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| “ | Whoo-ra! Yippee! Bang to rights! Back behind bars! Caged like an animal! Feathers won’t be troubling us again in a hurry! Oh no! | „ |
| ~ Wallace expressing joy at Feathers' defeat in Project Zoo. |
| “ | Good Greif! It's you... Again! | „ |
| ~ Wallace shocked to see Feathers McGraw returning for revenge. |
Feathers McGraw is the main antagonist of the Wallace & Gromit franchise.
He is an anthropomorphic penguin who is a notorious criminal mastermind who disguises himself as a chicken by wearing a red rubber glove on his head. He is also the arch-nemesis of the titular duo.
Biography[]
The Wrong Trousers[]
Feathers McGraw was a lodger, renting a room with Wallace when he had financial issues. Unimpressed with the room on offer, McGraw moves into Gromit's room, forcing him to live in a doghouse. McGraw then proceeds to further annoy Gromit by playing music loud late at night, hogging the bathroom, and monopolizing Wallace's time. Thinking Wallace has forgotten him, Gromit sadly leaves the house, while Feathers looks at him evilly.
Seeing Gromit gone, McGraw removes the controls on the techno-trousers to control them and arranges for Wallace to slide into them when he slid down to breakfast the next morning. McGraw then takes Wallace on a remote-controlled 'walk' to test his new control of the trousers. While searching for a place to live, Gromit notices Wallace trapped in the techno-trousers and follows. Gromit observes McGraw with the remote controlling Wallace and also spots a wanted poster of a disguised McGraw. Following McGraw to the museum, Gromit witnesses him take measurements for the break-in.
Gromit returns to the house to his old room and finds blueprints to the museum's blue diamond exhibit. Feathers, disguising himself with a red rubber glove (revealing himself to Gromit that he is the criminal chicken from a wanted poster he saw earlier), outfits the now sleeping Wallace a helmet with a claw and walks him to the museum, sending him through the air vent, inside to the diamond room, walking on the ceiling. There, using the electric claw to seize the diamond, he tries to walk Wallace back out. However, a loosened roof tile causes Wallace to sway off balance and trip one of the lasers, setting off the alarms.
McGraw walks Wallace home and forced him into the wardrobe; Gromit attempts to intervene, threatening McGraw with a rolling pin, but the penguin holds Gromit at gunpoint and forces him into the wardrobe with Wallace. Gromit hotwires the trousers to stomp continuously until the wardrobe's floor paneling breaks off, allowing them to break free. The two try to catch Feathers as he attempts to evade them with their electric train set.
After a long battle with the penguin, Wallace and Gromit manage to trap him in a milk bottle. They then return the diamond as their award and turn McGraw over to the police, who has officially imprisoned him in the West Wallaby city zoo for good.
Project Zoo[]
Feathers returns in the videogame Wallace and Gromit in Project Zoo, in which the imprisoned penguin escapes his penguin enclosure and attempts to take over the zoo in order to create a diamond mine. Feathers captures baby animals in order to force their parents to do his bidding. Most importantly, Feathers has Wallace and Gromit's adopted polar bear from the zoo, Archie, held hostage throughout the game. He uses remote controls to control many of his inventions - including his boiler, helicopter, toy penguins, and the mining machine. In the final level, Feathers uses an invention called the exoskeleton which fires missiles and wields buzz-saws.
In the game's conclusion, Feathers is defeated by Gromit, yet he still tries to make one last escape; however, when he exits from his hideout to leave the zoo, he finds himself confronted by the other zoo animals before he's recaptured and taken back to his cell.
Vengeance Most Fowl[]
Feathers will return in the 2024 film Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, 31 years since his first appearance in The Wrong Trousers.
Other Media[]
In A Close Shave, when Gromit is in prison, graffiti is seen briefly behind him reading "Feathers Was 'Ere". This may be an indicator that Feathers escaped from prison before Preston's kidnappings and is now at large.
In The Curse of The Were-Rabbit, Feathers can be seen standing in a vase on a building at the right of the screen when Victor threatens to shoot Wallace, right after Victor says "Eat karat, bunny-boy!"
In A Matter of Loaf and Death, wanted poster of McGraw can be seen near the entrance of the zoo, along with a ladder and a string of knotted bedsheets, indicating that Feathers has escaped again. Three of his kind are also seen in the penguin enclosure later on when Piella Bakewell falls into the crocodile pen.
In Shaun the Sheep: The Movie, a photo of Feathers can be seen on Anthony Trumper's office wall, indicating he may have been captured by him.
In Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Feathers makes a cameo appearance in the end of the film, appearing in the background when Ginger and her team are preparing to rescue more chickens.
Personality[]
Feathers McGraw may appear as a harmless, if slightly unnerving, individual, yet his sharpened mind more than compensates for his small size and lack of physical strength. He is contentious, suave, manipulative and pragmatic. He is able to assess others quickly to get into their heads and can manipulate them to enable daunting circumstances to come out in his favor. He tends to keep his wits about him and maintain his concentration when performing elaborate tasks, even during intense episodes of anxiety and rage. He never allows his emotions to hinder his steady deliberation or to cloud his judgement. He clearly possesses some sociopathic traits as he has no problems taking hostages or attempting to pistol down anyone he perceives as a thorn in his side. His technological prowess is fairly impressive, as he retrofitted the techno-trousers with a remote control, and his intelligence is almost parallel to Gromit's. As a nearly flawless tactician, it takes an experienced genius to outwit and subdue him.
Trivia[]
- Feathers McGraw is the first Aardman antagonist to be an animal, and the first one to be silent, being followed by Preston, another Wallace and Gromit villain, (in which case, he is a robot) while The Toad from Flushed Away and the Cat from Robin Robin are the only Aardman animal antagonists to speak
- Despite controlling Wallace to steal the diamond, Wallace nor Gromit never opened the bag to find out that he used Wallace to steal the diamond despite Wallace holding it, but possibly off-camera he gave the evidence to the police.
- Feathers McGraw is the second Aardman antagonist who is returning for his revenge against his arch-enemies, since Melisha Tweedy from the Chicken Run Duology.
- Similarly to Gromit and Preston, Feathers McGraw does not express himself with spoken words. However, while the former's facial expressions and body language speak volumes, McGraw's face is always blank and impassive, giving no hint of his emotions.
- McGraw is the first villain in the Wallace and Gromit films to use a firearm, with Victor Quartermaine being the second.
- In the Cracking Contraptions episode "The Tellyscope", Wallace is shown watching a series on the television entitled "When Penguins Turn" (written in the same font as the Wrong Trousers logo), which shows many penguins of Feathers' kind.
- It is confirmed by his mugshot that he is 3ft high and weighs 12 pounds.
- Feathers McGraw will be the second main antagonist of a Netflix-Aardman collaboration film after Melisha Tweedy from Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
- Feathers McGraw has officially made cameos in other Aardman media.
- Feathers McGraw is the only one of Gromit's archenemies to be a bird.
- Despite escaping the zoo in A Matter Loaf Of Death, when Piella Bakewell before her death in the background there can be seen two penguins, it was rumored that he had a family.
- It was revealed in the trailer that Feathers McGraw is controlling Norbot and has armed a evil gnome organization.
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 Villains
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Wallace and Gromit Shaun the Sheep | ||