"Live free-range, or die frying!" Last time around, Rocky and Ginger were trying to escape the ghastly fate of becoming unwilling ingredients in those despicable pies. Today, the fowls have to save their daughter, Molly (Bella Ramsey), from becoming — wait for it... a chicken nugget at Fun-Land Farms. And the sequel ever so briefly set a Rotten Tomatoes record for Aardman Animations. 23 years after the first Chicken Run hit theaters in 2000, the follow-up, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget boasted an RT audience score-best 86% for Aardman's feature-length films. However, the score has dropped drastically in virtually no time at all, but it's not all bad news.
Dawn of the Nugget currently ranks fourth among the other Aardman movies with 78%, at the time of this writing, after briefly achieving that 86-percent mark. Shaun the Sheep Movie takes the top spot with 81%. See how the latest adventure of the Rhode Island Red (Rocky) and the Brown Leghorn hen (Ginger) stacks up against the other Aardman animated titles, whether they are CGI or stop-motion, and their respective RT audience scores below:
- A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019): 79%
- Early Man (2018): 49%
- Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015): 81%
- The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012): 60%
- Arthur Christmas (2011): 77%
- Flushed Away (2006): 65%
- Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005): 79%
- Chicken Run (2000): 65%
When Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget first dropped on Netflix, the sequel temporarily held the top-spot, in regard to the best Rotten Tomatoes audience score for an Aardman feature-length film with 86%, according to The Independent. But since then, the score has steadily plummeted. Now, for the really bad news: Dawn of the Nugget also has the dubious honor of holding the second-worst Tomatometer rating of all those same Aardman movies.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget shot itself in the foot way before it ever dropped on Netflix. The biggest controversy manifested after the original film’s voice talents, Mel Gibson and Julia Sawalha, were not invited to reprise their roles of Rocky and Ginger respectively. Thus, Chicken Run 2's casting was criticized for being “ageist” by some when Shazam! star Zachary Levi and Mission: Impossible II alumna Thandiwe Newton were selected to portray the characters instead of Gibson and Sawalha in the sequel.
