Why The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is Basically an Aardman Animations Film

In 2018, Disney released The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, a live-action film adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky's Christmas ballet The Nutcracker, which bombed at the box office. Looking back on this underrated fantasy adventure film, I see that it has more than a little in common with the works of Aardman Animations, a British animation studio that specializes in stop-motion. In case you were wondering, Aardman is responsible for three hugely successful animated works: Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep. These hilarious animated stories have received many awards and nominations. This article will compare the aforementioned three stories to The Nutcracker and the Four Realms in terms of themes and subject matter. Here are the similarities I have found:

1. The works are set in England, often in a period format.

2. They take heavy inspiration from famous cinematic works.

3. Intelligent animals appear in major roles, often communicating through gesture and noise rather than speech.

4. Major characters have expertise with inventing despite their physical differences.

5. The machinery these characters handle are often a source of chaos and danger.

6. When captured and imprisoned, the main characters engage in daring prison escapes.

So, let's journey to a magical land as we discuss these similarities in depth.

British Settings

As a British establishment, the works of Aardman tend to take place in British period settings. Chicken Run is set in a chicken farm in Yorkshire in the 1950s. Wallace and Gromit takes place in an unnamed British town with a nostalgic 1950s feel to it, and its spinoff, Shaun the Sheep, is set on a fictional farm in a rural setting called Mossy Bottom Farm. These rural environments provide lots of hilarious adventures for their eccentric inhabitants.

In recent years, Disney has been converting their iconic animated films into live-action cinematic spectacles. Many of these remakes feature predominantly British casts due to being period pieces, which often feature European settings, and Four Realms is designed in a similar manner to the Disney Live-Action Remakes of Animated Films. The story is set in Victorian London, and it's about a young girl named Clara Stahlbaum who receives a an egg-shaped box as a Christmas present from her late mother, which needs a special key to open it. Said key subsequently disappears into a magical land consisting of Four Realms, including the Realm of Snowflakes, the Realm of Flowers, the Land of Sweets. There, she learns that her mother discovered the Four Realms as a child and became their queen, thus making her a princess, and sets out to get the key back from the ominous Fourth Realm and bring peace to the land.

A key difference between the two companies is that while Aardman's projects remain grounded in the United Kingdom, Disney is an American studio, but their works often reflect European and non-Western civilizations. Even when Aardman does make films set in foreign environments, they tend to give everyone British accents and depict settings with British features, such as association football. Disney, on the other hand, does a better job at accurately depicting foreign environments.

Cinematic Precedents

Every story takes inspiration from those who came before. Aardman's projects often contain various references to other great films, particularly in the form of affectionate parodies. Chicken Run is a homage to World War II prisoner of war films, such as The Great Escape, Hogan's Heroes, and Stalag 17, but with chickens as the protagonists. In 2005, Wallace and Gromit was brought to the big screen with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a parody of the Hammer Horror films from the 1950s and 1960s which took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Shaun the Sheep has been made into two feature films: Shaun the Sheep Movie in 2015 and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon in 2019. The latter film pays homage to various science fiction works, including as Doctor Who and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. These franchises provide a framework with which Aardman can pay homage to famous cinematic precedents.

Four Realms has frequently been compared to The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Alice in Wonderland, which are also about child protagonists, usually female, who travel to a magical land, where they learn some valuable lessons. When Clara arrives in the Four Realms, she is greeted by three regents who preside over the Realms: Sugar Plum from the Realm of Sweets, Hawthorne from the Realm of Flowers, and Shiver from the Realm of Snowflakes. If the Four Realms were the Land of Oz, Sugar Plum would be Glinda, because both are sweet and kind maternal figures to the young female protagonist. The antagonists of the two films, the Wicked Witch of the West and Mother Ginger, respectively, are also quite similar. Both are disfigured older women who rule over dark forests populated by frightening creatures which the protagonist and her allies must brave in order to save the land. The Chronicles of Narnia features more emphasis on combat than The Wizard of Oz, with the four young heroes being kings and queens who must take their rightful place by battling an villainous ice queen who has plunged the land into perpetual winter; similarly, when Clara enters the Four Realms, she follows a string leading to the key down a hallway and through a hollow log, where she emerges in a snow-covered forest. In Narnia and Four Realms, the evil queen is opposed by a wise good leader who was cast out and leads a rebel army in a battle to restore peace and harmony to the realm. In Narnia, it's Aslan, who is, in a nutshell, a lion version of Jesus; Four Realms, on the other hand, presents a shocking twist in which Sugar Plum turns out to be not as sweet as she appears and has framed Mother Ginger, the exiled regent of the Realm of Amusements, for her plot to destroy the Realms and recreate them in her own image. Alice in Wonderland combines elements of the aforementioned two films, combining outrageous costumes and trippy visual effects with a hero's journey plot, in which the titular protagonist must overthrow the volatile and bloodthirsty Red Queen and restore her ethereal and benevolent sister, the White Queen, to the throne. The dynamic between Alice and the two Queens is reflected between Clara, Sugar Plum, and Mother Ginger. Also, both Alice and Four Realms are Disney films set in the Victorian era which provide an action-packed take on an old story.

