While a relative unknown only a few years ago, there’s a good chance that you’ve now heard of Eddie Redmayn. He’s the star of Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts. He’s also the voice of the hero in animated comedy Early Man, the latest film from the makers of Wallace and Gromit. But how extensive IS his knowledge of those rather fantastic beasts? As Early Man is set in caveman times, and includes a bunch of prehistoric creatures, we thought we’d put Eddie Redmayne to the test.
Can he tell what prehistoric beasts really existed? Is Dracorex Hogwartsia a real dinosaur? And more to the point, can he tell the fantastic beasts dotted among them? To make things trickier still, we tossed in a couple of other pop culture teasers designed to throw him off.
Watch Eddie Redmayne employ a great deal of guesswork, and make a spectacular mess of telling us what a Diricawl is, in the video above.
What is ‘Early Man’?
Early Man is the latest film from Aardman Studios, the team behind the Wallace and Gromit films, Chicken Run and Shaun the Sheep, among others. Their stop-motion animation has charm in spades, and has won the studio a variety of awards, including a handful of Oscars. Early Man is set in prehistoric times and tells the story of a Stone Age tribe who come up against progress. They take on their Bronze Age counterparts via a football match with everything at stake.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A plucky cave man named Dug (Redmayne), his sidekick Hognob and the rest of their tribe face a grave threat to their simple existence. Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston) plans to take over their land and transform it into a giant mine, forcing Dug and his clan to dig for precious metals. Not ready to go down without a fight, Dug and Hognob must unite their people in an epic quest to defeat a mighty enemy – the Bronze Age.
Early Man is out now in the UK and hits US screens on February 16.