Talking Teapots: A Wallace & Gromit Treatise
by Zachary Robert Long (1279 words, estimated reading time: 7 minutes)

When Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) was released onto Netflix this January, my family had to watch. It had been nearly twenty years since the last Wallace and Gromit feature film had been released, and sixteen years since the last short. The movie was an absolute delight, very charming. But there was one moment in the film that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It’s a small moment but hides a valuable lesson for storytellers.

 

A Tale of a Teapot

 

The moment occurs during Wallace’s dark night of the soul. For reasons you’ll need to watch to discover, our happy-go-lucky inventor is suspected of being a criminal mastermind. Wanting only to help the community, this is a devastating blow. But it made all the worse by the police confiscating all of his inventions. Wallace is practically incapable of breathing without his inventions, and he proves this when he tries to make himself a tea and can’t even get a simple tea pot to work. This is the final straw for him. He sweeps the teapot off the table in a moment of anger.

When this moment occurred, both my wife and child practically jumped off the couch with shouts of “Oh no” and “Not the teapot!” Their investment in the story was such that this little moment hit them with the same impact they had when Brad Pitt revealed what’s in the box in Se7en (1995).

The stakes couldn’t seem lower. What consequence is it to an audience whether or not a fictional teapot breaks? Yet in that moment, the fate of that teapot was everything. To understand how such a small moment can have such a profound impact, let us first look at some large moments and the impact they have.

 

The Poison of Spectacle

 

It may be unfair to refer to spectacle as poison, but I think it’s apt. Poison has a negative connotation that renders moot the complicated nature we have with poison. Many of our most important drugs and recreational substances are technically poison. However, they can be quite beneficial or enjoyable in proper doses.

Spectacle is the same way.

Many movies make use of spectacle to great effect. To name a few favorites of mine: The Raid (2011), Ran (1985), Climax (2018), Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Hausu (1977).

However, one of the big issues with modern action movies is the placement of spectacle over substance. For me this is best highlighted by modern Star Trek. I personally detest modern Trek. It’s blasphemous to me. But even taken on its own merits, divorced from the Trek I grew up, it tends to fall flat. I find many Marvel movies to elicit the same reaction from me.

These movies culminate in these epic spectacles filled with action and effects. While there is nothing wrong with this in theory, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Often I find that I am just not invested strongly in the outcome.

Yet the stakes couldn’t be higher. In most of these a city, a country, a world, or even a universe is on the line.

How is it that an audience can get invested in the fate of a single teapot, but not care when a massive fleet of spaceships threatens the entire United Federation of Planets?

 

Character, Character, Character

 

The reason we get invested in stories is the characters. In order to get invested in a story, we must first care for the characters.

In Star Wars (1977), we don’t care that Darth Vader blows up Alderaan because of the countless death toll. We care because it was Princess Leia’s home and we can understand the pain she must be feeling.

Now, before we continue, it is worth pointing out that we don’t need to like a character to get invested in them. We love stories about assholes like Bad Lieutenant (1992) or Goodfellas (1990). We don’t need to like a character to get invested in them, but we do need to understand them. Understanding allows us to feel for them, even when we disagree with their actions.

The problem with many spectacle movies (though, again, not all of them) is that the spectacle takes precedence over the characters. This tends to fall into two categories:

1. In many Marvel movies, the action was decided and planned out well in advance of the film being written. A good story will have the characters taking actions based on their personalities, resources, and connections, which culminates in some kind of action. When you know the action scene ahead of time, the characters no longer drive the story because their actions now HAVE TO lead to a particular result.
2. The action set piece becomes so large that you lose track of the characters in it. This doesn’t mean that you physical lose track of them, though this can happen. Rather, you loose track of what they are going through emotionally and therefore you have no grounding for how to feel about the story. The need for each action set piece to be bigger and bolder than what came before can actually result in the audience losing interest.

The average audience member may not even understand why a particular set piece didn’t work or why a movie fell flat. A common criticism is that the effects look cheap. Yet when we are invested in a character and their story, the quality of effects stop mattering. Whenever you get notes back that an action scene or set piece didn’t work, it’s almost always because the characters fell to the wayside or acted in a manner that was inconsistent with their personalities.

With the importance of character in mind, it’s time we returned to our teapot.

 

A Tale of a Teapot Revisited

 

The last time we looked at the teapot scene from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl it seemed as if the stakes were miniscule. All that was being threatened was a single teapot. But that was because we were looking at it in terms of the physical action only. The stakes grow much larger when we view the scene through what it says about the characters.

The scene comes at Wallace’s lowest point. He’s entirely given up hope and that makes the audience sad. We want Wallace to succeed and be happy because we know he only wants to do right by the community and help out. The teapot represents the last bit of hope that Wallace has left. Everything was taken from him but this one object and he is so distraught that he’s going to break even that.

If Wallace breaks his teapot, we know that there will be no return to grace. When faced with persecution, one must stand up in the face of it. We as an audience are invested in the moment not because of the teapot itself but because we don’t want to see Wallace give up.

Which is why the moment that follows Wallace tossing the teapot is so important. Wallace’s dog, loyal companion, and best of friends, Gromit, catches the teapot and sets it back down gently. We feel a sense of relief in this moment not just because it means Wallace hasn’t gone too far as to be saved, but because it reminds us that Gromit is not going to sit by and let his friend suffer. Gromit is there to catch him when he needs it, or catch his teapot as the case may be.

The stakes in this scene, and our investment in the safety of the teapot, only make sense when viewed through the lens of character and serves as an example of how investment in a story’s characters can make even the smallest stakes seem vitally important.