The New 'Wallace & Gromit' Is the Most Disturbing Movie about A.I. Since 'The Terminator'

Aardman Animation recognizes that even if A.I. works perfectly, it will still be broken.

The soul of Aardman is in stop-motion animation. They’ve made some surprisingly good CG-animated movies (Arthur Christmas is a holiday staple in my home), but their identity is in the handcrafted claymation that brought them worldwide acclaim, particularly with their Wallace & Gromit movies. Despite all the recognition, Aardman’s uniqueness remains most visible in an unassuming British inventor and his dog, who’s smarter than him.

For a studio that never gave up on stop-motion animation, Wallace & Gromit is the perfect vehicle to satirize the rise of A.I., which is what Aardman does with their new feature, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. A sequel to their Oscar-winning short “The Wrong Trousers,” the threat is technically the revenge of Feathers McGraw, the thief who wants to reclaim his stolen goods, The Blue Diamond, and get some payback against the duo that captured him. Feathers’ opportunity arises when Wallace (Ben Whitehead) invents Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), a “smart” garden gnome who can do all the gardening around the house. When Feathers learns of Norbot, he hacks the machine to do his bidding and creates an army of sinister Norbots to break Feathers out of prison (aka the local zoo) and steal back the Blue Diamond. It’s once again up to Wallace and Gromit (but mostly Gromit) to stop him.

The evil Norbot plot point is arguably the tamest part of Vengeance Most Fowl’s satire, as there’s no shortage of stories about A.I. that turns against its masters. However, before we even reach Feathers hacking Norbot, Aardman’s take on contemporary tech is scathing as the obtuse Wallace only sees his creation as a cheerful time-saver on menial tasks. He has no respect for the idea that Gromit wants to garden and that what some may see as a chore, others see as a means of self-expression. The best encapsulation of this idea comes when Gromit wants to trim the hedges only to have Norbot bust in and make a string of perfect cubes.

Gromit, Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), and Wallace (Ben Whitehead) in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl | Image via Netflix