The Wild Robot is Breathtaking
Brief:
The following article will contain spoilers for the film and book. It will include plot elements that you might not want to know about going into the movie (or book). So, in brief, The Wild Robot movie is absolutely fantastic. It’s funny, it’s very pretty to look at, the music is stellar, the voice acting is top-notch, and the story will move you and make you feel all sorts of things. Please watch it and come back to this article so we can gush about it together because I’m not exaggerating when I say that…
The Wild Robot is Breathtaking
It isn’t very often that I am able to discover a story that is truly impactful not necessarily in the way that I think it affects society and the world at large, but more in how it affects me at the very core of my being. Of course, there will always be something—at least one thing—that comes out each year that I think is “Peak”. Last year, we had the phenomenal Best Picture winner Oppenheimer which changed my perspective on history. 2022 gave me Puss in Boots The Last Wish, a surprisingly stellar animated opus about appreciating life and more specifically your own life that you live. 2022 also gave me my favourite movie of all time; Top Gun: Maverick. Or at least it was my favourite movie of all time up until Dreamworks released The Wild Robot in theatres and I had the pleasure of going through one of the best cinematic experiences of my life. Now for some context, I’m in Malaysia and so the movie premiered on the 19th of September, which is a week before the U.S. I was fortunate to catch an early screening of it which was on the 15th; a week earlier. Prior to the film, however, I also had the pleasure of reading the book the movie is adapting, written and illustrated by Peter Brown. I love both of them with all my heart and soul.
The Wild Robot is a story about a robot named Roz who, because of a really bad storm, ends up shipwrecked on an island. Through observation and conversation, Roz learns the ways of the island and how to not only survive in the wild but to belong in it, all the while raising a gosling who sees her as his mother. Throughout the story, you’ll follow Roz as she navigates a world that is completely foreign to her programming. You’ll follow along as she tries to befriend the wary inhabitants of the island and convince them that she isn’t a scary monster. While most of the animals are afraid of her and avoid her, the introduction of an adorable little gosling perched on her shoulder turns most fears into curiosity and eventually friendliness. Most of this story is really just Roz trying to raise her “son” Brightbill while acclimating herself to her environment until it and its inhabitants become her home.
A story like The Wild Robot is not one that is particularly unique or original in its conception. Just hearing the name, reading the synopsis and seeing any image of the titular character would evoke memories of other robot or AI characters in the past who have found their place in the memories of many people. I’d wager that The Iron Giant would be the most obvious and immediate comparison that comes to mind. Wall-E is another one that shares similarities to Peter Brown’s book and Chris Sanders’ film. The story of a friendly, unnatural machine learning what it means to have a heart or be human or anything along those lines is a concept that is practically a family-friendly sci-fi trope at this point. However, I must admit that it is something I will never tire of or complain about. It’s a story that, no matter how you spin it, is bound to be an emotional tearjerker that explores important themes of what it means to be alive and to appreciate nature and whatnot.
It is a common trope that always finds an audience. It also often gains critical praise. The “friendly machine” trope doesn’t even have to be a central element of the story. Just look at the immense popularity and endearment of side characters like R2-D2 or BB-8 from Star Wars or Baymax from Big Hero 6 or even Cortana from Halo. So it comes as no surprise that The Wild Robot book turned out to be a hit among young kids and adults alike in America. When the trailer for the movie dropped, you would find countless comments from parents saying “My kids loved the book!” or an elementary school teacher saying “I read this to my class and all the kids loved it!” and these commenters would also mention their own reverence for the material, because the trope is one that wows younger audiences but can truly resonate with more mature audiences too. So, with all that said, what makes The Wild Robot so special? Why has this particular story stood out and gained so much reverence among so many who have experienced it?
Well, I personally think that there is an inherent sincerity in both the book and the film. Roz as a character is one that has no ill intent whatsoever. In the book especially, Roz is an unstoppable force of pure unadulterated kindness. Now, it’s important to understand that Roz’s kindness isn’t the same as the kindness we see in sentient creatures like humans or animals. Where in sentient beings, kindness is a mix of intuition and a choice, Roz is programmed to be kind. Or more importantly, she’s programmed to be helpful. In the story, we learn that Roz is a helper robot designed to help ease the day-to-day lives of whoever purchases her. She’s designed to do anything and everything she is told and will not stop until that task is completed. Her kindness is built into the core of her very being only to better serve her function—help customers. Roz doesn’t choose to be kind. She just is. It’s part of her utility. Thus, it is absolutely impossible for her to be anything but kind and I think that’s the most important takeaway from this story, and it is the main theme that is the driving force behind the book and the film. Kindness.
