#early man

Happy World Cup all you happy people! While I usually don't watch World Football/Soccer/Kickstuffballthing I am excited for this event from the food tie ins to the fact one of the stage is the nearbye city of Kansas City Missouri, having passed through a ton of world cup stuff on the way there. I may only know the game from Ted Lasso but this is a truly special event.

And since i've covered all of Wallace and Gromit and Aardman's unsung masterpiece Pirates: In An Adventure with Scientests I was happy to revisit Aaardman with a film i'd never seen but really wanted to I just tend to put things off till I can't no more. And Kev paying me good money to cover this for the world cup qualifies as "can't put this off any longer".

Early Man was orignally conceived as part of Aardman's deal with Dreamworks, which to make a long story short was like living in a living nightmare and did not last long as the two clashed constantly due to a combo of Dreamworks wanting to cut costs (hence why Flushed Away ended up being their first of two CG Films), and not understanding what they had wanting to americanize Wallace and Gromit.

While it was still technically functioning Dreamworks and Aardman thought up a film together: Crood Awakening, a film that with some tightening up by John Cleese of Monty Python fame and Kirk DiMicco of Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken fame, became about an inventor and a luddite in the stone age forced to cooperate.

With the Dreamworks deal ending in flames, no small amount of bloodshed and two films early, Dreamworks took the idea and socked it away for later, eventually leading to 2013's the Croods, which kept the inventor clashing with a luddite, but made the real focus the Luddite's Daughter and her issues with her controlling NIcholas Cage dad.

Aardman clearly still had some stone age ideas though, and five years after the croods and after Sean the Sheep Movie Film For Theaters had some success, felt in the right place to try it.

The result was Early Man, a film that likes pirates before it didn't really score at the box office, making, according to wikipedia, 54.6 million.. on a budget of 50 million. It didn't help over here that for whatever reason, Lionsgate put up a quirky very british film .. up against

Yes the biggest winter release of all time at the time, one of the most influental and important superhero films ever, and my personal faviorite mcu film... went up against Early Man. And if you think it got it any easier in the UK

Yeah one of Pixar's biggest hits and one I regretfully still need to get to... easily washed it aside.

There was no need for this to happen and the failure is entirely on distribution for deciding to basically throw the film away. This is the kind of scheduling that tells me neither Lions Gate nor international distributor Studio Canal gave a prestoric poop about this film, that they were obligated to put it out, dumped it wherever was convient and moved on. It's still a minor miracle aardman has lived this long as every company as even their most enduring partnership with Studio Canal still lead to shit like this while over here it feels like every company has had a turn at treating one of the best animation studios in existance like garbage. I can see why Netflix has become their main distributor as while Neflix can be shitty itself, it's not so stupid as to realize "hey wait having Aardman is a net win for us". Which you would THINK wouldn't take three other companies failing to get to that point, but here we are.

As a result of , no matter the country, going up against something making a far bigger more impactful splash Early Man has kinda fallen through the cracks of Aardman's filmography. It's the one film I see people just.. never even mention or talk about and that had my curosity peak. Was the film bad or was it just a victim of bad timing? Why don't people talk about it as much as the others?

My honest answer and one that pains me a bit: Early Man is, out of the Aardman Films i've seen (Excluding the Shawn the Sheep Films, Arthur Christmas and Chicken Run 2)... the most mid film Aardman has ever made.

Early Man is not a terrible film: The premise is pretty inspired and the opening one of aardman's best. Long ago a Meteor arrived on a prehistoric mostly uninhabital earth. Instead of killing the dinsoaurs, this meteor was left in the shape of a football and after dtermining they couldn't carry it and kicking it around a bit, the greatest game in the world was born. Besides debunking Hank Hill's own theroies on how Football came to be

This opening is the highlight of the film, a truly hilaroius little mini movie that sets up the premise well: Cavemen invented soccer, it's inherently funny.

The problem is it dosen't really.. use that premise. Instead it pivots to one that's equally promising and equally underutlized: The Bronze Age versus the Stone Age.

