Of all the films vying for honors in this year’s awards season, only one heralds the return of not just one of cinema’s most iconic duos, but one of its most dastardly villains.
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” — longlisted in BAFTA categories for outstanding British film, children’s and family film and animated film, and expected to be in the mix for the animated feature Oscar — marks the first film starring Aardman’s stop-motion animation heroes since 2008’s Oscar-nominated short “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (and the first feature since 2005’s Oscar-winning “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”).
While any new project starring Nick Park’s beloved inventor and his pet dog is cause for celebration, “Vengeance Most Fowl” also brings back Feathers McGraw, the would-be diamond thief and master of disguise penguin last seen being locked up at the end of 2003’s Oscar-winning classic “The Wrong Trousers” (and after a train chase scene considered one of the finest — animated or otherwise — in film history).
For Park, who co-directed the latest Wallace & Gromit with Merlin Crossingham, bringing Feathers back was never something that he’d originally considered, despite an ongoing appreciation for the character that hasn’t diminished over the years.
“I’ve never really been into bringing characters back in the Wallace & Gromit films, it was more just an opportunity that seemed just right,” he says, speaking from Aardman’s main studio in the British city of Bristol. “People had mentioned it, but it had never been a serious question.”
It was only in the writing process (Park co-wrote the story with regular Aardman scribe Mark Burton) when they needed “some darkness” in a film about garden gnomes going wrong (of course) that the idea hit. “It was like a lightning strike… Feathers could be behind all this!”
Despite far from being the most animated of the characters in “Vengeance Most Fowl” (Feathers is known mostly for his cold, blank stare), the actually process of animating him was “the most challenging thing” about the film, claims Park.
“Keeping him on this very steady line of not getting expressive and keeping the mystery behind the eyes — it’s been quite a feat, because it all depends on that lack of expression, that kind of simplicity. It’s his strength.”
Regarding the expressionless eyes, 500 black pins were sourced to find a pinhead the right size, with the team carefully measuring each one. From the 500, just 15 suitable pairs were found.
Coincidentally, the return of Feathers McGraw isn’t the first time Aardman — or Park — has brought back one of its famous baddies. Last year’s “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” which was directed by Sam Fell (Park directed the original but was busy with Wallace & Gromit for the sequel), saw the grand return of the ferocious chicken-hating Mrs Tweedy. Both Feathers and Tweedy may be giants in the stop-motion antagonist world, but who’s the worst and, most importantly, who would win in a fight?
“It’s a bit like asking ‘would you like to wrestle a horse-sized penguin or a penguin-sized horse?,” suggests Crossingham. “I don’t know. They’re both pretty bad.”
Adds Park: “But a penguin-sized horse would be easier though.”
