One of the most popular imports from Great Britain is the claymation of Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit, and co-director of the feature films Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Nick Park has won several Academy Awards. His work blends an amusing satire of noir, horror and jail escape films, with the masterful and innovative use of lighting and scenery in a form of animation often stuck at the level of Christmas TV specials.

The natal chart of the animator reflects the themes portrayed throughout his films. Nick Park expresses the stressful dynamics in his chart through his protagonists. He has a Mars-Jupiter-Uranus fixed T-Square, with Uranus at the apex. Sue Tompkins writes of Mars-Uranus aspects:

Uranus rules technology, electricity, and sudden unexpected changes. A square from Mars excites and energizes this archetype. In this stressful combination, one's desire to act on the world (Mars) conflicts with what one's technology can handle (Uranus). Imagine a personal computer burning out after a surge in electricity; this aptly describes the recurrent technological failures in Park's films.

Technology Gone Awry

Park's most famous characters are Wallace and Gromit. Wallace is an eccentric bachelor who spends his time inventing novel contraptions; he has a penchant for cheese. Gromit is his mute canine companion, who is obviously the brighter of the bunch.

In A Close Shave, Wallace creates a machine called the Knit-O-Matic. One inserts a sheep; out pops a shorn sheep and a sweater. Wallace's machines typically have a number of settings, ranging from "mild" to "extreme." In one instance, a sheep is shorn so closely that he pops out with band aids to cover his wounds. Also, at the end of the film, the evil cyber-dog Preston, who is kidnapping sheep so that he can turn them into dog food, ends up in his revamped clone of the Knit-O-Matic and is shredded into spare parts.

In The Wrong Trousers, Wallace invents a pair of techno-trousers—essentially robotic legs—to which he affixes Gromit's leash to take him out on a walk. Later, the trousers go awry because the evil penguin Feathers McGraw reprograms them, thus taking Wallace—who woke up wearing them—on a wild tour throughout the city.

Park's first feature film was Chicken Run2. He was not ready to bring Wallace and Gromit to the silver screen, so he developed a story about chickens who try to escape from a chicken farm. The chicken farmers, the evil one being Mrs. Tweedy, decide that making chicken pies would be more lucrative than selling eggs, so she buys a machine to make chicken pies. In comes a chicken, out comes a pie. Of course, in a test run the machine goes haywire, thus giving the chickens more time to plan their escape. And near the finale, Rocky Rooster and Ginger narrowly escape death inside the machine. During the release of the film (6/23/2000), transiting retrograde Uranus in Aquarius was completing a grand cross to Park's natal T-Square, highlighting the yearning for freedom and independence associated with the once-in-a-lifetime Uranus opposition.

Park's most recent feature film is Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit3, which is likely to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film. In Curse, Wallace and Gromit are running a pest control business, which is thriving because their small town has an annual Giant Vegetable Competition. They humanely collect rabbits and keep them caged in their basement. However, they are running out of space; Wallace has the brilliant idea of combining two of his recent inventions to solve this problem. The first invention is a vacuum which sucks rabbits out of their holes. They then fly around a container as if in a zero-gravity blender. The second invention is a mind control device. (Wallace wants to use it on himself to eat more vegetables and less cheese.) He hooks the two up to get the rabbits to lose their interest in carrots, by affixing the mind control device to his head, and connecting it to the rabbits. ("Carrots, bad.") Unfortunately, the machine goes haywire, and one of the rabbits gets sucked into the mind-control device. The poor wabbit loses his interest in carrots, and instead develops a fondness for cheese. The rest I will leave to the viewer, so as to avoid spoiling the movie.

On the release date (10/7/2005), transiting Pluto was conjoining Park's Mercury. Pluto rules pests and pest control.4 Pluto-Mercury also corresponds to mind (Mercury) control (Pluto). Additionally, the transformative power of Pluto is a prominent theme in this film.

