The Good Dinosaur and the power of ‘what if’ thinking

We may have missed out on a Pixar movie in 2014, but we are fortunate to have two of them being released this year: Inside Out which opens Friday, June 19 and The Good Dinosaur which rolls out November 25. This week, Pixar released a teaser trailer for The Good Dinosaur. Here it is:

Here is a transcript of the trailer’s text: “MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO… AN ASTEROID 6 MILES WIDE… DESTROYED EVERY DINOSAUR ON EARTH. BUT WHAT IF…”

…the asteroid missed? Then the dinosaurs would have survived and enable this story premise to emerge for Pixar’s 16th movie: “After a traumatic event unsettles a lively Apatosaurus named Arlo, he sets out on a remarkable journey, gaining an unlikely companion along the way — a human boy.”

I have blogged about this subject before: How those two little words — what if — are perhaps the single best way to kick-start the story-generating story process.

How screenwriter James V. Hart’s young son one day asked, “What if Peter Pan grew up?” That led to the movie Hook.

How screenwriter Bob Gale, when looking at his father’s high school yearbooks, asked, “What if I had gone to school with my father. Would we have been friends?” That was the kernel of an idea that led to Back to the Future.

And now this: What if the asteroid had missed and dinosaurs survived? Which has resulted in this:

The power of ‘what if’ thinking. Take those two words and a spark of creative juju:

Now go out there and come up with a brilliant story idea!