In the film's present but still prehistoic times, Dug , played by Eddie Redmayne is an optimistic young caveman with big ideas like maybe hunting mammoths that his world weary tired old chief of only 32....... 2.. years younger than me... liking this joke less the more I think about the implications, played by Timothy Spall, who lives by the motto of

If you don't try, you can't fail and we really can't succeed can we? While the bright eyed teen destined for more is one of the most deadest of dead horses in animatoin it does work for me here do that wrinkle. The Chief isn't mean to Dug or dismissive to be a dick, he just assumes if they did try his people might get hurt or Dug's spirit might get crushed. That it's better to take the path of least resitatnce. He's wrong, people doign that is why the world feels like a basket of turds these days, but it's something young people are bound to encounter.

Things change when a nearbye bronze age empire decides to mine in the Valley and forces the cavemen out lead by the agresively french Lord Nooth, played to comedic perfection by Tom Hiddleston who has far more comedic range than I realized. I knew he had plenty as loki but my god does he ham it up here.

Dug ends up swept to the Broonze empire and finds out Football has evolved, becoming the premire league of the empire with their team Real Bronzo being the reinging champs of all of Football. So when Dug is naturally outed as a caveman, he challenges them the same way the oposing team did for high stakes; They win they get the valley, Bronzo wins, they become slaves int he mines.

So Dug is forced to rally his bunch of ragtag misfits getting help from Gloona, a bronze ager who not only takes a shine to our young hero, and vice versa, but is more than happy to join the team as both their coach, as no one has the faintest idea what their doing or how footballw orks, and one of their members as undsuprisngly the bronze age is very he man woman haters when it comes to women in sports. Sadly something society hasn't really evolved on enough for my taste.

So our two young heroes and pig sidekick have to figure out how to train these misifits using the unorthadox methods of trainign in the volcanic hellscape they had to run to and the fact they like each other more than the more individualistc and egotsitical Real Bronzo.

Naturally the stakes rise ofr the villiana s the Queen isn't happy Nooth made the wager without him and while like him she considers the Cavemen savages, unlike Nooth she recognizes both how humilating the lost will be.. and how you know they have something to fight for so they'll actually put in the work to get good. Nooth has to try and demoralize Dug by revelaing his ancestors, while inventing football, eventually gave up on it after sharing it with other tribes who constintely beat them and invoated the game.

Dug almost sacrifices himself, but the chief, realizing he was a dick, gets the team there in time and convinces him it's about the heart and all that. The team despite stronger opposition and Nooth blatantly cheating win while Nooth is consigned to the mines and the Bronze and Stone Ages make peace and Goona moves in with the tribe because why not.

If all this sounds familiar, your spotting Early Man's biggest issue: it has nothing really.. new or interesting to do despite having had several chances at a fun setup: seeing how cavemen play football wether it be in the distant past or against the broonze, pitting a colonalist empire against cavemen to show the "Savages" they dismise and force out of their rightful land arne't as uncultured or helpless as they appear. The cast would have ot be 80% less white to really make the latter idea work, but it's still one worht exploring.

Instead Early Man just goes where 80 dozen films have before: There's no real character to it. Looking at Aardman's other leads off the top of my head they have more character, more humor to them and more of an arc. Wallace is a hapless idiot who just so happens to be a genius who can't see the forest for the trees because his tree o matic plucked them all out of the ground so he could see the lake better but means well, Gromit is his silent loyal dog who often has to reign in his nonsense, Ginger a defiant rebel against an unfair regime who simply makes the mistake of betting her hopes on Mel Gibson, and Pirate Captain is a swaggering moron who geninely loves his crew and cares about them but struggles iwth his own ego and inferority complex.

In contrast Dug is just a good kid who has big ideas and more faith in his people than Chief does. That's it. It's the START of something but he dosen't really get more to play jokes off: we get some great jokes in the Bronze City as he has no idea how to operate in it, but otherwise he's just a pretty bland paragon. And as superman shows us a paragon can still be funny and adorable while also being funny. Goona has a bit more to her being a lover of a game that rejects her and the Chief having just given up only to realize "Hey maybe don't" but they just never fully sculpt those into an arc. Dug is optimistic the whole time and was always right, the Chief was always wrong and just needs genine hope and effort and Goona is never wrong. They don't have to be wrong but htere's really nothing to them and nothing comedic to compesate.

