‘Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Review: Aardman Fights Off the Machines
Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham warn society against the use of Artificial Intelligence through the figures of Wallace and Gromit in their latest feature, Vengeance Most Fowl.
Twenty years (can you believe it?) after the release of their first feature-length animated offering, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit are back with their latest movie, Vengeance Most Fowl. For those who have only watched Aardman’s shorts and features (like yours truly), the shift from the late Peter Sallis to Ben Whitehead as the eccentric cheese-loving inventor may be a bit abrupt, but one acclimates quite easily to a vocal turn that’s perfectly in-tune to what Sallis laid out when he first played the character in 1989’s A Grand Day Out.
Vengeance Most Fowl is also the first film in the Wallace & Gromit series to be a direct continuation of a past adventure (all installments, except this new one, tell self-contained stories), with Feathers McGraw exacting his vengeance against Wallace for putting him behind bars at the end of the Academy Award-winning The Wrong Trousers. From his cell in the Zoo, he devises a master plan to ruin the inventor’s reputation, as he is now all in on automation and Artificial Intelligence, a technology that Gromit vehemently despises.
Gromit enjoys his daily activities – from reading the newspaper to sipping a nice cup of tea and gardening. The fleeting moments we observe the dog working in his garden are peaceful for him and act as a moment of “recharge” away from the exuberant inventions Wallace keeps creating, completely forgetting what makes this life worth living. However, since he’s always on the “cutting edge,” Gromit’s owner gives him the present of Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a gnome who can not only work gardens but tidy around the house, leaving all the punishing chores for the machines, and more time for humans to do absolutely nothing.
When Feathers McGraw learns of this cracking invention, he plans to ruin Wallace once and for all. One evening, Gromit, annoyed by the loud noises Norbot makes while recharging, plugs him into a computer, unbeknownst to the fact that Feathers is hacking into Wallace’s mainframe (truth be told, having “CHEESE” as your password may not be the brightest idea of all) and programs the Norbots to not only create clones of themselves but to be EVIL (because there’s a function in their backend that can make them so. Heh.). Mayhem obviously ensues, with the Norbots creating a string of petty crimes and directly linking them to Wallace.
However, Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh’s (Peter Kay) young mentee Mukherjee (Lauren Patel) does not believe Wallace is implicated in any of the crimes and thinks someone else is pulling the strings. The result is a riotously entertaining achievement in stop-motion claymation that it’s hard to be overtly cynical about the whole thing, even if the story (and beats it plays with) does not reinvent the wheel. But what’s most exciting about Wallace & Gromit isn’t the plot itself but the visual gags that are animated inside a world filled with bountiful imagination crafted by directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham.
Some may deride Aardman’s hypocrisy in making an anti-AI 79-minute-long feature, while the 4K Shout! Factory remasters of the Wallace & Gromit shorts are tainted by generative AI, ruining some of the most staggering, jaw-dropping animation one will ever see. Thankfully, I never saw the shorts like these (they can be found, unaltered, on the Internet Archive in excellent quality), but the clips that were shown, comparing the old and new versions of the films, are appalling. The texture and details of its characters and the world they populate are completely gone. They do not nearly feel as fresh and invigorating as the untouched versions, which still look (and feel) immaculate today.
I would assume Aardman had no part in this monstrosity (until proof of the contrary) because every single frame of Vengeance Most Fowl is a pure joy of human-made creativity to observe. Park and Crossingham do employ new techniques to slightly modernize the world of Wallace and Gromit in Vengeance Most Fowl, most notably CGI explosions and sequences inside the computer, but never to the detriment of what made the characters – and, by extension, Aardman – a household name in Claymation. The texture of the animation feels amazingly lived-in, particularly in high-spirited chase sequences, which now seem to be the mark of the Wallace & Gromit franchise (each movie contains at least one).
When Feathers McGraw ultimately breaks out of jail, a massive car, motorcycle, and boat chase ensues, and it’s as thrilling as their toy train battle in The Wrong Trousers. With a bigger budget (and longer runtime), Park and Crossingham craft deadpan jokes of impeccable timing that will both enthrall younger viewers, who will laugh at all of its physical comedy, and an older demographic understanding some of the film’s most deep-cut references. And even if Whitehead can’t escape the shadow of Sallis, his Wallace still imbues the most well-known quirks of the character. We quickly forget someone else is voicing him.
The message the directorial duo conveys in this breezy animated adventure is somewhat prescient because we’ve become a technologically-obsessed nation, always thinking machines will help us when it, in turn, sucks the soul out of being human. Some progress has been made, and one should note how, in many cases, the advent of new technologies has done lots of good in the world of science and health. But Artificial Intelligence cannot create anything meaningful, let alone something with artistry and, most importantly, human feeling behind it. AI “art” is not art. It’s plagiarism, and can never design anything that isn’t stolen because it can’t have the imagination of real human artists who pour their hearts and soul into making such an animated film like Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
As sophisticated as a software program can get, there is one thing it will never have or attain: real emotion. And that’s only because it isn’t human. When one grasps this inextricable fact, we wonder why we’re so hellbent on destroying our planet with a useless technology that will bring nothing interesting, creative, and honest to the table. The artistry of Park and Crossingham’s feature can’t be overstated because it was entirely made by human hands who value experimenting with plasticine and giving actual life to a wholly malleable component compared to a robot that will never know what it’s like to truly create, think, and feel.
This ultimately results in an endearing effort from Aardman that could stand the test of time as their most important movie yet. Sure, the story doesn’t tread any new ground, and, in comparison to previous Wallace & Gromit efforts, some of it feels a little stale. However, when a message of cataclysmic importance is visualized in a way that reminds us that all great art is made – and preserved – by humans, what more can we ask out of one of the best-ever duos in all of animation? Apart from a nice plate of cheese and crackers, not much.