Of all of the movies vying for honors on this 12 months’s awards season, just one heralds the return of not simply one in all cinema’s most iconic duos, however one in all its most dastardly villains.
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” — longlisted in BAFTA classes for excellent British movie, kids’s and household movie and animated movie, and anticipated to be within the combine for the animated characteristic Oscar — marks the primary movie starring Aardman’s stop-motion animation heroes since 2008’s Oscar-nominated brief “A Matter of Loaf and Demise” (and the primary characteristic since 2005’s Oscar-winning “The Curse of the Have been-Rabbit”).
Whereas any new mission starring Nick Park’s beloved inventor and his pet canine is trigger for celebration, “Vengeance Most Fowl” additionally brings again Feathers McGraw, the would-be diamond thief and grasp of disguise penguin final seen being locked up on the finish of 2003’s Oscar-winning basic “The Fallacious Trousers” (and after a prepare chase scene thought of one of many most interesting — animated or in any other case — in movie historical past).
For Park, who co-directed the newest Wallace & Gromit with Merlin Crossingham, bringing Feathers again was by no means one thing that he’d initially thought of, regardless of an ongoing appreciation for the character that hasn’t diminished through the years.
“I’ve by no means actually been into bringing characters again within the Wallace & Gromit movies, it was extra simply a possibility that appeared excellent,” he says, talking from Aardman’s principal studio within the British metropolis of Bristol. “Individuals had talked about it, nevertheless it had by no means been a critical query.”
It was solely within the writing course of (Park co-wrote the story with common Aardman scribe Mark Burton) after they wanted “some darkness” in a movie about backyard gnomes going fallacious (in fact) that the concept hit. “It was like a lightning strike… Feathers might be behind all this!”
Regardless of removed from being probably the most animated of the characters in “Vengeance Most Fowl” (Feathers is thought principally for his chilly, clean stare), the truly means of animating him was “probably the most difficult factor” concerning the movie, claims Park.
“Retaining him on this very regular line of not getting expressive and conserving the thriller behind the eyes — it’s been fairly a feat, as a result of all of it relies on that lack of expression, that form of simplicity. It’s his energy.”
Relating to the expressionless eyes, 500 black pins have been sourced to discover a pinhead the precise dimension, with the staff rigorously measuring each. From the five hundred, simply 15 appropriate pairs have been discovered.
Coincidentally, the return of Feathers McGraw isn’t the primary time Aardman — or Park — has introduced again one in all its well-known baddies. Final 12 months’s “Rooster Run: Daybreak of the Nugget,” which was directed by Sam Fell (Park directed the unique however was busy with Wallace & Gromit for the sequel), noticed the grand return of the ferocious chicken-hating Mrs Tweedy. Each Feathers and Tweedy could also be giants within the stop-motion antagonist world, however who’s the worst and, most significantly, who would win in a struggle?
“It’s a bit like asking ‘would you prefer to wrestle a horse-sized penguin or a penguin-sized horse?,” suggests Crossingham. “I don’t know. They’re each fairly dangerous.”
Provides Park: “However a penguin-sized horse could be simpler although.”