If you had to put your finger on why Wallace and Gromit are so popular it’s because lots of fingers have been put on them.
Look carefully at the characters and you can see flitting fingerprints that have shaped faces and meticulously moulded movements in 24 separate frames per second. Animators at Aardman have a target of five seconds of film per week.
It’s been 35 years since A Grand Day Out launched hapless inventor Wallace and his dependable dog Gromit to the moon. The Wrong Trousers in 1993 confirmed them as a beloved British double act and in the years since they have won Oscars, global success and been a childhood staple of multiple generations.
Wallace and Gromit in 1993’s The Wrong Trousers. Image: Maximum Film/Alamy Stock Photo
This year’s Christmas Day centrepiece on the BBC is their new adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl, the first full-length feature starring Wallace and Gromit since 2005’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
It has taken years to develop. The pair’s creator Nick Park says that it took screening the film in front of preview audiences to confirm whether the jokes were actually funny.
Advertisement
Advertisement
“You’ve lived with the gags for so long, it’s very gratifying after all that work to feel the audience reaction,” he tells Big Issue from the studio’s HQ in Bristol.
“It’s incredible that it is regular fayre at Christmastime and holidays. When I first started with A Grand Day Out at college, it was just a daft thing. Even the names were stupid ones I thought up as a student and now they’re household names. It’s unexpected.”
Vengeance Most Fowl is welcome return to Wallace and Gromit’s world; a version of Britain that exists slightly out of step with reality and therefore a place that has never been more appealing.
When Wallace invents a ‘smart gnome’ named Norbot to help Gromit with the gardening, the initially efficient assistant causes havoc after being hacked by a familiar foe.
Yes, evil mastermind and master of disguise Feathers McGraw is back. Since the events of The Wrong Trousers, Park says he’s been languishing in prison (well, in a zoo) for 30 years, plotting his revenge.
“We tend to be powered by the idea and if that isn’t there then there isn’t a movie,” Park explains. “This, by the way, didn’t start as a full-length feature. It started as a half hour about Wallace inventing a robot gnome, but it was always lacking something.
Advertisement
“Feathers was a much later idea. There was some sinister element missing. Who’s behind everything, why do they turn evil? Feathers was the perfect gift that unlocked it.
“I remember pitching the idea and a chill went up everyone’s spine. He gave the film a sparkle and real tension. It was suddenly very personal as well, someone that Wallace and Gromit had locked up years ago.”
“Feathers crashed the party and made it a very good party,” adds Merlin Crossingham, an Aardman veteran who co-directed with Park. “You’ve got to love to hate your villains. And Feathers is well-loved and well-hated. I’m fascinated by the power of a such a simple character, he doesn’t really do much but he has such screen presence.”
Making characters that don’t speak and have limited expressions – not even mouths – seem fully-rounded isn’t easy.
“It’s a massive challenge but we always want to turn that into a strength,” Park says. “The simplicity of Feathers makes him cinematic somehow. You can’t just rely on dialogue, you’ve got to use the camera and the lighting and the music. Only giving him the most minimal movements, just a blink, tells you the cogs are turning.”
“It’s not easy to do but it is a bit of a superpower,” adds Crossingham. “Less is more, especially with Gromit. He’s got a great expressive brow and he’s very articulate in the way he moves so he can have a strong physical performance. But Feathers doesn’t even have that. He just moves his head a little and sort of glides through scenes. We would debate making him blink on some occasions because holding him back just made him more powerful and mysterious.”
The fact that characters like Gromit and Feathers feel real and have become part of popular culture is testament to the miraculous animation. In the age of AI where algorithms increasingly shape and mould our own lives, stop motion as an art form feels more vital than ever.
“At the heart of it is the craft and the people,” Crossingham says. “I do find that a bit of a tonic in the current climate of pervasive digital imagery and image manipulation. We should acknowledge that AI is everywhere. You have to be very careful when you say I haven’t used AI because if you use a smartphone you’re engaging with AI in some form, but we’ve not used it for image creation or voice on this film.”
The team does embrace technology to help with visual effects that clay can’t conjure up by itself, but their more traditional method of moviemaking remains their USP according to Park.
“There are many great studios that do wonderful work but we stand out because of it,” he says. “As long as your characters are good and your stories are compelling, then in one sense the medium doesn’t matter – but I think in our case, it really does matter.
“With clay, you restrict yourself. There’s something about the character animation that brings with it a certain humour and a kind of irony because it’s clay. We’re creating a massive villain but he’s that big,” he says, holding up his fingers a few inches apart. “Total freedom doesn’t help.”
It took almost 20 years for a new Wallace and Gromit feature film but we needn’t wait that long for the next one. Helpfully, I asked an AI chatbot to come up with another plot. In moments it churned out a treatment for Wallace & Gromit: The Cheddar Chase giving a three-act summary (the story is about a cheesemaking machine that causes meltdown) with a list of themes (friendship and teamwork, creative problem-solving, the charm of small-town life and good cheese) and visual highlights (including a thrilling chase though the town of Wensleydale – the AI has seemingly mistaken an approximation of Wigan for the pair’s favourite fromage – and a cameo from Shaun the Sheep).
Advertisement
I explain the summary to the directors.
“I’m just writing that down,” says Park.
“It’s topline plagiarism, isn’t it?” says Crossingham. “It’s not actually had an idea. It’s like a very smart cross-referencing system that cherry-picks bits that it thinks are relevant.”
What’s missing from AI’s attempt is the delightful detail, heartfelt humour, craft, care and purpose.
If there’s a message in Vengeance Most Fowl, it’s one that’s been part of Wallace and Gromit from the beginning. Technology is great – but if you have trouble getting up in the morning, a bed that tips you out of it may not be the answer; and spreading jam on your toast isn’t too much of a chore and less messy than a contraption that fires splodges of it around the kitchen.
“Thematically, the film is about that balance,” Crossingham says. “We’re not saying tech is bad. In fact, tech is great in many ways. But Gromit enjoys the process of gardening. It’s not about doing it fast.”
Advertisement
Park continues: “How much does it enhance our humanity, or how much does it take away and diminish our humanity? Gardening is a good thing to do, creating something is satisfying thing to do, why take that away from human beings?”
That’s why the fingerprints are so important, Crossingham says: “The little lumps and the bumps and the irregularities that come from the human touch are to be embraced.”
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is on BBC One at 6.10pm on Christmas Day.
Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. This Christmas, you can make a lasting change on a vendor’s life. Buy a magazine from your local vendor in the street every week. If you can’t reach them, buy a Vendor Support Kit.
