First Man

This is an entertaining jump between the different stages of life that our ancestors went through on their way to becoming human. On the whole, it provides some great information about the steps that were taken, but mixed up among all of that is a lot of guesswork and straight up invented scenarios for the sake of drama. The beginning stages at 25 million years ago already have them acting more human than even modern chimpanzees, of which this is supposedly a common ancestor we share (Chimps and Humans share our last common ancestor between 10 and 8 million years ago)

The makeup is uncanny, and I never can forget that I'm just watching a bunch of humans in suits, which just never look very good? The Walking With Cavemen series looked far more convincing over 10 years ago.

The stories that are told can be entertaining, but the amount of baseless conjecture makes this absolutely useless as a documentary. I'd recommend Out of the Cradle as an alternative, which tells the story of our evolution with more up-to-date science than the Walking With series, but honestly they're both superior to this.

This documentary is an amazingly written, directed, acted, and filmed set of scenes dramatizing individual occurrences of collective knowledge evolution in localized groups! They pause at unexplored or recently revised points in human anthropology and propose scenarios in which specific discoveries may have been made. Well researched and beautifully narrated.

What a great journey. I don't know if all of the facts are correct, but they seem to be. To me, the reflections of humanity in our early ancestors are interesting. I see some other comments here saying the timeline isn't correct, but this story and the archeology is changing all the time anyway, so I imagine it would be tough to get this spot on. In any case, really fascinating to see this brought to life.

The make up is better than expected, and while artistic license has been taken with the narrative, they are good examples of behaviours.

An ambitious and enjoyable film. It does seem to have the feel of a TV documentary, which perhaps it is.

Of course, there are some inaccuracies here and there, but I guess that that much cinematic freedom must be given in order for this documentary to not turn boring. Dramatisation has been kept to the minimum so that this film is enjoyable while not straying too far from hardcore science. Must watch for every homo sapien on this planet.

If the males of each species were really as awful as this "documentary" claims, we would never have managed to evolve at all. Useless things don't survive. Bad ideas don't survive. Male and female genders of each species have a distinct purpose, and are neither good or bad. But you wouldn't know it from watching this gender studies hot garbage. Don't waste your time. If there was an evolutionary biologist involved in this production, they should be ashamed of themselves.

That said, the production values were actually not bad. It was pretty to look at. The actors were fine, even if the makeup was a little uncanny valley.