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“ | With another terrible cry, the big beast thundered toward them, his enormous mouth wide open and his one good eye glinting with hatred. | „ |
~ The book's narrator showing Sharptooth's hatred for the children. |
“ | Although one of his eyes were swollen shut, he was growling softly, enjoying his moment of revenge. | „ |
~ The Narrator describing Sharptooth's thoughts in the novel. |
Sharptooth is the main antagonist of Don Bluth's 3rd animated feature film The Land Before Time and its novelization.
He is a homicidal Tyrannosaurus rex that seeks to cause death and destruction, and seeks revenge on Littlefoot and the others for damaging his eye. He is also the archenemy of Littlefoot and his friends.
His vocal sound effects were provided by Frank Welker, whom also did the sound effects of Stripe in Gremlins, The Big One and her pack in Jurassic Park, Megatron/Galvatron in Transformers Cinematic Universe, the Carnotaurus in Dinosaur, Barn Owl in Once Upon a Forest, Scar Snout in The Rugrats Movie, Sabor in Tarzan, Barracuda in Finding Nemo, Rudy in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the Harvesters in Independence Day, Ludmilla in Bartok the Magnificent, Rhino in James and the Giant Peach and Mor'du in Brave.
Biography[]
Sharptooth has four scenes in the film. Sharptooth first appears when he approaches Littlefoot and Cera, who are playing together in a swamp. Sharptooth, who is probably hungry, chases them into a thicket of thorns. He plods through the thorns after them and leans down through the thorns to catch Littlefoot. The young Longneck tries to run but gets caught on a vine. As Sharptooth nears him, he escapes and the thorn-covered vines snap back at Sharptooth's face, severely injuring his right eye and causing him to bellow out in pain. Furious, Sharptooth stands up and resumes his pursuit of the two children, only for Littlefoot's Mother to intercept and face him.
In their ensuing fight, Sharptooth is hit several times with her tail, which doesn't really have much effect on him. Eventually, the menace succeeds in jumping onto the large Longneck's back and tears off some of her flesh. He also slashes her neck as well. She manages to dislodge him and knock him back again, but as the herbivores attempt to escape, a massive earthquake strikes the area. Quickly recovering, Sharptooth charges in the direction of Littlefoot and Cera again, partially trying to dispose of the two youngsters and partly in an attempt to save his own life from the raging earthquake. In their panic, the children are flipped onto Sharptooth's foot, and at that moment the quake tears the ground beneath them apart, and Sharptooth slides down the slope with his would be prey on his back. As the children yell for help, Littlefoot's Mother comes to the rescue; she grabs the children and knocks Sharptooth off the edge, sending him falling into the chasm below. Littlefoot's Mother dies later that night, probably due to severe infections from the wounds on her back and neck inflicted by Sharptooth.
Later, after falling into the big underground herself, Cera finds Sharptooth's apparently dead body. Cera rams her head repeatedly until he suddenly awakes, having only been knocked out. It is revealed that Sharptooth survived from falling into the chasm. The young dinosaur quickly flees in terror as the beast rises behind her. Shortly afterwards, she meets up with Littlefoot and his new friends, Ducky, a Bigmouth, and Petrie, a Flyer. Cera explains her encounter with Sharptooth, but exaggerates it, making it sound as if she bravely fought him. While Ducky and Petrie believe Cera immediately, Littlefoot is convinced that Sharptooth has been killed. He holds this belief until one morning, the fearsome beast himself ambushes the gang (by then including a Spiketail named Spike). The children barely manage to escape from Sharptooth through a small hole in a rock wall, which Sharptooth tries to squeeze through while snapping and clawing at the children, but is too big to fit through and they escape.
The next day, Cera is humiliated and left the group after they escaped a volcanic region she herself lead them into. Littlefoot, Ducky, Petrie, and Spike happen to see Sharptooth nearby while they are swimming in a deep lake. Littlefoot, guessing that Sharptooth can't swim, comes up with a plan to get rid of him for good. Baiting him with Ducky, they set their plan into motion. Sharptooth chases Ducky to the lake, while Petrie stands on a nearby ledge waiting to give a signal to Littlefoot and Spike, who are waiting to push a huge boulder off of a ledge onto Sharptooth. However, even after Sharptooth accidentally helps Petrie master his flight abilities, the plan is seemingly doomed to fail until Cera returns and helps push the boulder down onto Sharptooth. In a final act of rage and desperation, Sharptooth takes Petrie down with him as he plunges into the lake and sinks to the bottom to his watery grave. After moments, the remaining children start to walk away sadly, believing Petrie to be dead. However, the Flyer manages to surface and fly back to his friends, and they all rejoice, having finally avenged Littlefoot's Mother's death.
Personality[]
“ | Was he deficient in kindness and mercy? No! Was he evolutionary arrested or r******? No! Simply put he was hungry. It is the law of nature to seek out food to satiate the appetite. So I reasoned, how could I hate the beast for doing what nature instinctively ordained? Just because he was big, growling and hungry didn't make him malevolent. He needed to step outside nature's boundaries to be a bad guy, embrace brutality over compassion, and harbour a vendetta or grudge that could twist his soul into an unnatural existence. That would be a true villain. Creative ideas are born out of conflict. I wanted a more dimensional bad guy, but I was outnumbered and finally gave in. Steven and George, in fact, the whole team, felt that the Rex's teeth did the job. More evil could be over-kill. If something can bite you, that's reason enough to fear it. The dinosaur children, simply put, are terrorized by their natural enemy. Although I knew our story would pack a dramatic wallop to the audience if they could hate Rex, not just fear him, I grew weary of pitching the idea. The most horrific villains are those who appear confident, cool and in control at first glance, while beneath the skin, you sense something is terribly wrong, and you never suspect the magnitude of the twisted horror inside until it is too late. | „ |
~ Don Bluth on the Sharptooth. |
Little of Sharptooth's personality is seen in the film, but Sharptooth is just a normal and desperate predator looking for food during the course of the movie, as confirmed by Don Bluth in his Toon Talk Magazine. However, the novelization that was sold along with the original movie gives more insight on his actual thoughts. Sharptooth appears to be very persistent and indefatigable, given by the fact that he continues fighting Littlefoot's Mother despite the Earthshaker and his multiple wounds, and that he continues to pursue the main characters throughout the movie, even though they would be of little food to him.
