Back from the caves, and beyond

A falling cinderblock chopped off the ends of a couple of Joel Crawford's toes when he was a child. He got a special cover to pad his wounded toes a few years later when he ran track in high school.

This served as an inspiration for his upcoming feature-film directorial debut, The Croods: A New Age, which will open across the Chinese mainland on Nov 27.

The film's protagonist－a fearless and strong cave girl－shows her scars in one scene. She wears a peanut shell in place of her missing pinky toe.

Major roles in the sequel of the 2013 global hit, The Croods, A New Age, are voiced by Chinese actors Guo Jingfei, Lin Gengxin and Zheng Kai.

"The first Croods is a beloved project in the world," Crawford says in an online video interview with China Daily.

"As a fan of what directors Kirk Demicco and Chris Sanders created and those characters they gifted us, I want to make all the fans feel that their familiar characters are back."

Crawford has worked on multiple DreamWorks films, including the Trolls, Shrek and the Kung Fu Panda franchises. He was invited to helm the Croods sequel around three years ago and teamed up with veteran producer Mark Swift to develop the second installment, pitching a joyful tone.

Picking up from where the first film ends in the fictitious "Croodaceous Age"－sort of like the Stone Age, when primitive people wore fur and lived in caves－the sequel unfolds with a new challenge facing the Croods family.

Grug, the overprotective father, is struggling with his favorite daughter Eep's yearning to leave the patriarchal family with Guy, the nomadic outsider who wins the girl's heart in the first movie.

They face an unprecedented crisis when they encounter a new family who knows how to build tree houses and plant fruit.

As a father of three－two daughters ages 7 and 10, and a 12-year-old son－Crawford says he feels connected to all the characters, who mirror some problems that exist in modern parenting and adolescent education.

Speaking about Grug, who's voiced by Hollywood star Nicolas Cage, as a "burly, big man", the director says the figure is not just as strong-willed as audiences believe but also reveals a tender and vulnerable side while discovering his family must change their rules to accommodate his daughter's love.

"As a kid, I was very wild and very hyper. So, it's funny that I connect to Eep even more," Crawford says, laughing.

The director also explains that he took inspiration from hippie culture to devise the new family's man-bun hairstyle.

The film also features odd-yet-adorable creatures that are mixes of real animals and imagination.

For instance, the new family raises domesticated "chicken seals" and "cow mammoths", and drink "milk "from fictional "land sharks" that look like the actual sea creatures but live on land.

"Punch monkeys", the animal tribe obsessed with bananas, will also return in the sequel with their violent "language" of pummeling each other to communicate.

Crawford says most creatures the Croods came across in the first film served one of two purposes－to eat or be eaten by.

But the sequel's critters are cuter, goofier and more fun, since much of the story takes place in the new family's paradise, behind a safe wall that enables humans to domesticate wildlife, he explains.

Swift, the producer, recalls in another interview that around 300 animators worked on the sequel, with each staying on the project for a year on average.

"We said to the artists: 'Go crazy. Draw as many characters as you want.' Probably for every 15 characters that they design, we pick one. There are so many more that we just don't have space in the movie to do," he says.

Although COVID-19 affected production, Swift says they were lucky to finish most of the job before the outbreak, with stars Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds voicing the major characters in the original English version. Voiceovers proved the biggest challenge during quarantine.

"As we still had some to pick up, we were sending them microphones and computer equipment," Swift says.

"Some people even recorded in a closet because that was the quietest room in their house."

For Swift, who's also known for producing DreamWorks' Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, the new film continues the enduring charm of animated works that make us see ourselves in a fairy tale-style story.

"Look. It's a fantastic world. But we're really making a story that could be told today, which is about a family and all the things all families go through," he says.

With Chinese cinemas performing somewhat lackluster in the wake of the post-National Day box-office bonanza due to a shortage of attractive blockbusters, the film is likely to uplift the sluggish market.

It has been listed as the second most anticipated film, following Zhang Yimou's One Second, on the popular-review aggregator Douban.