Feathers McGraw is, arguably, one of the most iconic screen villains of all time – and without speaking a single word.
The character, a penguin disguising himself as a rooster, fist appeared in Nick Park’s Oscar-winning animated short “The Wrong Trousers” for Aardman Animations. He was a diamond thief who had infiltrated the quiet home of Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit. There were shades of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” and the entire short ended in one of the most breathlessly realized chase sequences ever.
And now, McGraw is back as the antagonist in Netflix’s Oscar-nominated feature “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” directed by Park and Merlin Crossingham. This time, McGraw is out for revenge — he schemes inside his prison cell at the local zoo and hacks a robotic garden gnome that Wallace has created. As far as characters making their splashy comeback, it doesn’t get much better than this.
TheWrap spoke to Park and Crossingham about the character’s origins and the decision to bring Feathers back to the big screen.
Humble Beginnings
After Park finished the first Wallace and Gromit-led adventure, “A Grand Day Out,” he started noodling on ideas. Park wondered what would happen if “a whole load of penguins came to stay at Wallace and Gromit’s house in a cold winter, even though penguins don’t live in the northern hemisphere.” Peter Lord, the co-founder of Aardman Animations and a producer on “Vengeance Most Fowl,” said to Park, “Stop-motion takes a long time. What if there was one penguin?”
Park agreed and started developing the character’s backstory, hitting upon a key concept – what if he was a villain?
Bob Baker, a co-writer of “The Wrong Trousers,” helped Park with the character and his scheme, which involved a diamond heist and the hijacking of Wallace’s Techno-Trousers. In terms of designing the character, Park said, “You always had that blank face.”
It’s that face that helps make Feathers so indelible. Somehow you can read everything that is going on inside. Or can you?
Imitations and Homages
In 1994, Feathers McGraw appeared in an episode of Canadian computer-animated series “Reboot” that aired on Saturday mornings in America. It was unauthorized, of course, but spoke volumes to the influence of the character, particularly since that episode aired a little more than a year after the short debuted (the character would appear a few more times, with the creators getting increasingly worried about the legal fallout).
“It was very early on. I remember as soon as ‘The Wrong Trousers’ came out, he was noticed as a villain, and as a highlight of that film,” Park shared. “The way he walked on and did these looks and did very little expression, and just the blinking.”
Crossingham added, “I think that’s key to him as a character, is that that he wasn’t like a silly, flappy penguin. What you found with that was a strength in stillness, which I think is very unusual in animation. And it does center him as a villain.”
“I remember at the time, if you mentioned to anyone, ‘Oh, yeah, we want to make a film with a penguin,’ people would imagine, Oh, he’s going to waddle and he’s going to be so cute and funny, but we were definitely wanting to avoid that,” Park said.
The design of Feathers McGraw also inspired the seagulls in Pixar and Disney’s “Finding Nemo.” (Go ahead, put them side-by-side.) Park swears that he “never made the comparison,” but clearly the wacky birds from the Pixar classic and Feathers McGraw share some bird-y DNA.
Easter Eggs
Over the years, Feathers has popped up in other Aardman productions. In the 1995 Wallace and Gromit adventure “A Close Shave,” which also won the Academy Award, when Gromit gets sent to prison, there’s graffiti in his cell that reads “Feathers was ‘ere.” And the character can be seen, for a single frame, in a scene later on in the short.
The character popped up as an urn in the first feature-length Wallace and Gromit outing “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” And in 2008’s short “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” there’s another reference: “There’s a ladder with tied-together sheets over the wall, next to a Feathers wanted poster,” Park said.
Not that these appearances were planned in any kind of serious manner.
“These things were done in a haphazard way,” Park said, to which Crossingham agreed, “They were frivolous.”
“People had asked if he was ever coming back,” Park continued. “But there’s never been a reason or context for it.”
That is, until “Vengeance Most Fowl.”
Return of the King
Originally, “Vengeance Most Fowl” was completely Feathers McGraw-free.