While it is perfectly alright to take inspiration from existing stories, it is also important to add your own spin to it to avoid plagiarism. Disney and Aardman both excel at this, and have gained favour with the box office and the Oscars as a result.

Silent but Smart

In the hit 2013 Disney animated film Frozen, loveable iceman Kristoff has a pet reindeer named Sven, who, despite being unable to speak like one would expect from a Disney animal sidekick, has other ways of communicating with his human co-stars. However, the concept of silent but intelligent animated animals predates Frozen, being a recurring theme in the works of Aardman. In Wallace and Gromit, the two title characters are an eccentric, cheese-loving inventor (Wallace) and his mute but snarky canine companion (Gromit). Wallace's inventions often malfunction, leaving Gromit to save his master's butt on more than one occasion. Gromit is fiercely loyal to Wallace, and has an interest in encyclopedic, classical, and philosophical literature. He is also more intelligent than his master, although everyone treats him like one would treat a normal dog. Other intelligent animals appear throughout the series, the most memorable of which is Feathers McGraw, a handgun-wielding penguin who disguises himself as a chicken in order to commit a diamond heist in the short film The Wrong Trousers. Shaun the Sheep does not feature a very talkative cast, both human and animal alike, but they take it a step further by shearing dialogue altogether in favour of telling their stories through body language and animal noises. This proves that cinematic animals do not need to talk in order to be anthropomorphic.

In Four Realms, when Clara follows her ribbon into the Christmas Tree Forest, she finds the key to her box hidden in a tree. However, before she can claim it, a mouse steals it and escapes into the Fourth Realm. Clara chases the mouse to a frozen river, which she is unable to cross for fear of drowning. Refusing to be bested by a small mouse, she finds a bridge guarded by Nutcracker soldier Captain Philip Hoffmann, who denies her passage until she introduces herself as the daughter of Marie Stahlbaum, and therefore, the land's princess. Clara and Philip follow the mouse into the Fourth Realm, where they are attacked by the Mouse King, a giant mouse made up of countless mice, and barely manage to escape. Later, when Clara leads an attack on the Fourth Realm, the mice take out her army and drag her through an underground tunnel leading to Mother Ginger's giant self-styled mecha. After Clara and Philip escape with the key, Mother Ginger sends one of her mice after them to warn them of Sugar Plum's deception; the two eventually find this out the hard way, and said mouse helps them escape from the palace to get help. At the climax, the mice help Clara and Philip battle Sugar Plum's army of animated tin soldiers, with one of them tricking three soldiers into knocking each other out in the Fourth Realm. Unlike in other adaptations of The Nutcracker, the mice in Four Realms do not speak, but communicate through body language just as effectively.

In the early days of cinema, most films were devoid of dialogue. However, in the 21st century, Aardman and Disney's most iconic works keep the silent film tradition alive through their animal casts, although while Aardman's projects tend to leave speech to the humans, talking animals are commonplace in the works of Disney to the point where characters like Sven and the Mouse King subvert the audience's expectations.

Unlikely Inventors

Both Aardman's projects and Four Realms focus heavily on mechanics, which are often performed by characters not typically associated with STEM. In Wallace and Gromit, Gromit assists Wallace in building and operating various inventions, from a space shuttle in A Grand Day Out to a brainwashing machine in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and often has to save his master when said contraptions go awry. On the negative side, Preston, the antagonist of A Close Shave, also operates advanced contraptions, specifically a dog food machine which ultimately turns out to be his undoing. In Chicken Run, the bird-brained inmates build many elaborate contraptions, which, along with the fact that many of them wear clothes, should be a sign to their malevolent farmer, Mrs. Tweedy, that they are anthropomorphic and smarter than they appear. However, that doesn't stop her from trying to kill the flock with an axe when they make their escape at the climax. The chickens are aided by Nick and Fetcher, two enterprising rats who provide them with tools from the black market, which are often stolen and heavily used. However, when the chickens hatch their ultimate escape plan, Nick and Fetcher happily provide them with good quality equipment in exchange for eggs as payment.