According to the novelization, much of this persistence is derived from vengeance, as he takes pleasure in cornering Littlefoot and Cera after the former had accidentally blinded him in one eye with a thorn. It is evident that he will continue fighting even when it is obviously hopeless, snapping at the children even when his head is trapped in a small tunnel and they are far out of reach. He doesn't stop trying when he is in extreme danger, as he tries to crush Littlefoot and Cera while falling to his apparent doom in the Great Earthshake, and pulls Petrie down with him in his last moments, plummeting into a lake.
It is shown in the novelization that Sharptooth does not forget grudges he holds against others; it is explained that after he spots the main characters for the second time, he immediately recognizes them and makes a thunderous noise towards them in about of hatred. Even after they escape through the narrow pathway, he continues to claw and snap at them with rage. It is also said in the novelization that Sharptooth enjoys killing, as it is said that when he finds the entrance of the Great Valley, he sniffs the air with "evil joy", showing that he gets more out of killing than just food.
Power and Abilities[]
Sharptooth appears to possess a near (if not outright) supernatural level of strength, durability, and athleticism, even for a Tyrannosaurus, as shown by him crawling through sharp thorns after Littlefoot and Cera with hardly a scratch, withstanding multiple blows to the face from Littlefoot's Mother, slamming his head through solid rocks with no apparent ill effects, and surviving a long drop into the canyon opened up by the earthquake. He is also shown to be capable of massive leaps, even jumping straight up into the air onto a cliff at the film's climax, as well as apparently being able to see just fine despite having only one good eye.
Relationships[]
Sharptooth's relationships with the characters he has been shown to interact with have all been negative. He attempts to eat the protagonists and fatally wounds Littlefoot's Mother. His relationship with Littlefoot is particularly hostile, as he despises him for (although inadvertently) blinding his eye with a thorn. It is stated in the book that he wants revenge on the children for the trouble they've caused him.
Cultural Influence[]
Merchandise[]
Sharptooth has not gotten as much merchandise as other characters but has received a moderate amount compared to other one-movie characters. He is also the only known antagonist to receive merchandise. A hand-puppet of him was distributed at Pizza Huts along with the other main characters during the movie's theater release.
Music[]
The San Francisco-based punk rock band "Set Your Goals" released a song called "Sharptooth" on their first demo tape, claiming while the song's content doesn't touch on the character himself, they were big fans of the movie as kids.
Quotes[]
“ | Littlefoot and Cera stood in the shadow of the most ferocious and deadly creature in the land—Sharptooth! | „ |
~ The book's narrator on Sharptooth. |
“ | The monster bellowed in pain and reared back from the brambles. Then, with a terrible fury, he plunged back into the thicket, searching for the puny creatures that had dared to injure him. | „ |
~ The narrator describing Sharptooth's actions after his eye is hit by the thorn. |
“ | Even in his terror, the huge beast saw his chance to crush the tiny creatures who had caused him so much trouble. | „ |
~ Sharptooth's thoughts as he is falling down into the "Big Underground". |
“ | A short time later, Sharptooth found the entrance to the Great Valley. He growled and sniffed the air with evil joy. | „ |
~ The narrator on Sharptooth finding the entrance to the Great Valley. |
Trivia[]
- Dried blood is shown around his damaged eye all throughout the book.
- Sharptooth was the first of his kind to appear in The Land Before Time media.
- As the characters call him "Sharptooth" instead of a Sharptooth, and The Land Before Time book states that he is "the most ferocious and deadly creature in all the land", this could imply that he was the only known Sharptooth around the area the dinosaurs were in at the time.
- Sharptooth is seen with his eye shut before it gets hit by the thorn, even though it shouldn't be injured yet. This is most likely a mistake on the animators' part.
- An audio glitch occurs when Sharptooth's eye is put out by the thorn, as Cera's scream can be heard from him.
- Originally, Sharptooth was going to have more scenes throughout the film chasing after Littlefoot and his friends. The developers feared these scenes would be too scary for children, so these scenes were either trimmed or removed.
- The scene where Sharptooth's eye is "poked out" was originally much more graphic, and scenes from a chase scene, including one where the main characters are trapped underneath him, were also cut.
- Occasionally, Sharptooth would open his damaged eye, like when Cera charged towards him after his fall into the chasm, and he managed to open it, and towards the climax, he opened it several times. This may be an animation mistake, or it may be that the swelling on his eyelid had eased, and thus, he could open it.
- Before filming, director Don Bluth considered Sharptooth to be a speaking character voiced by Harry Shearer.
- Despite being the main antagonist, he only has around 4 minutes of screen-time.
- Some people have believed that Sharptooth isn't a villain in the film version, although he is a villain because Don Bluth made the villainous predator of both versions in the film and novelization which he shown to be a sentient predator who seeks revenge on Littlefoot and the others for damaging his eye. Most of the sharpteeth are sentient predators which they aren't normal animals at all.
External Links[]
- Sharptooth on the Villains Wiki
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