Kron's social Darwinism may be interpreted either as a merciless tyranny or as a careful leadership whose aim is to save most of the herd, sacrificing the weak ones. There's also a Deleted Scene where Kron saves Neera and the orphaned youngsters from raptors, angrily claiming he won't do it a second time. While it was cut, it clearly shows that Kron wasn't entirely evil even if you go with the first interpretation of him. A quite disturbing one; Kron's social Darwinism may have been put in there to show how being raised by the lemurs made Aladar "turn out right." The lemurs are portrayed as caring, empathetic and nurturing of those who are weaker than them, even accepting the reptiles who show Fantastic Racism towards them, whilst the reptiles accept a cruel social Darwinism, with a unempathetic "the strong must survive!" mentality, and show Fantastic Racism towards the "weaker" mammals (calling them ''little parasites"). In essence, the mammals (and those who show mammal mentalities) are heroic and that reptiles are evil. Even though most characters are reptiles, Reptiles Are Abhorrent still applies.
Alternatively, is Kron’s social Darwinism really directed at the best interests of the herd, or is it at least partly a front for Kron really being interested in being in power and having all the perks that go with it. His threat to kill Aladar over disputing his authority and insisting on being first at the watering hole seems to suggest there's more unspoken elements, like insecurity, than Kron lets on.
Url, an Ankylosaurus that travels at the back of the herd with the two elder dinosaurs. Is he this world's version of having a pet? Or does Url perhaps suffer from some kind of intellectual disability that causes him to have a hard time keeping up with the herd, and the only reason he hasn't been left behind completely is because Eema knows how to interact with him? He does seem to understand every word the speaking characters say, and used a stalagmite/stalactite he found to lead the others to the cave. Alternatively, given that Url is far smaller than an actual ankylosaur would be, it's also possible that he's just a baby: similar to Spike from The Land Before Time.
Two other interpretations of the film's portrayal of the Carnotaurs abound. The first is that they are a mated couple, with the surviving one going to the herd not just to feed, but to avenge its mate. Others take their disparate sizes (one is markedly bigger than the other) as an indication of them being a parent and its child, with the smaller one being killed by Bruton and the larger one becoming vengefully angry.
Cult Classic: Despite having been forgotten by pop culture, Dinosaur maintains a loyal, small fanbase and is fondly remembered for its visual effects, score, and portrayal of the eponymous dinosaurs.
Designated Villain: The Carnotaurs and Velociraptors are all carnivores doing what they can to survive in a highly unstable ecosystem. They can only be seen as antagonists because they are hunting the heroes, who are all herbivores.
Bruton thanks to his Heel–Face Turn, and pure badassery for taking on two Carnotaurs solo despite being injured. One of which he took with him to the afterlife.
Baylene and Eema for being kind, wise old dinosaurs who are humble enough to know they're slowing down the herd but still try to stay hopeful. Eema's Deadpan Snarker personality also leads to her getting some enjoyable one-liners.
Fanon: Fans of the movie universally agree that Carnotaurus pair that stalks herd through movie are a mated couple, with the surviving one going to the herd not just to feed, but to avenge its mate.
Harsher in Hindsight: Plio's final narration hoping that somehow their story will be remembered is this, considering how the film fell into obscurity and is barely remembered.
A decade later, D.B. Sweeney would voice the adult Avatar Aang, another wise, kind character who not only hangs out with lemurs, and is not only a survivor of his entire people getting wiped out, but becomes a legendary leader in his own right. "Avatar" is only a few letters away from "Aladar", too!
One idea floated around was having the dinosaurs speak without moving their mouths, but Disney CEO Michael Eisner nixed this, deeming that such a move would represent a failure on the part of the animators if they couldn't find a way to animate the dinosaurs speaking with their mouths. Thirteen years later, the Walking with Dinosaurs movie would feature the dinosaur characters speaking without moving their mouths in any way, and would be critically panned partly because of this lazy technique.
Carnotaurus being used as the main predator instead of a Tyrannosaurus rex as it was initially planned. 18 years later, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom would have Rexy curb-stomping a Carnotaurus as a reminder that she's the dominant predator. One trailer for the film even briefly used the Carnotaurus’s signature roar from this movie!
Given that this is likely the first film to prominently feature Carnotaurus, the dissonance between this film's portrayal and the 2022 portrayal in Prehistoric Planet can come off as this. In this film, Carnotaurus is a Prehistoric Monster buffed to tyrannosaur size. In Prehistoric Planet, they're depicted dancing like bowerbirds to court mates.
Love to Hate: The Carnotaurus are very enjoyable villains despite being just mindless animals, as they are one of the most terrifying depictions of an apex predator in any Disney movie. Kron is also well-regarded due to being a more complex, morally gray Anti-Villain than most Disney antagonists and having a splendid performance from the late Samuel E. Wright.
Older Than They Think: A common criticism of the movie's choice is that people had hopes for a movie with non-speaking dinosaurs until the lemurs began speaking after the prologue. This ignores the fact that the advertising campaign after the iconic teaser trailer liberally featured the characters speaking.
Popular with Furries: Similar to Jurassic Park, the use of computer-generated dinosaurs and almost-anthropomorphic lemurs gives the film appeal to the scalie and furry fandom.
Presumed Flop: The film led its production company to be shut down by Disney and is lumped along with other underwhelming cartoons the studio had made at the Turn of the Millennium. But it actually made $350 million on a $127 million budget, meaning that it was Disney's biggest success between Tarzan and Tangled. Yes, bigger than Lilo & Stitch, Bolt, or The Princess and the Frog.note Though the first one of those three still beats it as a franchise by far, and the last one gets by with the Disney Princess affiliation. Still, it fell short of expectations, especially considering a big marketing budget.
