You’ll Never Believe Which Animated Movie Pays Homage to THE LORD OF THE RINGS
By Movieguide® Contributor
Aardman Animations’ latest movie, WALLACE AND GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL, gives an entertaining nod to THE LORD OF THE RINGS franchise.
In the new movie, Wallace and Gromit’s peaceful home gets shaken up when Wallace builds Norbot, a “helpful” garden gnome. Their nemesis, Feathers the penguin, uses Norbot to get revenge on the inventor and his dog.
The scene of Norbot building a hundred clones of himself in Wallace’s basement mimics a scene in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
“The idea was based on the building of the Uruk-hai army, so we’re getting that feeling of sparks and industrial works,” production designer Matt Perry said of the “very dramatic” scene.
The basement is depicted as a huge place and shows the bots building something — a submarine — using huge scaffolding.
“We doubled the height of the basement to allow for that shot. We just wanted it to be vast,” Perry said, adding that the scene “was all in camera. We also wanted to feel like the scaffold was around a subject that was being built.” The team used “Victorian gardening tools to make the inside have that gothic feel.”
READ MORE: WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL REVIEW
“Our electricians got inventive and used traditional techniques of getting gobos moving against each other with random patterns of light going through them, so it looked like there was rippling fire and light on the walls,” director Merlin Crossingham explained.
“We used the projector that had projected the numbers onto Norbot with some animation on it to look like explosions of fire. Then it was augmented with CG sparks and other digital effects on top of it afterwards. Principally, it’s good lighting in Wallace’s and Gromit’s basement. We wanted it to feel rather Orc-like,” he said.
The movie also gave a nod to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Feathers’ chair inside the sub is named “The Nautilus,” which is the name of the sub in the Leagues book and film.
“We called it that during production,” Perry says. “The garden chair is a classic cast iron chair, and when [Feathers] sat there, there’s a halo around his head and fairy wings to make it look quite angelic when he’s the most evil villain in cinematic history.”
For one of Aardman Animations’ next projects, it’s partnering with The Pokémon Company for “a special project,” promising “brand new adventures” in 2027.
If the studio includes any homages to LOTR in that project…Well, that’d be interesting.
READ MORE: SHAUN THE SHEEP CELEBRATES 26 YEARS OF FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN
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