The Animation Revolution

A common argument is that animation isn’t a genre, but rather a medium in which many different types of stories can be told. Even when considering the mainstream films that are broadly aimed at children, there are distinctions within tone, thematic intent, and style; it doesn’t take a film scholar to understand that a mature, existentialist character drama like The Boy and the Heron doesn’t belong in the same category as crass, slapstick entertainment like Minions. That said, animated films get bundled together when there’s consideration for the significant work ethic required to make even the most minor of projects.

Aardman Animation is representative of a niche field, “claymation,” in which malleable plasticine clay is utilized to craft every character, environment, and background detail. All animation requires hyper awareness on the part of the artists, but Aardman is one of the few studios that built stories from the ground up. Although Aardman found its roots in short-form content for Bristol’s Channel 4, the studio broke into the cinematic landscape when 2000’s Chicken Run became the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all-time (a title it still retains). Aardman’s string of successes was comparable to that of early Pixar, as the studio’s 2005 Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

In the decades since Aardman first announced itself as a competitor within the “animation wars,” the market has changed rapidly as the result of corporate consolidation. 2D animation, a more labor-intensive alternate to the mainstream 3D method, has become all but extinct on the big screen. Studios like Pixar, which were founded on the ideals of originality, have ratcheted up the production of sequels, a trend that’s unlikely to slow down in wake of the nearly $1.7 billion gross of Inside Out 2. What constitutes a “film” has itself become malleable; while Warner Brothers trashed a nearly finished Scooby-Doo film for the sake of a tax write-off, Walt Disney Animation merged several episodes of a planned streaming series to make Moana 2, which has made close to $1 billion at the global box office.

Even if the painstaking process of claymation was always a novelty, it has become representative of a nearly extinct degree of artistic integrity when compared to its competitors. Aardman hasn’t changed much since its inception; the only sign that it’s bent the knee to commercialization is the rampant production of sequels, as Aardman has revisited established hit franchises with A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Reviews for both were respectful, if not enthusiastic; not every sequel will be The Empire Strikes Back, but Aardman did justify a continuation of their franchises with films that seemed to have ideas of their own.

The studio’s latest, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, is representative of a more complex subcategory of “legacy sequel.” Although it’s technically a continuation of the film from 2005, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is centered on characters that’ve been present since the studio’s origins. The homely inventor Wallace and his intuitive beagle Gromit debuted in the 1989 short film A Grand Day Out, and have appeared in several subsequent shorts, specials, and spin-off projects. Even if Aardman’s reach is much smaller, Wallace and Gromit are as essential to the company’s identity as Mickey Mouse is to Disney.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is intended to be the ambassador for Aardman’s identity as a creative enterprise, but it’s also a compelling sequel that has the right blend of nostalgia and maturity. Aardman’s brilliance has always featured a density of jokes, which may be why the studio’s most beloved projects tend to be its short-form content. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl has woven several entertaining set pieces together, each of which could justify a short of their own. However, there’s an overarching narrative structure that deals with more modern ideas.

The main antagonist of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is the penguin criminal mastermind known as “Feathers McGraw,” who first appeared in the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers. Feathers is more a punchline than a true villain; any of his extravagant evil heists results in an inventive series of contraptions reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Nonetheless, the presence of a larger threat allows the film to introduce a more concentrated analysis of artificial intelligence.

Animator jobs have yielded to artificial intelligence programs, as the diversion of work to a non-organic entity has allowed stricter mandates and efficiency. The downside is that a robot isn’t capable of original thought, and can’t react to a situation through the use of emotion. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl makes use of a rather extreme example; after Wallace becomes reliant on robotic garden gnomes to take care of his property, his inventions are hacked by Feathers, who’s thus able to escape from prison.

The argument is more complex than a warning that all technology is evil. There’s nothing intentionally threatening about the garden gnomes, but they lack the ability to make moral judgments, and can be hijacked for any purpose. In this scenario, Aardman likely sees itself as Wallace; they’re a human hand that has ensured that technology is a tool, and not a replacement for artistry.