Wallace and Gromit blasted by long-running fans for ’embarrassing’ changes-Asyia Iftikhar-Entertainment – Metro

Wallace and Gromit fans have shared their anger over the new 4K renderings (Picture: BBC/Aardman Animations Ltd)

Just weeks after Wallace and Gromit dropped ‘four cracking half-hour specials’ in 4K Ultra HD, fans have shared their disappointment at the quality.

The restored masters of the British animated comedy franchise, featuring our dynamic titular duo, include 1989’s A Grand Day Out, 1993’s The Wrong Trousers, 1995’s A Close Shave and 2008’s A Matter of Loaf and Death.

The 4K quality promises Ultra High Definition (UHD) which creates clearer, crisper visuals. The additional Blu-ray also features ten beloved short films and the feature-length The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit.

But not everyone has found this to be the case for the newly restored Aardman Animations series from Academy Award-winning creator Nick Park.

Reddit user Walopoh declared them ‘garbage AI remasters’, claiming that the restoration had ‘removed all texture’.

The user also shared comparison photos from the original and restored versions to further prove the point with one image showing text that looks considerably less decipherable in the upscaled version.

In one scene the text goes from easy to read(Picture: Shout! Factory / Aardman Animations)

To much blurrier in 4K (Picture: Shout! Factory / Aardman Animations)

‘The original work is altered under the guise of preservation, but in reality, the essence and details of the original are lost. What appears to be “detailed” is an illusion, which will lead to a degradation of the work’s integrity over time,’ ok-pianist9407 shared.

‘Thank you for doing this and warning everyone. We need to “shout” it from the rooftops for Aardman to do better and void Shout Factory products from now on. This is an embarrassment,’ DrLee_PHD echoed, referring to Shout! Factory’s Collector’s Edition version that is listed at $119.98.

‘That’s pretty bad,’ Dark-Penguin wrote.

‘This is very disappointing for a company that puts so much time and effort into stop motion movies,’ greggers1980 complained.

‘Of all the things you could use AI to remaster and improve on imperfections, Wallace and Gromit (or any claymation) is just about the worst thing to apply it to,’ bulldog_blues shared.

In Slant magazine’s review of the 4K masters, the publication wrote: ‘The short most affected… is A Matter of Loaf and Death” which has been so drastically de-noised that it suffers from a clear loss of detail in some shots.’

And complaints around the use of AI (Picture: BBC/ Aardman Animations)

Official reviews have also pointed out this issue (Picture: Aardman Animations/ BBC)

Some have said texture has been removed (Picture: Aardman Animations / BBC)

And one 17 minute YouTube video laid out their complaints (Picture: Aardman Animations / BBC)

Although it added: ‘ Stop-motion has always benefited from 4K, and these shorts are no exception in spite of the flawed remastering, though definitive transfers remain frustratingly out of reach.’

One YouTuber, Interactive Menu and Screen Access, uploaded a nearly 17-minute video with a detailed critique of the new masters, writing: ‘It’s an upscale, with some AI nonsense. I am disappointed.’

The controversy comes as Wallace and Gromit gears up for a return to the big screen with Vengeance Most Fowl twenty years after the Oscar-winning Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Metro’s five-star review called it ‘a wonderfully nostalgic movie that’s truly worth the years of painstaking work stop-motion animation requires.’

In fact, based on 46 reviews, the upcoming feature has secured a mightily impressive 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ironically the new movie tackles fears around technology as Gromit becomes concerned that inventor Wallace has become overly attached to his ‘smart gnome’ which turns evil.

The new Wallace and Gromit movie is at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Picture: Aardman Animations)

Aardman director Merlin Crossingham told Metro: ‘We start with the stop-motion and we put them in front of the camera, and if the story needs something that we can’t quite do in stop-motion, then we look at what the alternatives are.

‘We have an amazing CGI and visual effects team in house at Aardman, whose principal skills are not just technological ones, they’re artistic in as much as they know what they need to do to make it feel appropriate to the film.’

And Nick added: ‘So as long as the authenticity is there – it’s got to be in keeping with the stop-motion, even though it’s created in digitally.’

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl will be on BBC iPlayer and BBC One in the UK this Christmas. It will stream on Netflix in the US and other countries from January 3, 2025.

Metro has reached out to Aardman Animations and Shout! Factory for comment.

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