Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
/Step aside Tom Cruise: make way for the claymation hens! This fall we’ll behold a long-awaited sequel to the 2000 film Chicken Run, which was the first film created by Aardman Animations, known for their Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep franchises. The plot in Chicken Run focused on a group of hens escaping from a chicken farm. But now, in a bizarre reversal – for which we’ll have to watch the sequel to understand why – the upcoming Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget features this same group of hens seeking to break into a maximum security, laser-fortified and robot-guarded chicken farm.
Functioning like a summary micro-teaser, the trailer starts with a buildup over the first 11 seconds, with each measure of music ratcheting up the intensity behind the voiceover by mastermind hen Ginger (this time voiced by Thandiwe Newton). Midrange strings enter first to establish a minor chord, followed by ominous low strings, leading to an insistent repeating rhythmic motif from the full orchestra as the visuals take us on a sped-up view of entering the impenetrable chicken farm.
The subsequent section of this trailer is orchestrated using classic film scoring techniques first set out by composers like Lalo Schifrin in his music for Mission Impossible dating back to the 1960s. These concepts are put into play against this caper’s classic step-by-step here’s-how-impossible-this-is-gonna-be preview sequence from 0:18-0:46.
The trailer features two comical rats whom we first met in the original Chicken Run. They sit in their tropical poolside paradise – the group’s destination after escaping the farm in film 1 – and explain to all assembled with no-nonsense candor reminiscent of the cast of British comic-crime classic Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels exactly how the break-in will go. The rats’ opening line at 0:18 is a nice homage: “It’s an impossible mission.” Like Mission Impossible, the band here uses low register piano playing a repeating, syncopated ostinato, using some of the chromatic movement heard in the_ Mission Impossible_ theme. There is heavy and layered support from drums and percussion, reminiscent of the various iterations of the Mission Impossible theme. As chickens are being sling-shotted over fences starting at 0:23, we begin to hear steadily rising chords from the brass section of the orchestra, which eventually drop out leaving behind nothing except the anticipation of a roll on the bongo drums at 0:35 (another tip of the hat to the Mission Impossible theme). The slow motion line of protagonists at 0:51 brings the narrative in line with posters for other team action films like Ghostbusters of The Matrix. Then at 0:53 we build to brass section accents reminiscent of the first two notes of the 5/4 Mission Impossible unison figure, followed by another bongo roll into a dialogue punch line immediately before the cut to black at 1:02.
Clearly this trailer was edited to have a version which could end around the 1:00 mark, suitable as a short teaser, but it does feature an additional 20 seconds that preview the return of Mrs. Tweedy, the farmer villain from the first film. A cymbal roll segues us sonically into the trailer’s outro, which is principally accompanied by tremolo strings and the reverberant sound of footsteps on a staircase. An orchestral riser effect from 1:11-1:16 accompanies the camera tilting upward to reveal our villain. She delivers one line, “Welcome to the future,” and the trailer closes with sound design evoking thunder, along with low and malicious laughter.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget arrives on Netflix on December 15th, as potential holiday fare.
— Jack Hui Litster
