The Good Dinosaur - Move Review

A while back I posted a few comments on the trailer to the movie "The Good Dinosaur".  At the time I thought it looked like an interesting movie but had a few problems with the science in the trailer.  Recently we had the opportunity to watch the full movie.  As family we enjoyed the movie and had a fun family evening together.  It's a fun movie to watch and if you haven't, rent it and turn it into a family night.

My focus for this post is the first minute of the movie.  The rest was great.  Obviously the science of humans acting like dogs and dinosaurs acting like humans is incorrect, but that was the point of the movie so I won't be focusing on that.

The premise of the movie is that the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs (now we have evidence there were other things going on and the asteroid strike probably had the effect of increasing and quickening those other things) missed Earth and the dinosaurs survive.  Here are my problems.

1.  The movie starts with the Solar System's asteroid belt shown.  The asteroid belt is shown as VERY densely packed with large asteroids.  Asteroids are bumping into each other and one is knocked off orbit and heads toward Earth.

• The asteroid belt is NOT very densely packed.  There are more asteroids in this region than other regions of the Solar System, but there are still millions of miles on average between individual asteroids.
• Yes, asteroids can collide, but not at the frequency shown in the movie.  
• Yes, there are large asteroids in the belt, but these are few in number.  Most asteroids are very small.  Only a few are very large.  The movie shows mostly large asteroids.

2.  The asteroid in the movie zips by, very close to Earth, in a straight line.

• No, this is not how gravity works.  An asteroid zipping by close to Earth will not travel in a straight line as it passes.  Earth's gravity will bend the path of the orbit toward the Earth.  The asteroid may not strike the Earth, but the path of the asteroid will bend a bit toward it.

To conclude, I enjoyed this movie.  My kids enjoyed this movie.  The opening scenes, however, portray an image of the asteroid belt that is simply not true.