Feat of clay: Park brings ‘Early Man’ to prehistoric life
With four Oscars and six Academy Award nominations, Britain’s Nick Park makes his quirky Claymation comedies, like this week’s “Early Man,” look easy peasy.
Yet the director, producer and writer behind Aardman Animations’ “Wallace and Gromit,” “Chicken Run” and “The Curse of the WereRabbit” never rests on his laurels.
“All the time with every film you never know how it’s going to do. Everything is a risk,” Park, 59, said.
“Feature films take time and blood, sweat and tears. I found the caveman drawing I first did for ‘Early Man’ and that was 2010. It’s been five years’ work. With that kind of commitment you’ve got to believe in the work — and that it’s going to be funny.”
“Early Man” is a soccer spoof that creates a classic confrontation between Stone Age cavemen and women with their more advanced Bronze Age descendants.
“First, I wanted to make a movie about cavemen and women but from a different angle and more of an Aardman approach,” Park said.
“I drew a caveman hitting a rock and that made me think of a sport. Then it started with ‘What if a bunch of idiotic cavemen had to use their wits and not use their weapons’?
“That was the idea and then it became bigger with the Stone Age meets the Bronze Age. And soccer is like a religion in the U.K.”
“Early Man” revels in its characters made out of clay, not digital creations. They are really bizarre and quirky looking, not at all realistic.
Park’s roster of voice talent is topped by Eddie Red mayne as Dug, the hapless Stone Age hero who must rally his mates to function as a team. Tom Hiddleston (Loki in the “Thor” movies) is the evil arrogant plotter Lord Nooth, and Maisie Williams (“Game of Thrones”) is Goona, the Bronze Ager who must battle gender discrimination to play.
But it’s Park who voices the film’s funniest, scenestealing player, a smart pig named Hognob.
“That was quite by accident really,” he said. “We make the film beginning with storyboards and put a reel together to find out how the scenes play and put a temp soundtrack on that.
“I was doing Hognob all that time and when it came time to cast the film, a few colleagues said, ‘Why don’t you do Hognob?’ ”
And the rest is pigstory. (“Early Man” opens Friday.)