Rewriting the Land Before Time

I was scrolling through "Watch It Again" on Netflix when I noticed this,

And I thought, what a happy picture. Those dinosaurs don't look like they're in any danger at all! That's not the way I remember this movie. I remember death, and starvation, and being chased by a T-Rex that looked WAY bigger than that tiny dude does in the picture above.
 
So I went looking for the original poster/vhs cover art, and found this

Now THAT looks more familiar. Two volcanoes erupting in the distance. Tree suspended over a misty canyon. Tiny little dinosaur kids with giant T-Rex. And I wondered if there was more cover art cover-ups out there.

Here's An American Tail the 21st century version

 Fivel's got his sister and a friendly cat next to him, and he's standing tall on some luggage.

Here's what it looked like in 1986

Fivel's by himself, and in easy foot-smashing level, though still apparently happy to be in America.


Here's one in reverse.  The Rescuers Down Under as it was in 1990.  Dangling high above the outback, everyone seems terrified, except for the Australian kangaroo rat.

Somewhere in between they made this one

Now they're still dangling, but over water. And everyone looks like they're having fun.

And finally we have this latest version.

Nobody's dangling, they're flying. And everyone seems happy. Except Bernard who for some reason looks worried.

These are all fairly frightening children's films. Children are separated from their parents, put in life or death situations, often by truly evil bad guys (or bad cats) and people die. Thank god they haven't actually edited the films themselves to make them less frightening, but by editing the pictures they're misrepresenting the content of the movies. Modern children's movies are usually much tamer than what I grew up with, and G ratings reflect the lack of violence and danger. All three of these movies are rated G, but it's a 1980's-1990's G, not a modern G.  If you're a parent who has somehow never seen these films, you might think from the cover art that they'd be perfect for your two year old. Never guessing he could have many nightmares of evil dinosaurs, evil cats, and poachers.