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n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 9 he film begins with rain falling on Aspen leaves, dripping from pine needles, and splashing on rocks. We see a farmhouse planted in a meadow. Clawtooth Moun- tains hover in the distance. It's a beautiful, pastoral setting. But, there is an unsettling undercurrent of danger and a struggle for survival. The pioneers are vulnerable. The land surrounding their homestead is so vast it could even dwarf a family of dinosaurs. And, it does. In the capable hands of artists at Pixar Animation Studios, it becomes easy to believe that dinosaurs didn't become extinct. Instead, herbivores, like this family of homesteading Apatosaurus, became farmers. Carnivores, like a family of T. rexes we'll meet later in the film, became cattle ranchers. And raptors? They became rustlers. Peter Sohn directed the Disney/Pixar film The Good Dinosaur, the second animated fea- ture created at Pixar and released by Disney this year. Pixar doesn't shy away from emotional stories, as the two 2015 films – Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur – attest. But the two films couldn't be more different. Inside Out (see "A Frame of Mind," May/June 2015) took viewers inside a child's mind, a brilliantly colored and brightly lit emotional world filled with reflections. The Good Dinosaur sends a child outside, on a real and metaphorical passage through an expansive, painterly landscape. His journey of emotional growth plays out in nature. The child is Arlo, an 11-year-old Apatosaurus dinosaur voiced by Raymond Ochoa. Arlo is a goofy, fearful, 18-foot-tall child, the baby of the family, who stays close to his father. Until, one day, Arlo loses his dad in a tragic accident and he falls into a rushing river. The river propels the fatherless child into a wilderness: a huge, terrifying world he'd never seen before. In this film, nature is the antagonist. "This movie is about facing your fears and finding your way through," Sohn says. Less fearful in these wild open spaces is a second character, Spot, a feral, six-year-old human boy who Arlo meets along his way. Spot is an orphan who has lived on his own in the wilderness. He barks and howls. He moves on all fours. He doesn't speak. "This is 'a boy and his dog' story," Sohn says. Arlo, the dinosaur, who acts like a human, is the boy. Spot is the dog – a human boy who acts like a wild animal. "Spot is everything Arlo is not," Sohn says. "And Arlo becomes fond of the little kid. It's a ©2015 Disney•Pixar SPOT, ARLO, AND THE BEAUTIFUL CLAWTOOTH MOUNTAINS.