The latest world premiere of the 2005 Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit took place on October 27 at the prestigious AFI Fest 2024 in Los Angeles.
Nick Park’s iconic clay figures first appeared in the 1989 Oscar-nominated short film A Grand Day Out, and now they continue their adventures in a new full-length animated feature film.
The new movie, titled Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, is a direct sequel to Park’s 1993 short film The Wrong Trousers, which introduced the cunning jewel thief penguin, Feathers McGraw.
In the new film, Wallace becomes even more reliant on technology and creates Norbot, a “smart garden gnome” powered by artificial intelligence. When Norbot is reprogrammed into a criminal by the deranged penguin serving a life sentence at the zoo, it’s up to Gromit to rescue his unsuspecting master, Wallace.
The film was co-directed by Park and Merlin Crossingham, one of the animators on Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, sparking an intriguing dialogue on artificial intelligence. Although the creators likely did not anticipate the film’s release would coincide with Tesla’s introduction of humanoid robots, the parallel undeniably gives a chilling edge to viewers sensitive to such themes. Reading between the lines, the film could even serve as a serious warning about the fatal consequences we may face if robots fall into the wrong hands and are centrally controlled.
NickPark talked about how it’s very important that the figures still show human fingerprints because this reveals how much heart and how many people’s work went into this film. Nick Park personally attended the premiere in Los Angeles, during a post-screening talk, emphasizing the importance of human labor in contrast to technology.
Following the world premiere of Vengeance Most Fowl, the film will debut on the BBC in the UK at Christmas and will be available globally on Netflix on January 3.
– Virág Vida –
