FOREWORD

JOHN LASSETER

One of the things we love to do at Pixar is take something familiar and show it in a way people have never seen before.

What got us interested in the world of dinosaurs was a simple question: what would have happened if the asteroid that brought an end to the dinosaur era had missed Earth, and dinosaurs had gone on living?

This question led to many more—How would they have evolved? What would that world look like?—and we soon found ourselves thinking about plant-eating dinosaurs working farms (and, eventually, meat-eating dinosaurs running ranches). The more we dug into the story, about the coming of age of a young dinosaur who befriends a feral human boy, the more excited we got about the incredible richness of this idea.

Peter Sohn is one of the most engaging storytellers at Pixar. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, but combines that sincerity with a disarmingly sharp sense of humor. A talented actor who has done voices in several of the studio’s movies, he is also extremely perceptive about behavior and personality. All those skills went into shaping and giving truth to the characters in this film. I always say you are what you direct, and you can feel Peter’s openness and warmth in the characters of both Arlo and Spot.

There is a wonderful simplicity to The Good Dinosaur, a purity of storytelling that took a long time and a lot of hard work to achieve. The deliberate choice to have very little dialogue in the film meant that there would be that much more attention on the visual storytelling, and, as you’ll see, the film’s artists have absolutely risen to the occasion. Their spectacular, ingenious, and appealing work masterfully supports Arlo and Spot’s story—one of the most emotional we’ve ever told.