The T-Square: Dark and Light

The Mars-Jupiter-Uranus T-Square expresses itself most explicitly in Chicken Run. The protagonist, Ginger, convinces and inspires (stellium in Sagittarius) the other chickens that there is a better world outside the chicken farm, and that if they stay, they will be resigning themselves to death. The chickens fight (Mars) for freedom (Uranus). Certainly, Jupiter-Uranus does not want to be hemmed-in. Jupiter expands the freedom-loving, revolutionary impulse of Uranus.

The yearning for expansion can also be witnessed in A Grand Day Out, in which Wallace designs a rocket ship (Uranus) to travel (Jupiter) to the Moon, because he has run out of cheese (and of course, everyone knows the Moon is made out of cheese!).

The darker side of this combination is the use of technology (Uranus) to aggressively or violently (Mars) acquire wealth (Jupiter). The Mars-Jupiter opposition is along the Taurus-Scorpio axis, which is concerned with money. Scorpio adds the element of secrecy and deviousness associated with the malevolent characters such as Feathers McGraw, who uses Wallace and the techno-trousers to steal a diamond (The Wrong Trousers); Mrs. Tweedy, who buys a chicken-pie machine (Chicken Run); Preston, a product of technology himself, who steals Wallace's plans for the Knit-O-Matic and makes a dog-food machine (A Close Shave); and Victor Quartermaine, who wants to shoot the rabbits who are destroying Lady Campanula Tottington's lawn, so that he can marry into her riches (Curse). Come to think of it, there's an awful lotta implied killin' in these animated films: turning chickens into pies, sheep into dog food, shooting wabbits, the use of a gun by a penguin. Remember that in Scorpio, Jupiter celebrates death!

Fortunately, Jupiter is also the planet of humor, which is prevalent in all of Park's films. Jupiter rules Park's four-planet stellium in Sagittarius. This benevolent influence adds fun and lightness to the otherwise dangerous combination of Uranus and Mars.

Towards a Rectified Chart

Nick Park was born on December 6, 1958, in Preston England5. Without an exact birth time we cannot know the house placements of the above planetary configurations. Assuming an Ascendant at 0 Cancer, and using the Placidus house system, many aspects of Nick Park's cinematic world fall into place6. Cancer Rising corresponds with the importance of home to Wallace, as well as his fondness for cheese. An Aquarius Midheaven relates to his occupation as an inventor; this occupation is also mirrored by Park's Sun-Uranus trine. Jupiter in Scorpio, as well as the stellium in Sagittarius, all inhabit the Sixth House, which is not only associated with pets (obviously Wallace's closest companion is his dog), but with the extremely detail-oriented work required to mold tiny bits of clay over several hours to create a few seconds of film.

Mars is placed in the Twelfth House, which is associated with prison and confinement. The chickens are confined in the farm; both Gromit and Feathers McGraw find themselves in jail in A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers, respectively; and Park's early series of shorts, called Creature Comforts, concerns the feelings of imprisonment experienced by zoo animals.

At the moment, there is little to support these placements in terms of transits  and progressions. However, at the release of Chicken Run in summer 2000, Uranus was at 20 Aquarius, passing over Park's presumed Midheaven. This film has been one of the highest-grossing films to come out of the UK.

Notes:

1. Tompkins, Sue. Aspects in Astrology. (p. 207).
2. Co-directed by Peter Lord (birth time not available).
3. Co-directed by Steve Box (birth time not available).
4. Bills, Rex E. The Rulership Book.
5. Source: imdb.com
6. This would give Park a birth time of 4:35 PM GMT.

Jeffrey Kishner, MA is an astrological counselor, writer, and psychotherapist, as well as host of the Astrology at the Movies blog. He has a graduate degree in integral counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he first learned astrology. He writes essays on how film directors express the planetary archetypes in their movies. As an astrological counselor, Jeffrey focuses on the aspects (relationships) between the planets in one's natal chart and in one's transits. An understanding of these planetary interactions helps to illuminate one's current struggles and chronic self-defeating patterns. This approach yields powerful insights that aid in self-understanding.