This year, Aardman shook hands with the titans. The Bristol-based animation studio produced a reference-laden short for Disney’s Star Wars: Visions series and, now, has delivered a sequel to their 2000 box office hit Chicken Run for Netflix. And, yet, they’ve kept hold of their underdog sensibility – the impression that they’re the quiet kids at the back of the class, twiddling with lumps of clay, only to reveal some ingenious work of whimsy. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget may not quite rise to its predecessor’s level, but if this is the closest Aardman ever comes to selling out then, well, there’s still hope for animation’s future.
If there’s any suggestion Aardman’s gone all Hollywood, it may lie in some of the changes to its voice cast: Mel Gibson has been replaced as cockerel Rocky (for obvious reasons) by Shazam! star Zachary Levi. Julia Sawalha has been replaced as hen Ginger (for less obvious and far more contentious reasons) by Thandiwe Newton. Meanwhile, The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey joins as Rocky and Ginger’s plucky, bright-eyed kid Molly. All three now live in an idyllic chicken Themiscyra, away from human intervention and human taste buds. But Molly itches for justice when she spots, across the water, a truck of less fortuitous fowls being hauled away to their bread-crumbed doom.