Every Disney Princess has a special talent. For Cinderella, it's housework; for Belle, reading; for Tiana, professional cooking; for Pocahontas, diplomacy; for Mulan, military service; for Rapunzel, painting; and for Moana, sailing. In Four Realms, Clara specializes in science and mechanics, a gift she inherited from her late mother. As she later learns from a play telling the story of how her mother discovered the Realms, when Marie Stahlbaum was a child, she built a machine called the Engine, which transformed toys into living creatures (more on this later). The Engine has a keyhole similar to the one on Clara's box, and after Sugar Plum manipulates Clara into activating the machine, the young princess has to battle Sugar Plum's soldiers in order to shut it down.

In real life, women are underrepresented in STEM fields, and there are definitely fewer chickens and dogs involved in STEM as well. But in both The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and the works of Aardman, it's commonplace, allowing these characters to challenge stereotypes associated with Disney Princesses and animals, respectively. Clara is an amazing role model for young girls interested in a career in STEM, while the work of Gromit and the cast of Chicken Run shows that they are just as intelligent as, if not smarter than, their human masters. Which brings us to my next point...

Machine Mayhem

The cracking contraptions of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms and the tales of Aardman Animations have be used for both good and evil agendas, and this often leads to madcap hijinks and frantic action sequences when they inevitably malfunction. There are numerous examples of machines going haywire in Wallace and Gromit, but in two extreme cases, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave both feature Wallace and Gromit's inventions being used against them. In The Wrong Trousers, Wallace lets the spare bedroom in his and Gromit's house to a penguin named Feathers McGraw, who befriends the former and drives the latter from the house. Prior to this, Wallace had acquired a pair of "techno trousers," a robotic pair of trousers capable of walking on walls and ceilings, and Feathers takes an interest in them, secretly rewiring them for radio control. Feathers is actually a wanted criminal who disguises himself as a chicken, and the conniving penguin forces Wallace into the techno trousers and uses them, along with a helmet containing a remotely operated crane claw, to steal a diamond from the local museum. In A Close Shave, Wallace falls in love with a naive wool shopkeeper named Wendolene Ramsbottom, whose sinister dog, Preston, frames Gromit for a sheep rustling scheme. It is in A Close Shave that Shaun the Sheep makes his debut, prior to starring in his own television series and two feature films. Shaun's introduction has him wander into Wallace and Gromit's house, where the dynamic duo put him in a machine called the Knit-o-Matic, which shears him and knits the wool into a sweater. Later, Wallace and numerous sheep break Gromit out of prison, and the group pursue Preston to his dog food factory, where it is revealed that he stole the blueprints for the Knit-o-Matic and replicated the machine with the intention of turning the sheep into dog food for his own personal profit. In an intense standoff, Preston is sucked into his own Knit-o-Matic by Shaun, stripping him of his fur and revealing him to be a robot built by Wendolene's father. Preston is subsequently blinded by the sweater made from his fake fur, sending him falling onto the conveyor belt leading to his own mincing machine, and is destroyed when Shaun pushes him into the machine. Chicken Run takes this a step further by pitting good and evil machines against each other, but under different circumstances. The Tweedys' farm is run like a World War II prisoner of war camp, where the chickens lay eggs day in and day out, and when they can lay no more, they are beheaded. The situation worsens when Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy realize that they can make more money by changing from selling eggs to selling chicken pies, and construct a pie machine with the intention of turning the entire population of their farm into pies. Once the pie machine is completed, the Tweedys take it for a test run, and they select Ginger, the leader of the chickens, as the machine's first victim. Prior to this point, Ginger had masterminded many plans to escape from the farm, and all of those escape attempts ended in failure. After each failure, Ginger was imprisoned in a coal bunker as a form of solitary confinement, then released back into the general population, where the cycle would repeat. When Rocky Rhodes, a cocky American circus rooster, sneaks into the farm to hide from his handlers, he and Ginger begin to bond when they work together to disable the pie machine during the aforementioned test run. Realizing that their eggs can no longer keep them alive, the chickens use the time allotted to them by the Tweedys' unsuccessful attempts to repair the pie machine to hatch their most insane escape plan yet: to build a bicycle-powered flying machine to transport the entire flock out of the farm. When the pie machine is finally fixed, the chickens are forced to improvise, and in the end, their flight to freedom is successful.

