Wallace and Gromit are back on Christmas Day with Vengeance Most Fowl, and one of fans’ biggest questions has finally been answered.
The iconic characters have become a British institution over the last 35 years, with creator Nick Park taking what began as an art school idea and turning them into something truly special.
From Wallace’s inventions to Gromit’s withering looks, there are so many constants over the last 35 years – and the man’s love of cheese, which has gone unexplained… until now.
‘I went about it all the wrong way around,’ Nick told Metro as he reflected on how Wallace’s character-defining obsession started for 1989’s A Grand Day Out.
‘As a student, I wanted him to go to the moon with Gromit, but I couldn’t think of a reason,’ he recalled.
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‘It was more in retrospect, because I did the first scene last and I just – “Of course, the moon’s made of cheese!” And then it became an obsession in all of the films.’
Fans have always adored Wallace’s dairy obsession, with a post on the r/Cheese subreddit dedicated to him.
‘Patron saint of this subreddit,’ wrote @Rutgerman95, while @PassageTurbulent8874 added: ‘Hi do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour Wallace?’
Naturally, the characters didn’t arrive fully formed, as Wallace originally appeared as Jerry, while Gromit was actually a cat ‘in some early sketches’, until Nick realised a dog was ‘easier to make out of plasticine’.
‘You know, I look at Grand Day Out, and I do cringe with embarrassment at how how dirty the plasticine is, and the shapes of noses,’ he laughed. ‘Each film, they’ve evolved a bit, and I think they’re at their zenith at the moment.’
Everything’s been building to this Christmas, Wallace and Gromit’s big return with Feathers McGraw and Norbot the smart gnome, with the sinister fan favourite villain making a comeback.
‘It all seemed to lack something about motivation of the evil side and the menacing side,’ Nick recalled, before Feathers popped back into his head ‘just before lockdown’.
He added: ‘It wasn’t like we sat down and thought, “Oh, what would be a great story with Feathers in it?” He just became the perfect answer to this other story.’
Vengeance Most Fowl will only be the second feature length Wallace and Gromit film, and the sixth overall – but that’s not for a lack of ideas.
‘I’ve always had ideas that we’ve been clawing out of my sketchbooks, but we’re always waiting for that special idea that really lands, that can really carry a full length feature,’ Nick told us.
He explained that to get made, the story needs ‘gag potential and story escalation’, while any unused ideas ‘tend to go in a bag of tricks’ in case they’re needed in the future.
The storytelling aces at Aardman don’t limit themselves either, with countless references that might go over most children’s heads including nods to classic films, from Laurel and Hardy to ‘Cape Fear, Village of the Damned’ and even Hitchcock.
‘Sometimes it’s a stylistic choice, and sometimes it’s to get a joke in,’ director Merlin Crossingham explained, while giving a teaser of what to expect on Christmas Day.
‘I don’t want to spoil anything, I think it’s probably obvious that the gnomes become bad! But it was very much inspired by 60s, and Hitchcock’s Rebecca,’ he said.
‘The way Mrs. Danvers emerges, and very much like Feathers, kind of motionless, comes out of the shadows. [It’s] the power of using the camera and the sound and just taking inspiration from that.’
It’s clear there are no limits to the filmmaker’s imagination, but there are still some guidelines that have to be followed to stay true to Wallace and Gromit.
‘A lot of it is instinctive now, and almost sometimes unspoken until it goes wrong,’ Nick noted, pointing out that ‘there’s a subtlety to everything’ amongst the slapstick.
‘We should probably write up a rule book or something,’ he laughed, explaining that animators get given a ‘crash course’ in bringing the characters to life.
‘How to animate Wallace, it’s all to do with how he stands, his posture, his demeanor. You know, same with Gromit and Feathers,’ he added. ‘We have a rule about how wide Wallace’s mouth can get. What’s reasonable?’
Nick and Merlin pointed out even Norbot had his own specific restrictions, as he couldn’t be ‘totally robot’ because the static movements ‘might become distracting’.
When it comes to the humour, the directors are happy to get ‘a bit cheeky’, but their main concern is not breaking the ‘cheese-o-meter’ for puns, while keeping things accessible.
‘A lot of them don’t work outside of the UK, in non English speaking countries, with wordplay,’ Nick pondered. ‘We like to say it’s a bit cheeky sometimes, and some are a little bit rude, but we have to be careful how much we deal with that.’
The new film puts fears around technology at the forefront, with Gromit becoming concerned when Wallace becomes over-dependent on his own inventions, including a ‘smart gnome’ which turns evil.
Despite stop-motion and clay being at its soul, Aardman isn’t afraid of embracing technology and innovation in their own films.
‘We start with the stop-motion and we put them in front of the camera, and if the story needs something that we can’t quite do in stop-motion, then we look at what the alternatives are,’ Merlin explained.
‘We have an amazing CG and visual effects team in house at Aardman, whose principal skills are not just technological ones, they’re artistic in as much as they know what they need to do to make it feel appropriate to the film.’
Nick added: ‘So as long as the authenticity is there – it’s got to be in keeping with the stop-motion, even though it’s created in digitally.’
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Looking to the future, there’s more to come from Aardman, with new partnerships with Pokémon and Pingu to look forward to – and more Wallace and Gromit.
‘It’s like coming back to old friends,’ Nick smiled. ‘They’ve got this lovely dynamic between them. Natural kind of conflicts that emerge, you can almost put give them any situation. Watch this space.’
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Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Christmas Day.
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