There is an elite list of British men and women who have gone to space in the real world, but in the fictional world at least one man reigns above all: Wallace, the humble inventor of dough. model whose very first adventure, A great daydebuted at the British Short Film Festival 35 years ago today. As we prepare to return to the wacky world of Wallace and his canine companion Gromit in Revenge most birdsit’s incredible to see the path traveled by the duo… and yet despite all that, it’s A great day it remains the series’ strongest connection to the world of science fiction, more so than any crazy gimmick Wallace would ever come up with.

In the three and a half decades that followed Great day And Revenge most birdslittle has really changed Wallace and Gromitis an idyllic depiction of the quaint and charming life of British life. For all the gadgets Wallace has invented over the years — from dog-walking robots to home automation, from airplane transformations to bicycles to an in-house wool manufacturing company — his technological world is still largely analog. Computers exist in one form or another, but closer to the style of the giant machine banks of the 70s and 80s. If someone wants to call someone, they call on a landline rather than a cell phone, and The Internet doesn’t really exist. Even in the series’ final adventure, the only real acquiescence to the contemporary is Wallace’s latest invention, Norbot the intelligent Gnomewhich always looks like an evolution of Wallace and GromitThe lateral approach to our increasingly technology-infused lives, rather than trying to catch up with our evolving world.

Which is why it remains extremely funny that the first thing we as an audience see Wallace do is build an actually working rocket in his basement. A great day is undoubtedly the most explicitly science fiction entry In Wallace and Gromit– the duo build a spaceship, fly to the moon and encounter artificial, extraterrestrial life – and yet they are rooted in a layer of absurd surreality that paved the way for the fantasy version of Britain that the series would continue at once. live with charm and transform into an international and intercultural exchange of Britishness. We’re never asked to question the hows and whys of Wallace and Gromit building a rocket from wood, scrap metal, and the design documents of a man still working on stick figures. The desire is not rooted in the need to explore the unknown or prove a big scientific dream, but because Wallace sincerely believes that the moon is made of cheese and that building a rocket to get there and collect some is in somehow a much more reasonable answer. realizing that you’ve almost left Wensleydale rather than popping around to the shops on the corner.

And when they get there, not only are they right in that assumption, but they don’t have to worry about things like atmosphere or artificial gravity, aside from a specific and hilarious joke about Wallace kicking a ball up in the air and it’s not. on the way back down – it’s all just caught up in Wallace and Gromit’s quick strides. There is no real admiration for what they accomplish A great dayapart from that, they wanted cheese, and they acquired some: that is what matters, rather than casually innovating space exploration. Even when they encounter alien life, in the form of a coin-operated robot, mad for not cleaning up after themselves, beyond the initial misunderstandings, it’s not much of a mystery to solve. Rather, once again, the fact that the short ends with the now apparently sentient robot having discovered the joys of skiing in a vacation magazine that Wallace left lying around is treated with a reality that can’t help but feel be incredibly charming.

It is in this surreal charm that Wallace and Gromit has thrived, not only as an institute of British animation and culture, but also in the way it has managed to distance itself increasingly from the dissonance of our modern technological world, even as their premises advance. to expand the reality of its titular inventor. In many ways, our world is already beyond even some of the wildest inventions Wallace could muster. But where else could he have gone if his very first outing had taken him to the stars and back?

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