Even among the biggest fans of the film, you will find few willing to defend the lemur Zini. Many find his Casanova Wannabe antics pretty annoying for attempts as comic-relief, feeling as if they date the movie. In addition, he contributes little of value to the plot's events, especially since he is usually with two other lemurs who can do many tasks he could, rendering many to view him as useless. It's ironically not the case for his portrayal in the video games since he is an essential part of the playable character party since he collects health-regenerating fruit.
From the DVD’s bonus features, most fans hate the unseen kid who acts as your guide due to sounding like he’s trying way too hard to be cute and cool, and it really clashes with the rather dark “Aladar’s Adventure” game. It gets worse when he narrates Dinopedia, and has to give solemn reflections on the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Signature Scene: The Egg Travels is such a grand epic opening to the film that the entirety of it was used just for the very first teaser trailer. It's also one of the few parts of the movie that even people who dislike it will admit looks good.
So Okay, It's Average: This seems to be the general consensus. Outside of big dino fans, it hasn't really stuck in the memory of general audiences, or even a lot of Disney fans. While the visuals, cinematography, music and some of the action set-pieces are widely agreed to be impressive, the plot is often criticized for its lack of originality and the characters criticized for feeling underwritten (for what it's worth, there are so many main characters it would be difficult to allocate enough screentime to develop all of them).
Strangled by the Red String: Aladar and Neera's chemistry isn't established much despite them being an Official Couple in the end. Aladar quickly gets a crush on Neera but she doesn't initially think much of him until about midway through the film; they briefly spend some time bonding but they're then separated until the climax.
One of the major criticisms of the film is that the overall story after the asteroid hits turns into a plot that's way too similar to The Land Before Time.
1) Aladar and his family having to survive in a world destroyed by an asteroid impact is similar to how Littlefoot's group of children were left to fend for themselves after the Earthshake.
2) Aladar falling in with a surviving herd travelling to the "Nesting Grounds" while they're pursued by Carnotaurus is basically Littlefoot and company searching for the "Great Valley" while they're pursued by a Sharptooth.
3) Aladar clashing with Kron over which way to go, and having to go back to save everyone from Kron's pride before he forces the herd to climb over an impossible rock wall, is just like how Littlefoot and Cera end up in a fight over which way to go, and after Littlefoot goes off on his own, he returns to save his friends that got trapped at the Mountains That Burn.
4) The climax of both films features the protagonists knocking the antagonist carnivore over a cliff to their deaths.
For a non-dinosaur related example, the plot has also been criticized for being too much of an adaptation of the Book of Exodus given Aladar's upbringing away from his people only to return and become the leader that delivers them to the promised landnote This can arguably be seen as a surviving artifact of an earlier script for the movie's plot that was meant as a more overt religious allegory.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Bruton. The moment the movie was finally developing his character by going into his Hidden Depths during the cave scene, he ends up dying almost immediately afterwards.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The Iguanodons might stick out due to their human-like lips. The animal had a beak in real life, but the designers gave them all realistic human lips to make them more expressive, and the result can be unsettling. Especially since the anatomically-correct beak is still there under the lips, resembling a strange strip of teeth without any gaps.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: As confirmed by the DVD's bonus features, the Carnotaurs were intended to be portrayed as insane, nonstop killing machines. However, many fans see them as minor, but developed characters. They only kill for hunger, are smart enough to know when not to attack the herd, and after one's death, the other goes insane with apparent grief. They seem like normal predators just hunting to survive, despite the filmmakers' intent to just have them as hungry, evil killers.
Vanilla Protagonist: Criticism of Aladar often boils down to this, accusing him of being an uninteresting everyman protagonist who only goes through a brief moment of Heroic BSoD towards the end of the film while other characters, including the antagonists, are considered more interesting.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite the lukewarm reception from critics at the time, pretty much everyone agreed the film looked gorgeous. To this day, even though the character animation has understandably aged in the decades since the film's release, it's still easy to see a lot of detail in the animals, such as the twisting jiggle of Baylene's legs when she takes a step, Bruton's muscles shaking from strain when he tries to get up, the generally wrinkly hide of the animals, and some very rapt attention to accuracy in the generic, non-anthropomorphized animals of the herd. Additionally, the backgrounds frequently and seamlessly blend different environments togethernote for example, that shot in the opening where Brachiosaurus looks up while the Parasaurolophus runs underfoot? The lake surrounding it was shot in Florida, while everything above the tree line is Venezuela spliced in!.
That One Level: The first level of the PlayStation game is exceptionally hard since you haven't had any real opportunity to level up. Expect to die a lot thanks to those damn Oviraptors. Once you get past the first and second level, thankfully, your EXP goes up and the game difficulty evens out.
Cult Classic: The ride has become a bit of a darkhorse favorite among Animal Kingdom fans, especially young adults and Disney College Program members who grew up with it, for its fun animatronics and gorgeous details.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Dr. Seeker has a lot of fans with his endearingly dorky personality and enthusiasm for finding his Iguanadon. Expect to see at least one person reciting all of his lines along with him in the pre-show.
Nightmare Fuel: Pretty much the entire ride. You're in the dark, the dinosaurs are randomly lit up, and then the Carnotaurus appears. Also? It's loud.
The original version of the ride was even worse. Between the multiple times the outright demonic-looking Carnotaurus charges the ride, there is a scene of near total blackout as the car tries to speed away to safety. All while you hear the beast's terrifying roars and running footsteps, showing it's right behind you. Even in the toned down final version, the ride is still unique amongst the park attractions for the experience of being chased by a relentless predator through a dark forest.
On that note, the final scene where you see a immobile sculpture of the Carnotaurus is actually quite horrifying because you see it only for a split-second and it doesn't even do anything.
The Alioramus seen near the ride's beginning, eating a small crocodile.
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