The human body is
an extraordinary machine that never ceases to amaze even after heavy research
and familiarity. We, as humans, have the
power to do many things in our lifetime whether it is to score the game winning
goal with an outrageous kick or hit high frequencies at great volumes with our
voices. What if there was a way to take something that is already great and
make it phenomenal? DreamWorks Animation created a phenomenal family of cavemen
in their 2013 3D animated feature film, The
Croods, following a prehistoric family and their struggle to survive the
end of their world. Throughout the film you are reminded that the family has
little difficulty overcoming the adversities of the new, strange world, yet all
the family knows or must believe that to survive, you must never, not be
afraid. The Croods exceeds the laws
of physics by allowing these sensitive characters to be indestructible in times
of life-threatening danger with the use of exaggerating human physical
limitations in mobility and imposing the ability to surpass the expectations
for the deadliest of circumstances.
Human mobility is
very important to consider in animation to create a believable moment that
would otherwise be impossible to execute in the real world. All of the members
of the family have the ability to run at alarming speeds but the most
impressive would be that of the grandmother who was designed as an 80-year-old
female character. During the first hunt, she is given super-human speed that
allows her to keep up with the others in an effort to obtain the family meal
for the day. Realistically, an elderly woman’s muscles can’t generate the
amount of torque necessary for her limbs to produce the excessive nature of her
movements.
Although the
amount of energy exerted from a child such as Sandy is more convincing when
paired with the super-human speed, it is still exaggerated to the point of
impossible proportions. The child, who mostly gets around on all fours, has the
speed of a hungry cheetah chasing its prey.
Another valuable
aspect to mention would be the paths of action and how squash and stretch is
applied to the movement to create wildly fun action scenes. The daughter, Eep
gets pulled in the air in a backbreaking attempt to keep the prize egg from
getting taken away by flying creatures. Clearly her body suffers deep stress as
she holds on to the egg for dear life and gets taken on a whirlwind of twist
and turns, essentially breaking the model for greater effect but still
maintaining believability. A father and daughter moment was taken to a whole
new level when Eep and her father Grug, “put on the breaks” essentially
stopping a mammoth from gaining momentum. They do this by planting their feet
suddenly in an angled fashioned into the hard floor, using only the strength of
their legs to slow down the very large animal. It is understood that humans
carry the majority of strength in our legs, however, certainly not to this
extent. Believability is key. Channeling what we know and what would appear to
be possible given our knowledge helps the viewer to envision this actually
happening with the careful execution of action and reaction in the animation.
In contrast to the
incredible strength and agility of the caveman family, isolated by fear, is
that of a young man who the family meets. Guy represents the modern human Homo
sapiens that actively use their mind rather than might to invent new things
that attribute to his own individual survival. In contrast, Grug endorses the
quintessential Homo Neanderthalensis behavior in which he uses brute force
accompanied by his family’s cooperation to ultimately keep them out of harm’s
way. An example of Guy’s more realistic human behavior would be the scene where
he is first introduced to the family. His reaction of fear is clearly
recognized but subtler than say a Crood would project fear with over-the-top movement
that exaggerates literal boundaries. Guy’s subtle movement, speed limitation,
and his failure to avoid pain where pain is obviously inflicted by great
forces, leave him to depict the elements of physics.
As discussed
previously, Guy was not able to avoid pain where pain was inevitable. On the
contrary, the Croods had no problem cheating a deadly fate. A prime example of
this would be Grug’s “SnapShots,” an idea that Grug created to compensate for
the demeaning quality imposed by the others that he was incapable of an
original thought. These snapshots are made by the application of a flat rock
being slammed across the body at a super high speed that ultimately imprints the
person’s form into the rock in a comedic resemblance of a Polaroid picture.
However, as described in Newton’s second law, the acceleration and mass of the
massive rock slab would create a force so significant that it would shatter the
bones in the families’ bodies, if not kill them when impacted.
Another instance
where these characters avoid severe injury and is a great example of defying
Newton’s first law would be when Grug tackles Guy, causing them to roll and
fall off of a cliff. For an effective comic moment that has been used in many
animated films throughout our time, Grug and Guy both pause in mid-air for just
enough time to see Guy’s hilarious reaction and then they both plunge to the
floor. The Law of Inertia states that an object in motion stays in motion
unless acted upon by an outside force. The moment Grug and Guy are clearly off
the cliff there is no evident force that allows them to sustain from free fall.
Not only can these
characters perform such super-humans acts, they also have the unlikely
proportions in body structures that would further limit their ability to
perform said acts. Grug has tiny legs in comparison to his excessively large
upper body. It would be unlikely that he could stand up on his two legs due to
his center of gravity. Spreading out the legs, however small, creates the
illusion that Grug’s legs are in fact supporting the weight of his body,
ultimately tricking the viewer. Another important aspect to mention in respect
to unlikely proportions or structures would be that a few creatures in this
film are made to look inanimate yet they move without apparent force acting on
an otherwise object or creature at rest. An example of this is when the family
grabs onto a trunk of a tree and the tree begins to move in the same form as an
ostrich, walking as if the tree had become a slippery noodle bending and moving
at its will. It breaks the basic concepts of Physics because the tree would’ve
splintered and cracked as it moved in this fashion. Furthermore, a tree that
massive can’t functionally move in that way because the pressure needed to pump
water from its roots to the top of the canopy would be massive. This may be
overanalyzing the use of inanimate objects in the movie, but still contradicts
the structure of physics.
The Croods does have traces of real-life
movement and believability of balance and weight; however, to convey the story
and give the characters history, several laws of physics were deviated from in
order to create such a world. Prehistoric Earth still leaves many questions
unanswered which opens a wide range of possibilities.