“Early on there was this idea of Wallace creating a gnome that helps Gromit in the garden and they become evil. But it was always a question of what is motivating the evil? And we never had an answer to that,” Park said. “It was like a big lightning strike moment. Of course, Feathers McGraw! There he is on the shelf. This is a wonderful opportunity to bring him back, because he’s got this personal vendetta against Wallace and Gromit, and it suddenly ups the ante an awful lot, and gave a great motor, too.”
“He really was a solution to a story issue and what a good solution. Because it seems so natural now, you almost can’t imagine the film without him in it,” Crossingham added. “It was so necessary for him to be part of the story, and all of a sudden it opened avenues, answered questions and he stepped into the villain’s shoes again very well. And like Nick says, it’s because he had history that it becomes a revenge movie.”
“We felt we suddenly found the movie when it became a revenge movie,” Park said. Everything quickly followed thereafter, including the movie’s punny title and some of the visual gags, including McGraw doing pull-ups in prison (something Park calls “’Cape Fear’ with penguins”). “It found itself as an idea,” he noted.
Of course, McGraw’s return meant that they had to look at the original design of the character, in order to replicate him for the new film. “What we found was, in analyzing it, that his design wasn’t as strict as we maybe thought it was, or indeed how he came across in ‘The Wrong Trousers,’” Crossingham said. “Our model-making department now is very specific, and they wanted to know real measurements, and we couldn’t quite give them to them.”
It turns out that in the years since “The Wrong Trousers,” all the original models of Feathers McGraw had disappeared. While this might sound like a case of theft worthy of McGraw, they likely wound up in museums and exhibitions around the world. The team had to observe stills from the old movie, recreating the character as best they could for the new movie.
“We’ve had to take the strengths of all that [came before] and really be disciplined with him for a longer story,” Park said. “One of the biggest challenges was staying right on track with him and not deviating, because that’s where his strength is … not giving away anything.”
The whole not giving away anything idea extended to even when he would show up in the movie. Would they keep McGraw in the shadows? Or lean into the return of everyone’s favorite penguin?
“That’s not just in his animation, when he’s on screen, but also where and how we let him be in the story. We did debate a long time about whether he should even be at the beginning,” Crossingham said. “Should he just be this nefarious force that we reveal later? We tried that, but actually we felt if it was going to be revenge, you set that ball early. And then you go, OK, so what is it going to be? How is it going to work and that part of his character is you don’t give everything, you hold something back. In Act One, he’s at the beginning, I think we drop in with him once or twice for a few brief moments, but he’s just this mysterious force that is there. That’s in the storytelling and in his performance – holding him back was always a key to his success.”
It’s this subtlety that makes the character so powerful and one that made him so tricky, especially for a feature-length film.
“Especially in animation, holding back is not something as a medium we’re famous for. Usually you just get everything in your face and fast and to actually have an animated character and to need to do that — as directors and as storytellers — that’s really kind of a thing for us.”
“Things that help the audience to focus in on him are the minimal moves, or he looks very deliberately. And we have long debates with the animators, like, how many blinks he should have? Should it be two or one? Sometimes it’s stronger with that being his only form of expression,” Park said. Gromit is another character that does not speak, but “he’s got an amazing repertoire of physical performance,” Park noted. “He’s got shoulders and eyebrows and neck and everything.”
“Once we’ve cut it together, it’s the music and the little camera move-in that helps the audience do the rest of the work,” Crossingham said.
Feathers has been upped in “Vengeance Most Fowl.” If he was a Hitchcockian heavy in “The Wrong Trousers,” he’s been transformed to a Bond villain here. The filmmaking team said that Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” was still a big inspiration – the way that she moves in and out of the shadows. Another bigger reference was sci-fi classic “Village of the Damned,” for the way the gnomes moved around.
“For Feathers’ story, we referenced ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ You know when they’re going to the wrong house?” Crossingham said. “The whole thing with Feathers, we hope that everyone thinks he’s going to the museum, but he’s not. He’s going to Wallace’s house. Building that in with subtle misinformation and you think you know what he’s up to, but actually he’s one step ahead.”
Of course he is. He’s Feathers McGraw, after all.
“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” is on Netflix now.
