The Good Dinosaur trailer: Pixar's take on prehistoric life

How much impact can a single moment have? That question sets the tone for Pixar’s upcoming film, which tackles the topic of what life on prehistoric Earth would look like if dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out by an enormous asteroid.

The new trailer for Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur introduces audiences to Arlo, an orphaned Apatosaurus who becomes BFFs with a little boy nicknamed Spot. Set against a series of startlingly realistic backdrops that includes dense forest, grassy meadows, and craggy mountain tops, the cartoonish-looking pair encounter a slew of other wild animals. (Think snakes, fireflies, buffalo, and lizards, as well as lots of dinosaurs.) Lead by child actor Raymond Ochoa (American Family) as Arlo, The Good Dinosaur’s all-star voice cast includes Jack Bright, Francis McDormond, Jeffrey Wright, AJ Buckey, Anna Paquin, Sam Elliot, and Marcus Scribner.

As sweet as it seems, The Good Dinosaur — which appears equal parts survival story meets boy-with-dog flick — looked doomed for extinction when the studio decided to delay the movie, which was initially slated for release in 2014. The delay came after Pixar replaced director Bob Peterson (Up) with longtime Pixar employee Peter Sohn (Partly Cloudy) back in 2013. Following the director shakeup, Good Dinosaur was also given an entirely new cast and story line.

“You know, it was a troubled film for us. We had an earlier version we stopped production on because we didn’t think it was good enough — it wasn’t quite working,” Pixar Animation Studio president Jim Morris told EW in June. “This was a very, very different movie. It’s got a couple of characters that are similar to the original one, but everything else, the story and everything is different.”

Pixar’s latest effort comes close on the heels of the studio’s summer release Inside Out. The Pete Docter-directed film features the story of five emotions that live inside a pre-pubescent girl’s mind, and has earned more than $300 million worldwide since its mid-June release.

“It’s so different from Inside Out, but it’s wonderful and charming and raw in its own way,” Morris said, discouraging comparisons between the two features. “I’m a big fan of it.”

The Good Dinosaur stomps into theaters Nov. 25.