Wallace and Gromit return to the screens with a new feature film for the holidays, the first in twenty years. Or when modeling clay wants to be smarter than artificial intelligence. Christmas gift to the British public, who will discover it exclusively on the BBC on the evening of December 25, Wallace and Gromit: The Palm of Vengeance will then be broadcast in the rest of the world, including France, on Netflix from January 3.
Nothing has really changed for the most endearing duo in animated cinema. In the very British living room of their brick house, Wallace, the eccentric inventor, and Gromit, his phlegmatic dog, lead their best life: armchair, cheese platter and tea break.
This well-regulated daily life will be turned upside down by an invention from Wallace: Norbot, a robot “intelligent” to do everything. A professional in cleaning and gardening, this assistant powered by artificial intelligence must spare them all the household chores and make their fortune. This is without counting the return, thirty years later, of Feather McGraw, the evil penguin who has been languishing in prison since the short film Bad pantsreleased in 1993. Norbot falls into the wrong hands.
“Norbot is Wallace’s best invention ever!”laughs Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park. An Oscar-winning director, he has restored the nobility of one of the most ancestral techniques of cinema, stop motion, or frame-by-frame shooting.
Craftsmanship and hard work with handmade plasticine puppets, which brought glory to a unique studio of its kind, Aardman (Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run), of which Wallace and Gromit remain the mascots .
In The Palm of VengeanceWallace, the geek before his time, and Gromit, the techno-skeptic, each have their own way of seeing technology. Accessible to all, the film is a mischievous nod to the rise of artificial intelligence, this technology which invades our professional and personal lives, even to the peaceful city of the two heroes. “Wallace is completely delirious, obsessed” by the idea of delegating tasks to your robot, “while Gromit represents the human touch”, who likes to do things by himself, continues Nick Park.
At a time when artificial intelligence is proposing to replace humans for a multitude of things, the film “talks about taking back control and finding balance” faced with the onslaught of technologies, he confides. “It’s a very contemporary story but told in a traditional way.”
“I love that we have access to technology, but sometimes we have to ask ourselves if it improves our lives and our connections with others or if it damages them”raises Nick Park.
“Artificial intelligence is like a very sharp knife: it can be used for both surgery and murder,”
Merlin Crossingham, co-directorAt l'AFP
And to turn Wallace and Gromit“as far as we know, we have not used artificial intelligence!”, smiles Nick Park. “It’s all made by real human beings and we hope that comes across on screen.”
For this new feature film “handmade”more than 200 people were active around the plasticine statuettes, with a top speed of two minutes of film produced… per week. Of course, technology can help in cinema, he admits. But in the end, on screen, “It’s important that we see the fingerprints” on the modeling clay.