In The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Mother Ginger's palace is a giant robot version of herself, the bottom half of which is a tent connected to an upstairs control room via a spiralling chair-like elevator, which Clara uses to retrieve her key and escape after a brief confrontation with the outcast regent during the assault on the Fourth Realm. The aforementioned Engine, while capable of turning toys into living creatures, can also perform the reverse, and that is the crux of Sugar Plum's plot to destroy the Four Realms and recreate them in her own image. You see, when Marie Stahlbaum created the Realms, she appointed four regents in charge of each realm while she served as queen. However, when Marie left to start a family, she placed the regents in charge. As a result, Sugar Plum, for whom Marie had a special place in her heart, became embittered at this perceived abandonment and cast Mother Ginger out, declaring her to be evil and causing the vast majority of the population of the Realm of Amusements to move to the other three realms. The only residents of the Fourth Realm who remained were an army of mice and mischievous clown-like nesting dolls called Polichinelles. After Sugar Plum manipulates Clara into activating the Engine, the former uses it to bring an army of tin soldiers to life with the intention of wiping out the Fourth Realm, while also stating that she has "something special" in mind for Mother Ginger; specifically, to turn her back into a toy. Now, the tin soldiers are hollow creatures, soulless robots which answer only to Sugar Plum. In the end, when Sugar Plum is defeated, the tin soldiers are deactivated.

It is also worth noting that in both Mrs. Tweedy and Sugar Plum are ultimately done in by the same machine they had planned to use to wipe out the populations of their respective domains, courtesy of the female protagonists. Coincidentally, both antagonists had earlier tried to use the machine on a strong, red-haired/feathered female character named Ginger who leads an eccentric group of creatures in opposing her. In Mrs. Tweedy's case, after repeatedly ignoring her husband's claims that the chickens are up to something, she finds this out the hard way when the inmates begin their flight to freedom. Grabbing onto the plane via a string of Christmas lights hanging from the tail end, Mrs. Tweedy climbs up the lights, armed with an axe and hell-bent on killing the chickens. In order to cut the line, Ginger orders Rocky to lower her down with a pair of scissors while Nick and Fetcher use a turnip catapult to launch eggs at Mrs. Tweedy to hold her off. Ultimately, when the ammo runs out and Ginger loses the scissors, the lead chicken tricks Mrs. Tweedy into cutting the line with her own axe, sending the deranged farmer flying into the pie machine, where the resulting blockage causes the machine to explode in a mushroom cloud of gravy. In Sugar Plum's case, Clara confronts her just as she is about to use the Engine to de-animate Mother Ginger, and tries to reason with Sugar Plum by saying that Marie never abandoned neither of them. Frantically, Mother Ginger backs Clara up, telling Sugar Plum that she is far from the only one who misses Marie and what she is doing is not what Marie would have wanted. After a pause, Sugar Plum ignores both of them, and thanks to Clara having tinkered with the machine, is zapped by her own de-animation ray and turned back into a porcelain doll. In addition, both Ginger and Clara deliver a powerful one-liner right before their respective villains get their comeuppance. Ginger's last words to Mrs. Tweedy are a mocking "Bye-bye!", right before she drops the latter into the pie machine. On the other hand, Clara's last words to Sugar Plum are an echo of something Sugar Plum said to her earlier in the film, but this time with new understanding: "And you were right, Sugar Plum. I am every inch my mother's daughter!", right before Sugar Plum realizes what Clara had done to the Engine and screams in terror as she falls victim to the same fate she had intended for Mother Ginger. Technology is an integral part of everyday life, and it can be used for both good and bad purposes, something that Four Realms and the works of Aardman reflect on a regular basis.

