The Croods 2 | A colorful fantasy that takes us to the worlds of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

- Advertisement -

The Croods 2 | A colorful fantasy that takes us to the worlds of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

After the first film was released in 2013, “The Croods” received two Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Animated Film, and DreamWorks took a lot of time to release the second movie, “A New Age”, whose production was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many animators Complete the film and work on it from home, until finally “The Croods 2” movie was released after seven years, in November 2020.

- Advertisement -

The Croods 2 | A colorful fantasy that takes us to the worlds of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

The movie “The Croods 2” directed by “Joel Crawford” and the story of “Chris Sanders” known for his previous works “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Lilo & Stitch” in partnership with “Curd Demico” who also worked on “Vivo.” In this film, we follow an adventure full of fun and imaginary creatures not mentioned in history books with the Crood family in the Stone Age, during a fictional era called “The Croodaceous Age”.

What distinguished the film most is the presence of a large group of stars who excelled in the voice performance of the characters and made the film receive a lot of praise, such as Oscar winners “Emma Stone”, “Nicolas Cage” and “Cloris Leachman”, in addition to international stars “Ryan Reynolds” and “Peter” Dinklage”.

The sequel came as a delightfully cute and easy to watch, full of color and suspenseful imagination, earning a Golden Globe nomination and receiving generally positive reviews.

The cultural conflict between the Croods and Petermans

The first movie ended with “The Croods” realizing the difference between the struggle to survive, and living it freely with all that it offers them, even the dangers. And she rejects all that is different, to a family that lives and travels in the wilderness to discover the outside world and on a permanent adventure fraught with newness.

The second film, “A New Age”, continues the family’s journey in the wilderness, with the family’s father “Grug” upset when he sees his daughter “Abe” falling in love with “Guy” because one of his basic principles in life is that his family should always stay together, and he hates the possibility of In the future, Eep leaves them to adopt her new life and family with Guy.

In the film, we see their meeting with the “The Betterman’s” family when they break into their farm by chance. After his parents died a few years ago.

- Advertisement -

The vast differences in lifestyle between the two families become immediately apparent to the viewer, as “The Betterman’s” approach urbanism, inventing concepts that were vague to the Croods such as walls, windows, and elevators.

We also see Phil and Hope’s meta-sense of the Croods, their quest to separate Abe from Guy, and their desire to reunite him with their daughter Dawn, as they try to convince the Croods that Guy, the smart and sophisticated young man, should live with Benny. His kind, and that they have to leave without him, and Guy’s fascination with the materialistic and the great development in the Peterman house created a distance between him and Eep because he made her feel that she did not belong to that development and that she and her family were completely different from them.

“Privacy promotes individualism” is the unofficial slogan of the Petermans, who believe in the importance of independence and sleep in a separate room for example, unlike the Croods, who believe that the herd should stay together no matter what. With the great differences between the two families suddenly putting their lives at risk, they realize that working together with each other’s strengths and embracing their differences is the only way to move forward and live in a civilized society.

The film also spreads a message about the strength of the girls and the importance of their work together, for example, when they meet Dawn and instead of having problems between her and Abe to get Guy into a completely unnecessary love triangle, we see Abe’s overwhelming happiness for meeting a girl of her age, becoming Two close friends throughout the film, in addition to highlighting the old “Gran” and giving her an important role in the rescue operation that takes place at the end of the film.

Similarities between “The Croods 2” and its first part

The first film focused on the world in which the story was written, unlike the movie “A New Age”, which shed light on its characters and made them the focus of the film, and the film deals with two main themes that he committed to in both parts: the first is the parents’ fear and their confinement to the surroundings of their children, as “Abe” suffered in the first part. From her stubborn father who prevented her from leaving the cave for fear of the unknown, we see him with Peterman’s daughter “Down” when her parents built a large wall separating the farm from the outside world, and completely prevented her from leaving to explore life outside it, and this was a reason for the connection of the two girls to each other and reinforced the idea of ​​similarity and proximity People are connected no matter how different their lifestyles are.

In addition to meeting the new and the importance of accepting the difference in the first part when the Croods meet with “Guy”, the young man who taught them to make fire and told them about (the end of the world) and helped them change their view of the outside world completely, we see a convergence of that in the second part when we meet each of the family Peterman and Al Crood get together, and there are a lot of disagreements between them first, to reach compatibility and coexistence at the end of the movie.

How close is the movie to historical facts?

Although the makers of the film said that they did not adhere to the information we had about the history of primitive times, we can see that returning to Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species, we can see that the Croods are Neanderthals, and perhaps the closest in form is Father “Grug” with his large chest and nose pulled forward, Unlike, for example, his wife “Ugga“, who appears to be less similar to them than “Grog” and her mother, “Gran”.

As for Eb, our main character, long with red hair and green eyes, studies have shown that less than 1% of Neanderthals had red hair because the individuals that lived in a warm climate such as The Croods, most of them were short in stature with a dark color to their eyes and skin.

We also see by reference to the research that the main characteristic of their lifestyle is nomadism, and that hunting was essential to their survival, and is present in the life of the Crood family, in addition to studies that found that the Neanderthals, contrary to the image that we have of them, were very sensitive and emotional, and have high intelligence and ability On planning and team collaboration, which is what we see in our characters in the movie for sure.

Research also found that over the 300,000 years of the Neanderthals’ existence, their culture was very stable and narrow, for example, their tools did not change despite the passage of hundreds of thousands of years, and they were limited in creativity and innovation, and this can be linked, for example, to the “Grug” mentality, which has been rejecting change since The first movie and his constant fear of anything new and when he met “Guy”.

In a difference between the facts about the Neanderthals and the movie, studies have found that the Neanderthals did use fire, and the movie depicted the opposite when we saw that the Croods had no idea what fire was and that “Guy” was the first to introduce them to it and how it was made.

We also see that both “Guy” and the Peterman family are Homo sapiens, the species to which our human race belongs. For example, we see the great difference in their faces and the way they stand and walk, in their lack of brutality and dazzling creativity, and their resort to a safe and more comfortable life based on agriculture and livestock.

As for the love story of “ Eep ” and “ Guy ”, contrary to the beliefs that modern humans have swept the Neanderthal species and that it became extinct because of them, DNA studies have revealed a mosaic of population groups and an overlap between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens about 40 thousand years ago, and that intermarriage between them has already been done.

The Croods 2 | A colorful fantasy that takes us to the worlds of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

- Advertisement -

Latest Posts

Enable Notifications OK No thanks