across a particular chasm is by walking across a tiny string of vines.

Cera: Ohhh no, not this threehorn! But everytime we sneak off and leave the Great Valley, we end up having to crawl across some giant ditch or pointy rocks or something.

Littlefoot: Yeah?

Cera: And somehow, the only way to do it is if we use some big, tipping boulder or rotten old log.

Spike: Uh-huh.

Cera: And I always end up at the back of the line, falling off or getting chased by a Sharptooth!

MarzGurl (vo): Wow...you know, Cera's got a point, and I'm a little surprised that they actually took the time to address this fact. I mean, I was totally gonna gripe on this myself, but Cera went and did it all for me before I could. That's freakin' amazing! But they cross it, anyway, and it's going just fine until Spike friggin' eats the vines they're holding on to. Luckily enough, they're able to hold on and swing directly into an open cavern. In fact, it's the same open cavern that Ducky has to be stuck in. Convenience! Following the sequence of events comes a song that is seemingly out of absolutely nowhere; there was next to no lead up to this song or anything, they say a couple of sentences about Pterano, and then suddenly...

Ducky: (singing) Everybody's got a lot of good inside them, and everybody has a little bad / Everyone is going to make you happy sometimes, and everyone is going to make you sad

MarzGurl (vo): Wow, okay. In the several minutes following the song, the flyers manage to steal Ducky back again, lose her just as quickly a second time, and then fly into a rock formation while chasing the kids downriver. I guess that was kind of exciting, kind of. This series of events didn't really seem to serve much purpose, otherwise. Back in the Great Valley, everybody finally figures out that the kids are gone. Petrie's mom is told to recruit a second flyer and go after the kids over the mountains, and as a storm blows in, everybody else in the story takes their own shelter. Pterano sings a song about how he's destined to be a leader while the other two flyers secretly make a pact with one another to just use him long enough to get the Stone of Cold Fire.

Sierra: Sorry, guess we got a little outta line. After all, you are the leader.

Pterano: (singing) Yes, I'm a very important creature, tremendously brave and strong / I find that I am frequently right, when others are often wrong

MarzGurl (vo): At this point, the kids take shelter inside the mountain, which surely the Stone of Cold Fire is at the top of. They rest there while it rains, but wake up to suddenly find a pile of green food sitting in front of them. Well, that's awfully mysterious. So, if none of the kids brought the food along, then who did? The answer: the rainbow-faced Gallimimuses from the beginning of the movie. Hmmm, now just how did they do that? Now these two, they're smart, real smart. They teach the kids how to use steam pressure to rocket themselves to the top of the mountain, which they then do, and it totally should have gotten them killed, but don't worry,they're wearing plot armor, they're totally safe. And lo and behold, here's the stone and they managed to get to it only seconds before the flyers do. Fat lot of good that does them, it's not like there's anything they can do with a rock that's grinded itself to a halt in the side of a mountain. Pterano, however, mistakenly believes that this rock will bestow upon him mystical powers from space. It does no such thing. You might even say it's ignoring him, but really, it's simply nothing more than a crappy space rock, and just as the mountain they're on starts threatening a normal volcanic eruption, Petrie's mom and another ginormous flyer swoop in and save the kids. Pterano takes off and leaves the other two flyers to die, basically, which they don't, of course, they just end up a little scorched. Pterano ends up being banished from the Great Valley for five years, and even after nearly the entire movie has passed, and even after Pterano admits that his punishment is fair, Petrie still doesn't get that Pterano deserves any sort of punishment for what he put innocent dinosaurs through. Good job, Petrie, the lesson of the story is unfolding right in front of you and you don't seem to be learning it. Hopefully, the kids watching the movie understand it better than you do. Afterward, the migrating dinosaurs start leaving and Littlefoot stumbles upon the rainbow faces, asking if they're leaving, too, and they are, but not in the same way the others are.

Male rainbow face: Oh-ho, would you look at that?

Littlefoot: What? Look at what?

(A strange sound is heard and we then see a mysterious beam shining down, with Littlefoot looking on in awe)

Male rainbow face: (vo; singing) Beyond the Mysterious Beyond (Female rainbow face (vo): Beyond the Mysterious Beyond), you know that nothing ever ends there...

Both: (vo; singing) And you might find that you have friends there, somewhere beyond...

MarzGurl (vo): (sighs) Yep, the dinosaurs just teleported themselves up to their UFO meteor and took off into space. You know what's funny about this sequence of events? All I can really do is sigh and shake my head. At this point, I'm not terribly angry, I'm just disappointed. I don't like it, don't get me wrong, but right now, it's the smaller things that get me, things that break old Land Before Time continuity, not so much the new stuff getting introduced. I'd sooner yell at Spike getting to speak a few lines than watch dinosaur aliens make first contact.

Quite frankly, despite the fact that this movie introduced dinosaurs from outer space, it's not the worst in the series that I've seen thus far. Three still manages to be the reigning champion, as far as that one is concerned. The animation in this movie is far improved over the last five movies, and they actually bothered to compose new background music rather than solely relying on James Horner's old soundtrack from the first movie. There's something to be said for slightly better and slightly faster paced scripting above the previous sequels as well. It still doesn't come close to the emotional value brought to us in movie one, though. So for being the seventh movie in a series of thirteen, this could've been a lot worse, but since it is the halfway point, does that mean that it does get a lot worse? Well, let's just wait and see.

(Credits are shown)