Great Escapes

When the protagonists of Four Realms and Aardman's projects find themselves behind bars, you can expect them to pull off a daring prison escape. As mentioned above, Chicken Run is basically The Great Escape with chickens as the protagonists. Aside from various references to the Steve McQueen-starring POW film throughout, the film's opening scene establishes the tropes Aardman seeks to replicate with poultry. Specifically, the first shot of the film is an exterior shot of what appears to be a POW camp, followed by the foot of a would-be escapee crossing the camera, which turns out to be that of a chicken. In both A Close Shave and Shaun the Sheep Movie, Shaun and his flock take part in hilarious prison escapes. In the former, while Gromit is in prison, he receives a puzzle containing a picture of a flock of sheep. Believing that whoever framed him is taunting him, Gromit breaks down sobbing. He eventually completes the puzzle, which turns out to have a message written on it: "FRIDAY NIGHT 8 pm BE READY. A FRIEND". Shortly after, Shaun, standing atop a ladder of sheep, cuts through the bars of Gromit's cell with a chainsaw. At the bottom of the stack is Wallace on a motorcycle, and after Gromit is broken out of prison, he, Wallace, and the sheep pursue Preston on the aforementioned motorcycle, which has a sidecar that can turn into a fighter plane with a cannon that shoots porridge. In an added moment of slapstick humour, after the escape is completed, the pile of sheep loses its balance and falls on top of Wallace. In Shaun the Sheep Movie, Shaun and his flock accidentally cause their absent-minded Farmer to get lost in the Big City, where he gets knocked out and wakes up with amnesia. Bitzer, the Farmer's dog, follows him into the big city, where he is captured by overzealous Animal Containment officer Trumper. Later, when Shaun and his flock head to the city to locate and bring the Farmer home, Shaun is also captured by Trumper and reunites with Bitzer in the pound, which is presented as a prison for animals, the inmates of which include a harmonica-playing goldfish, a Hannibal Lecter-esque cat, and a cardboard cutout of an angry, perpetually staring dog (the real one dug his way out long ago). Shaun and Bitzer escape with the help of a homeless dog named Slip by drawing a photorealistic hole on the wall of their cell with chalk and locking Trumper in when the relentless animal-catcher enters the cell to investigate. Prior to this, the sheep try to break them out, but end up pulling down the wall of a prison cell on the other side of the alley, exposing a human inmate on the commode.

In The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, after retrieving the key from the Fourth Realm, Clara is dismayed to discover that her box is a mere music box. Nonetheless, she and Philip hand the key over to Sugar Plum, who uses it to activate the Engine and, over Philip's objections, bring a box of tin soldiers to life. After Sugar Plum animates the tin soldiers, she reveals her true colours to Clara and Philip, all but tells Clara that Mother Ginger did nothing wrong, and uses the Engine to de-animate a hapless guard. When Clara calls her out, Sugar Plum orders the imprisonment of Clara, Philip, the male regents, and the palace guards. While imprisoned in a high-rise tower, Clara discovers that her music box contains a mirror, and realizes that her mother left her with everything she needs. With this epiphany, Clara and Philip pull down a chandelier on the ceiling of their cell, then use the rope holding up the chandelier to slowly carry them down from the balcony as per Newton's Third Law. The two then pass through the lobby of the palace, where Sugar Plum lines up her soldiers to lay siege on the Fourth Realm. After Sugar Plum leaves, Clara suggests that they sneak into the bunker to disable the Engine. Just then, Mother Ginger's right-hand mouse appears, and leads them to a drainage grate, which Clara and Philip use to escape, team up with Mother Ginger, and save the realm.

Coincidentally, the great escape depicted in Four Realms features elements of all of the aforementioned escapes in Aardman's projects. In A Close Shave, Gromit was imprisoned in a cell on a higher floor of the prison; in Four Realms, Clara, Philip, Shiver, and Hawthorne are imprisoned in a tower with a balcony, which they use to escape. In Shaun the Sheep Movie, the sheep tie a rope to the wall of a prison cell in which they think Shaun and Bitzer are imprisoned, belatedly realizing that they are on the other side of the alley; in Four Realms, Clara's escape plan involves using a rope to pull down the chandelier, but unlike Shaun's flock, this escape plan is successful. In Chicken Run, the climactic escape involves stealing tools, equipment, and laundry from the Tweedys, as well as taking their huts apart, to build a flying contraption and fly it to a safe haven; in Four Realms, STEM also plays a role in the escape, with Newton's Third Law being cited as the principle used to allow Clara and Philip to climb down from the tower. It is said that it is an officer's duty to escape from captivity if taken as a POW, and the crafty prison escapes featured in Aardman's filmography and Four Realms are a testament to that.

Conclusion

It turns out that The Nutcracker and the Four Realms shares a lot of tropes and motifs with the works of Aardman Animations. However, these tropes also apply to many other films, but all of the points I have made appear in both Four Realms and Aardman's projects. However, while Aardman received critical acclaim for Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep, Four Realms bombed at the box office, with criticism for the story and dance routines, or lack thereof. However, the best thing about failure is that it allows you to learn from your mistakes and do better the next time.

This is Toby Gold, bidding you farewell until we meet again.