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In “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” director Nick Park finally explores the unhealthy consequences of Wallace’s obsession with tech invention, which nearly wrecks his friendship with beagle pal Gromit. For the first time, they face an existential crisis after Wallace’s “smart gnome,” Norbot, runs amok as an AI nightmare, thanks to mastermind penguin nemesis, Feathers McGraw (back from “The Wrong Trousers” short).
“There’s always been tension in how Gromit gets on with Wallace, but we’ve never had an arc for Wallace [Ben Whitehead],” Park told IndieWire. “It’s always been a joke that he never learns anything. It’s always inventing to make life easier or better, creating an invention to give Gromit a pat, when all he really wants is a loving pat from Wallace.
“Sort of the last straw is creating Norbot to help with the gardening,” continued Park. “He becomes the new favorite, and Gromit feels abandoned. But the main thing is they’ve kind of lost touch with each other. We didn’t want to be black-and-white by saying that tech is evil. But it does beg the question: How much does tech enhance our human experience or how much does it diminish it?”
Yet Park has difficulty wrapping his head around AI, given the tactile nature of stop-motion animation. ”You’re literally playing with physical objects that you make,” he said. “It’s key to the puppets and environments. And this franchise is remarkably low-fi. It was led by the requirements of the storytelling and the style of the film we were making [despite a cutting-edge aqueduct chase sequence that’s a hybrid of practical and CG effects].”
‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’NetflixMeanwhile, Aardman has upgraded its stop-motion Wallace and Gromit puppets with improved plasticine clay, more silicone and resin, and better armatures and mouth replacement. They were last seen in the 2008 short “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” which followed their first feature, the Oscar-winning “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” from 2005.
Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), though, was a miniature challenge with thin arms and legs and locked eyes and a bottom jaw that swivels up and down like a ventriloquist dummy. “ We actually dialed right back, so that he moved more robotically,” Park added, “so that you knew he was a robot and not a boy in a suit.”
However, the return of Feathers, the little clay puppet with silicone feet and glass pins for eyes, was an afterthought to provide a more sinister force. “When he came aboard, the chill in the room was visceral,” Park said. “He’s graphically so simple, there is nowhere to hide with him. Any little movement that is made by him, you read something into it.
“So the animators who work with Feathers have to work so precisely,” Park added, “especially because our philosophy with him was to keep him very withdrawn and restrained and to move in a very calculated way. We would use cinematic techniques like camera and sound with him much more than we would with other characters.”
‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’Courtesy of Netflix“But once they saw that it was working, they were like, ‘We get it now,'” co-director Merlin Crossingham told IndieWire. “For us, as directors, to be very confident in his stillness, and for animators, who love making things move, that’s really quite challenging. And even amongst our fantastic crew, there’s only a handful that could really nail the performance of Feathers.”
Never trust the penguin, but never underestimate Wallace and Gromit. “The compromises they make about realizing who each other are and what they need, becomes a big part of the story,” Park said. “There’s like an exchange of gifts, really, they both learn something.”
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” is in select theaters on December 18 and will stream on Netflix January 3, 2025.
English (US) ·