A character can be thin arc wise and still have a lot of comedic laters but aside from Lord Nooth, whose snootyneeds, nove of bathing in gold and general ego make him funny, it dosen't work. The Cavemen don't relaly get invidvidual jokes and never coalse enough into one big unit. The film banks on you loving them as a family on them being funny enough but it dosen't work.

And aardman has made what's fucntioanlly one character spread across many with a few notable traits work: I can't tell you the names of more than four of the Pirates from Pirates, but they do a lot better job up front selling why we like these guys with one scene: Ham Night. The weekly gathering where they all clink plates and have ham selling both the pirates obession with ham glorious ham, and their togetherness as well as why they love PIrate Captain: he provides the ham while hamming it up. He provides adventure. With Dug we get they like him and the chief and they like their lives, but we don't get much of a sense of community and the film banks on it too hard to get away with failing at it just as hard. I still root for them, but it's hard not to root against rich assholes wanting to enslave them. It's like Space Jam if it didn't make you care about the Looney Tunes but withou decades of already carring about them as a cushion.

The jokes could save the film but they don't relaly make the cast distinct or funny enough and don't provide them frequently enough to matter. There are enough good ones to make the film still decent from Nooth's dealings with the queen's messag ebird which mimics her, the queen herslef bringing her own commentary team, the commentary team having puppets and saying "puppets dont' lie', Dug falling down a bunch of stairs, or just general puns like one of the commentators calling them Early Man United. I'm sure if I was more familiar with Football in Britian, Ted Lasso only gets you so far, i'd probably laugh at more, but as it is it relies on that a bit too much to be funny if you don't watch the great game. Which tbf is less likely anywhere lese in thew orld, but still an entry for me and even beyond that the rest of the stone age jokes just dont' land. They get pretty basic with the training the only one making me laugh when they play a combo of hexgon heat and bumper balls that also makes them focus. There's good scattered jokes that work enough to make it watchable but they really coudl've done more to both sell their progress and the jokes. Instead ther'es just nothing to relaly care about till the next joke floats you by. There are a bunch of great visual gags like Tooth's minon getting a foam finger stuck on his head and having to point with it or making their shoes out of local catipllars, just not enough to be as joke a minute as pirates or either of the wallace and gromit films with not enough heart to compensate.

The films one ace in the hole and the one thing it gets absoltuely right is the animation. Early Man is easily the most gorgeous Aardman film i've seen and Pirates was damn impressive visually. The backdrops are haunting beautiful each setting, the valley, the bronze city and the badlands are wonderfully animated and a lot of the weaker jokes are elevated simply by having such expressive gorgeous animation. It's not enough to make the film great, but it is enough to deserve a watch. The detail on the costumes from the cavemen's togas to their eventual uniforms to the bronze age togas and their own uniforms are great, you can see the fine detail on the hair.. it's all so damn good. I had high expectations but boy oh boy is this film just pretty to look at. Any time I paused it the frame was great.. till the amazon ad came in.

Early Man is far from Aardman's best films, not having the heart or joke denseity to really stand out. I can see why it's mostly forgotten. That said.. it's still charmingly british and gorgeous to look at enough to merit a watch, it just dosen't merit multiple like the rest and for a studio that for the most part has delivered banger after banger, it is a bit disapointing. It's Aardman's Equivlent of the Boxtrolls: not necesiarlly horrible, but not nearly good as everything else this stuidos done. Thanks for reading and if you liked this review please consider following for more and joining my patreon

Interesting, very interesting. I find it curious that this competition features Aardman films that prioritized comedy over script (yes, also Pirates: A Band of Misfits does, but there's more desire there.)

Both protagonists have similar goals and are threatened by a corrupt leader who detests those of his kind or species.

Source: https://www.donsmaps.com/humanevolution.html