As a rule, you can rely on this: When Netflix releases one of its big originals, it appears in the top 10 most popular films or series a few hours later. It is all the more surprising that the first big title of the year in the film sector was hardly registered: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings.
Three years ago, the second full-length feature film from the stop-motion cosmos was announced, which has been delighting audiences since 1989 with exciting and strange stories and lots of modeling clay. So that the film doesn’t go under completely, we would like to recommend the new Wallace & Gromit adventure to you again at this point.
Wallace & Gromit on Netflix: In Vengeance with Wings, an AI garden gnome causes trouble
Life could be so beautiful if you didn’t have to worry about these annoying everyday tasks. At least that’s what Wallace thinks when he’s working on one of his inventions. His latest work: the Norbot. The garden gnome, controlled by artificial intelligence, is supposed to make gardening easier for Gromit – and quickly takes complete control of the green paradise in the backyard.
The trailer for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings:
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings – Trailer (German) HD
Before Gromit knows it, Wallace is breeding an entire army of Norbots who throw themselves into work without batting an eyelid. The once lovingly designed garden is becoming a new one strict forms modeled cage. And then the sneaky Feathers McGraw shows up. The thieving penguin still has a score to settle with Wallace and then manipulates the garden gnomes.
A series of misunderstandings leads to catastrophe: Wallace thinks that he is doing everything right and better with his inventions, without seeing how Gromit suffers from his zeal. He doesn’t even notice Feathers McGraw taking over the Norbots. How can he miss the most obvious things? Bad for Gromit, good for us: This dynamic is the driving force for a lot of action and humor.
On the trail of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and the latest Mission: Impossible film
Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park and his creative team haven’t forgotten, after all these years, what makes the claymation stories so good. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings is lovingly designed and features more playful details in every scene than you can see at first glance. One Lucky bag of discoveryalmost like Wallace’s absurd inventions and all the processes that go with them.
In contrast to Wallace, Park has a firm grip on his craft and once again proves himself to be a stop-motion master. It is absolutely astonishing how fluidly one moment flows into the next, while the available cinematic vocabulary is generously exploited. The slapstick is igniting just like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. And the action is at Mission: Impossible blockbuster levels.
In the finale, Vengeance with Wings even seems like the Kent version of the final act of Mission: Impossible 7. That we are one Chase at walking speed It doesn’t matter: Park and his co-director Merlin Crossingham know exactly how to get maximum thrills out of even the most unexciting animations – with heights to fall in both the literal and figurative sense.
The new Wallace & Gromit film delights with Norbot and turns out to be an anti-AI manifesto
The biggest star of the film, however, is the Norbot and his mechanical colleagues. Just how the garden gnomes turn their heads around their own axis, how they raise their little arms and how they stomp around – every movement is pure gold and can be stretched in unexpected directions, so we’re not just dealing with comedy characters. Sometimes the robots appear as horror figures.
Red glowing eyes and eerily synchronized gestures transform the Norbots into one nasty threatwhich vacillates between Five Nights at Freddy’s and Terminator. The Wallace & Gromit films were always extremely good at playing effortlessly with different genres, whether it was a moon walk or a diamond heist. Retaliation with wings is no exception and exploits the possibilities in many ways.
What’s particularly clever is how the AI theme transfers into filmmaking, because basically every single frame opposes the automation of the Norbots. They are actively involved, but they own it no sense of what they are doing. On the other hand, no one would make a stop-motion film because it’s quick and efficient. No, you have to get involved in every single one of the 24 frames per second in order to create a film.
Every new setting in Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings is a testament to that artistic creativitywhich cannot be replaced by any AI in the world. There is of course a certain irony in the fact that this film is not shown in the cinema, but can be seen on the streaming service that is most closely associated with the term content. However, this doesn’t detract from the magic. See this piece of gold wherever you can.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance with Wings has been streaming on Netflix since January 3, 2025.