Why didn't they animated it ? Such a waste ! LOL
I know, right?
Let me do a little of self advertisement. At the time I was working on a RTN Doujin, I tried to animate Road to Charasuke...
But the process is too difficult! I don't have abilities with these art programs (photoshop and etc). My plans were to draw frame per frame and put all pages in the movie maker or sony vegas.
It would sound like a photo novel, but at least something you could watch!
Well, my thoughts on RTN isn't different from the majority here. Kishimoto implied a lot on the context for we can take to the NS side. He showed that his troll nature is real (SS and NH on the ads for the final product be NS), his thoughts about MK being a parallel to NS (Kushina even support Naruto's approach to Sakura)...
Also, Sakura was chosen, from all characters, to be Naruto's partner in this movie. Why is that? He could take Sasuke or make Naruto all alone. It would just be hilarious to see Sakura's alternative character! Imagine how she would act near Naruto and how Hinata would react. And if Sakura was that person close to Menma (ino stated that she loves him in the drama CD), making her being close to Naruto in the movie would be so fantastic! Surely, Naruto would have much more to deal than just with his undead parents...
But no, Kishimoto placed Sakura there, to be at Naruto's side all the time. She was his only vestige of reality. If it wasn't for her, he could be trapped forever in that universe! And their interactions in the movie represented the canon development in the timeline of the manga. At first, Sakura was that spoiled fangirl who would treat Naruto bad if her humor said so, but little by little she walks in his shoes and recoganize all the pain he is used to carry. And she goes after him, wanting to help and support him, putting all her desires aside for his happiness AGAIN! The tsukuyomi world represents one's truest wishes. Sakura and Naruto wanted Sasuke on the village, so there he was. Sakura wanted the atention of the most popular boy of the village and she got it. By the end she realizes how empty and vague that feeling was when she busted him flirting with other girls. She protects Naruto with her own life, she worries about him... Nothing romanticaly important, it's just friendship. But this is the surface.
Reality itself changed, but the essence didn't. Hinata continued to love (or to be obssessed by) Menma (who is Naruto's counterpart), Sasuke continued to be proud and selfish, the trio Inoshikacho didn't broke, they still were together... And the characters still had a conspiracy/theories about Menma's and Sakura's relationship. Don't tell me this doesn't exist on the canon world because it exist! Sai, Yamato, Ino and Minato are great conspirators/theorists! In the RTN world, we see this by Kushina, Minato and Ino (on the drama CD). We can include Kishimoto in this list? Because he made Sakura play the Kushina role when she got kidnapped by the masked man. Even the when she was chained was the same. Naruto appears and defeat the enemy the same way his father did. So?
To summarize, RTN was a weak movie (with some plot holes) and could've been soooo better... It was good, but not enough. It was the most weak of them all, specially in the animation that was terribly bad. I don't see different, the movie was made just to present Kishimoto's intentions. Not only about NS, but about his passion about parenting too.