| “ | Wendolene: He's malfunctioning. Wallace: Mal-what? Wendolene: Malfunctioning! Preston... is a cyberdog! Wallace: Cyber-what? Wendolene: A robot! Daddy created him for good, but... he's turned out evil! |
„ |
| ~ Wendolene revealing Preston's true nature to Wallace. |
Preston is the main antagonist of the 1995 stop-motion animated short film A Close Shave, the third installment of the Wallace and Gromit franchise.
He's a robotic dog that was intended by his inventor to be friendly and helpful like a real dog, but due to a malfunction, wound up becoming a ruthless criminal, hellbent on stealing as many sheep as he could and turning them into dog food. To do so, Preston coerces his creator's daughter Wendolene into helping him enact his schemes.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
- While working with Wendolene, he stole numerous sheep from farms all around England for their wool.
- Once they had their wool, Preston wasn't satisfied and instead of returning the sheep to their homes, hatched a scheme to slaughter them all and turn them into dog food as part of a new business.
- Killed some of the sheep on the spot instead of stealing them due to his short temper and miniscule amount of patience.
- Stole the blueprints for Wallace's knitting machine and altered them in order to convert it to a dog food machine that he would have Wallace build unknowingly.
- Framed Gromit for all of his crimes after the former attempted to unveil his evildoings to the public, making the authorities sentence Gromit to life in prison until Shaun, his friends and Wallace rescue him.
- Manipulated Wallace and Wendolene into completing his schemes for him and then attempted to murder them in a really gruesome way, when he saw them as no longer being of use to him, along with numerous sheep that he'd stolen (including Shaun). It's even worse, especially when we take into note that Preston attempted to kill them by using the grinding machine to murder them, which makes him even worse.
- Attempted to murder Gromit while the two dueled on the knitting machine.
- At the end of the film, he's shown with a strip of cloth wrapped around his head and having been reprogrammed by his owner Wendolene to be the friendly canine he once was, seemingly having been redeemed. However, because his redemption wasn't an act he performed willingly and his newly sweet demeanor was purely the result of Wendolene more-or-less brainwashing him to be good, it's not a genuine act of redemption and therefore doesn't affect his moral scaling.
- Unlike other Wallace and Gromit villains, including Feathers McGraw and Victor Quartermaine, he has little to no comedic moments and is presented very seriously.
What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]
- Despite showing a clearly sadistic personality and is implied throughout the short to be acting of his own free will, his moral agency is left unclear due to being implied to have gone rogue solely due to somehow malfunctioning.
Trivia[]
- Preston alongside Piella Bakewell are the only two villains from Aardman Animations to be Near Pure Evil. He and Piella are also the only Near Pure Evil Villains to come from the Wallace and Gromit franchise specifically.
External Links[]
- Preston on the Villains Wiki
- Preston on the Wallace and Gromit Wiki