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Tom Hiddlesnce touted as James Bond. w he’s a villain in Park’s brilliant Age football flick, an. om, 36, jokes that ctor is “the first o really see me for ”. ift’s former squeeze tar-studded squad acters in the new animation, which use the “Beautiful the baddies. r Eddie Redmayne, rones’ Maisie Wilmics Johnny Vegas n are in the line-up. he latest creation of rdman Animations, which gave us Wallace And Gromit, Shaun The Sheep and the blockbuster Chicken Run.
Now they’ve turned their plasticine powers to prehistory and the origins of football itself.
After a comet crashes to Earth killing the dinosaurs – somewhere near Manchester – it hilariously brings football to Neanderthals.
The story then fast forwards to a Stone Age tribe living in an idyllic valley. They’re happy hunting rabbits until their home is threatened by Hiddleston’s evil, overweight Lord Nooth of the more advanced Bronze Age City.
Hero Dug, voiced by Fantastic Beasts star Redmayne, and his wild boar sidekick Hognob decide to fight back, despite their foes having armoured mammoths.
After visiting Bronze Age City and discovering football, they convince tribe chief Bobnar, played by Timothy Spall, to challenge Nooth’s Real Bronzio to a match instead.
As they try and master the sport they’re helped by talented Bronze Age player Goona (pleasing Arsenal fans everywhere) voiced by Williams. Vegas is caveman Asbo, while Brydon voices a John Motsonstyle commentator.
The movie, initially called Early Man United, is packed with football puns and action replays.
Nick Park, 59, says he had long wanted to make a film featuring dinos and cavemen, but then he got the idea to make it about football, even though he isn’t a fan.
He explains: “I was doodling a caveman holding, typically, a club, SLOW: One 40-second scene took eight weeks to shoot when I started to think about the idea of sport.
“It all came down to the fact that I’d never seen an underdog prehistoric sports movie.
“This idea started to develop, about what if sport, particularly football in this case, brought about civilisation. It seemed to fit with the whole tribal nature of football.”
“I wanted to make a big family adventure comedy that has a quirky element of football in it.
“I was inspired very much by the film Gladiator. I wanted to do a football match that had that kind of excitement to it. Just how to stage a football match in a cinematic way. That was a big challenge.”
Technically the movie was a huge challenge – animators even had to construct a 10ft-tall model football stadium, complete with trap doors so they could make tiny movements to the models for each shot.
One scene involved 78 moving parts which had to be adjusted for each frame of film.
Redmayne, who admits to being a terrible footballer, was amazed by the sets. He said: “It was so vast and yet on such a tiny scale… the intricacy of the model making. You could get lost in it.”
It turns out that Dug’s ancestors actually invented the game after all, before giving it up when everyone else got better at it.
And Hiddleston’s French accent as the dastardly Nooth gives the film a Brexit flavour too.
So can the Stone Age tribe overcome 3,000,000 years of hurt? There’s always hope. ¬
Early Man is out now.