THE PROBLEM WITH FEATHERS MCGRAW
Over the years, Park and his co-director Merlin Crossingham often heard fan requests to bring Feathers back.
“We’d been very noncommittal about it because characters haven’t in the past come back,” Crossingham said. “But when we did drop a little teaser trailer, we were completely bowled over by the response. At that point, we were still making the film and it kind of gave us a boost and that confidence that it was the right thing to do.”
They needed it too since Feathers McGraw, like a true diva, was by far the most difficult puppet to animate, direct and light — this in a movie that has chase sequences, special effects and an army of evil gnomes. The simplicity of his design, and the fact that he doesn’t speak, gave them no room to hide. In fact, in their world-class group of animators at Aardman, Park said only five volunteered to work on Feathers.
“All the filmmaking tricks have to come together very well to make Feathers have that screen presence that we needed from him,” Crossingham said.
KEEPING THE BRITISHIMS ALIVE
Part of the charm of the Wallace & Gromit films is their unabashed Britishness, which the filmmakers have had to fight (politely) to preserve as their audience has become more and more global. While Netflix was largely supportive, they did have a bit of a back and forth over the turn of phrase “Flippin’ Nora!” (They ultimately kept it.)
“A lot of the stuff in the films is inspired by stuff we grew up with, the design of things, little products,” Park said.
He was particularly happy to include a “high-speed” barge chase on the canals and a joke about police at the Yorkshire border — melding uniquely British references with big Hollywood movie tropes.
“I think all of it is a sort of a lovely homage to Britishness and not in a patriotic way, just kind of laughing at ourselves culturally,” Crossingham said.
