Comic couple returns with warning about AI dystopia

Comic couple returns with warning about AI dystopia | Daily Tribune

Beloved British animated couple Wallace and Gromit are returning to screens in their first feature-length film in 20 years for a typically mad-cap adventure that spotlights the dangers of technology in the wrong hands.

“Vengeance Most Fowl” will air on the BBC on Christmas Day for the first time before being made available on the Netflix platform from 3 January worldwide.

Inventor and director Nick Park has returned to the technology theme that he explored in his 1993 Oscar-winning hit “The Wrong Trousers,” but updated to take into account the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).

The tale centers on tea and cheese-loving Wallace’s latest invention: an “intelligent” robotic gnome called Norbot, which helps around the house and garden, threatening to replace the ever-loyal Gromit, who takes pride in the daily tasks of life.

“Wallace is completely deluded and obsessed, whereas Gromit represents the human touch,” Park told AFP in a pre-release interview. “He likes doing his gardening. It’s not about just seeing an end result, it’s the act of doing that is enjoyable.

“I love the fact that we have technology. We have to just sometimes ask: is it always enhancing our lives and our relationships, or is it somehow diminishing them in some way?”

Real humans

Park has shown loyalty to the idea of “doing” throughout his four-decade career and still insists on real-world modelling to create Wallace and Gromit instead of resorting to computerized imagery.

At his Aardman Animations studio -- makers of other hits including “Chicken Run” and “Shaun the Sheep” — films are shot frame-by-frame, with clay models slowly moved and altered in a technique known as “stop motion” that dates back to the dawn of cinema.

At their fastest rate, the 200-person production team for “Vengeance Most Fowl” produced two minutes of film per week.

“Everything’s made by real human beings and that hopefully shines off the screen,” Park said.

The limitations actually spur creativity, he insists, and are a core part of the franchise’s appeal.

“With CGI (computer-generated imagery) I guess you are tempted to just use it to the full. You’ve got everything at your disposal,” he said. “Whereas I think if you don’t have that, you tend to be more creative with what little you’ve got.”

The film sees the return of the villainous penguin Feathers McGraw from “The Wrong Trousers,” which won an Oscar for best short animated film.

Feathers McGraw is blank-faced throughout, but his on-screen menace is always obvious -- often to comical effect -- while a full range of emotions are expressed, as ever, through the legendary eyebrows of Gromit.

“Very small nuanced movements can say a lot,” Park said.

One small change to listen out for in the new film is Wallace’s new voice after the death of English actor Peter Sallis, who had played him since his debut in 1989.

Sallis has been replaced by Ben Whitehead, an English voice artist and actor who collaborated with Park on the last full-length Wallace and Gromit film, “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, released in 2005.