Chicken the Aardman Animations studios, the production

Chicken the Aardman Animations studios, the production

Chicken Run Intro Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films.

Set in Yorkshire, England in 1961, the film centres around a band of chickens, who seek a smooth-talking Rhode Island Red named Rocky as their only hope to escape from their certain death when the owners of their farm decide to move from selling eggs to selling chicken pies. Plot The Tweedys are a grumpy middle-aged couple who run a chicken farm in Yorkshire, England.The coop is run in the style of a World War II prisoner of war camp, with the chickens accountable for the number of eggs they lay each day or else face being on the chopping block. One chicken, Ginger, has attempted numerous plans to flee the coop, aided by contraband smuggled into the coop by two rats, Nick and Fetcher, but she is always caught by Mr. Tweedy and his dogs, and placed into solitary confinement. Mrs.

Tweedy realises her farm is failing and reads a catalogue on products to increase the profits.Ginger tries to convince the other hens to speed up their efforts to escape, but soon comes to conclude the only escape route is to go over the fence, something chickens cannot do. Soon, a Rhode Island Red rooster appears to fly over the fence and crash into the coop. The hens fawn over the new arrival, Rocky, and keep him hidden from the Tweedys. Ginger finds part of a poster Rocky dropped, claiming that he can fly. She tries to convince Rocky to help them escape by teaching them how to fly, but Rocky’s wing was injured and cannot show them immediately.Instead, he puts them through a set of exercises that seem to have no purpose but assuring them they will be able to fly.

Soon, the Tweedys have machinery delivered and Mr. Tweedy sets to work to assemble it then they begin overfeeding the chickens to fatten them up. Ginger realises that something is wrong when the strange boxes arrive in the barn and the farmers where giving them extra food. Soon, what is revealed to be a pie machine is completed, and Mr. Tweedy grabs Ginger for its first test.

Rocky rescues Ginger, and they manage to jam the machine, giving them a more time to work out their escape.Fowler, an older rooster, gives Rocky his respect for saving Ginger, giving him his old RAF badge in tribute. Rocky thinks to himself, and the next day flees the coop. Ginger finds Fowler’s medal and the second part of the poster, showing that Rocky was a stunt rooster, “flying” by being shot out of a cannon; Ginger is stunned by this revelation.

However, in talking to Fowler, she realizes that he has flown in aircraft, and uses his knowledge, all of their spare resources, and additional contraband from the rats to construct their own flying machine, racing against Mr.Tweedy’s repair of the pie machine. The chickens finish their machine just as Mr. Tweedy completes repairs and enters the coop to grab the chickens. The chickens gagged and bound him, and complete the assembly of their aircraft.

As they prepare for take off Mr. Tweedy breaks himself loose and tries to stop the chickens from taking off by knocking down the ramp then he gets knocked out by the aircraft. Rocky, having had a change of heart, returns and stops Mrs. Tweedy from intervening while joining the chickens on their aircraft.As they take off, Mrs. Tweedy, with a hatchet, grabs onto a string of lights caught in the aircraft’s wheels as it takes off, weighing the craft down. Ginger heads down the string to cut it, but after losing the pair of scissors, tricks Mrs.

Tweedy into using the hatchet to severe the string. Mrs. Tweedy ends up crashing into the pie machine, plugging up a the safety valve and causing it to explode, destroying their barn. The chickens cheer and continue flying to safety.In the film’s denouement, the chickens have found an idyllic field where they have set up their new homes and raising their new chicks, while Ginger and Rocky fall into a romantic relationship. The film ends with Nick and Fetcher talking about starting their own chicken farm so they could have all the eggs they could eat but then they argue over wether the Chicken or the egg should come first. * Ginger, the chickens’ leader.

Ginger is an orange chicken who wears a green knitted hat on her head and a cream-colored bandana around her neck.She is determined to save her fellow chickens from the farm. * Rocky, a rooster. * Melisha Tweedy, a chicken farmer. Determined to make good money, she decides to turn the farm into a chicken pie factory.

* Fowler, an elderly rooster who lives on the farm. He is a former RAF member who was obviously involved in World War 2 and is always talking about his time there. * Nick, an obese rat who, along with his partner, Fetcher, aids the chickens in their quest to freedom, in exchange for eggs.

He is the more level-headed of the two. Fetcher, a slender rat with a knitted sweater and a knitted cap, who, along with his partner, Nick, aids the chickens in their quest to freedom, in exchange for eggs. * Babs, one of Ginger’s friends, who is the fattest of the chickens with a dim-witted personality who loves knitting.

* Bunty, another one of Ginger’s friends, who has a tendency for laying eggs and is the most doubtful of Ginger’s plans to escape. * Mac, Ginger’s white-bodied assistant from Scotland, who is extremely brilliant, and who helps in the chickens’ big escape as the engineer * Willard Tweedy, Melisha’s husband.He is dimwitted, but still tries to help his wife make money. ————————————————- Allusions The high concept behind Chicken Run is that it is a prisoner-of-war film featuring grimacing plasticine chickens in place human actors such as Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.. Allusions to Escape Movies * Many quotations from The Great Escape (1962).

* When Ginger is confined to a coalbunker, she bounces a Brussels sprout just as “cooler king” Steve McQueen did a baseball in solitary confinement. When Rocky rides to the rescue, he pulls off – in reverse – the wire-jumping motorcycle stunt that was McQueen’s finest moment in The Great Escape. * nuts and bolts up Fowler’s trousers in Chicken Run mimics the way they got rid of the dirt from the tunnel being dug in The Great Escape.

* The construction of a homemade flying machine was an allusion to the 70s television series Colditz, where prisoners cobbled together a glider from found materials in an echo of a true historical incident.