Now, I did start to ponder while writing this, what does it mean to be kind? Is kindness a choice or is it an inherent quality? Does making an active effort to be kind mean you’re not? Is kindness something within one’s nature and you either have it or you don’t? That’s a question for another day, maybe another article. The most important thing to keep in mind when discussing The Wild Robot is that kindness is kindness, period.
“Kindness is a survival skill,”
That quote was the phrase that Chris Sanders said was constantly ringing in his head as he wrote the screenplay for the film. It’s something Peter Brown said over the phone when they called him about making an animated film adaptation of his book. It was the driving force in his mind when he was writing his book, too.
Roz is faced with an island full of creatures that treat her with immediate hostility. She is attacked, bullied, and ostracised simply for being what is essentially a foreigner. They reject her very existence when from the very beginning, all she wanted was for someone to give her a task. She wants to help. That’s what she was made for. Despite how she’s treated, however, her attitude never waned. Her inherent kindness never faded. She continues to be the sweet, good-natured robot that she is. Both the film and the book don’t shy away from the nature of the wilderness. It is a dangerous and violent place where there’s no space for kindness. Predators can’t spare their prey any kindness or they’d starve. As a 23-year-old young adult, I think it’s important to be very matter-of-fact about this with children. I appreciate a children’s story that doesn’t talk down to kids. There’s no benevolent ruler, there’s no kingdom, and animals aren’t friends. The movie is so upfront about this in fact, there’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” shot of a bird’s severed head on Roz’s hand after a predator pounced on it.
So then, when we get to the point in which the animals have to look past their nature and refrain from munching on each other, it becomes a poignant message that you hear in the trailer for the movie:
“Sometimes, to survive, we must become more than what we were programmed to be,”
This line embodies the second biggest theme that forms the base of the story. You see it most clearly with Roz. As the story unfolds, you watch Roz turn from an unfeeling and truthfully uncaring machine who only cared about fulfilling her function into a living, feeling creature who sees a little goose as her own son. The cold and programmed kindness I mentioned before starts to become warm and genuine. Where once, her kindness was simply a necessary tool in her toolkit, it eventually became something that came from her heart. To follow the film’s take on this, Roz had to override her code in order to complete her task which was to raise the little gosling, Brightbill, and to make sure he can fly before winter. Raising a child is more than simply fulfilling a task. Although Roz does initially try to approach it like a regular task.
“Eat, swim, fly by fall,”
And so in a comedic sequence, she tries to force-feed him a pine cone, placing him in water to swim (without actually teaching him, mind you), and launching him into the air to get him to fly. Roz quickly realises that raising a child is not so simple and straightforward. Roz is designed to tackle tasks mostly following preset sequences of actions in their database which are calculated to achieve a desired outcome. But there is no step-by-step guide on how to be a parent. Nobody truly even knows how to be a parent. Parenthood is, from what I can tell from my parents, a huge pain in the ass. The movie, more than any other I can think of, nails on a fundamental level what the wonders and horrors of being a parent are. How hard it is, but also how rewarding it can be. That brings us to theme number three: Parenthood.
“I do not have the programming to be a mother,”
“Nobody does!”
Roz does not have the programming to be a mother. But a Rozzum unit always completes a task, right? Well, what happens when a task isn’t within its natural capabilities? Simple. Roz improvises. She has to learn to become a mother. Over time, she really does become a mother. She starts to care for Brightbill and worries for his safety. She begins motivating him and comforting him like a mother would. She even has to go through the kinds of emotional pains a parent would have to go through. Through her transformation into becoming a loving mother, we start to see Roz change. Roz grows. She’s starting to feel. She’s not supposed to feel but she does anyway. When the great migration comes…Roz, as she watches her son fly off of her shoulder and into the sky, begins to feel something foreign to her programming. She’s done with her task, right? Eat, swim, fly by fall. Task complete. But there’s an itch inside her that she can’t place. As her son flies away, Roz speeds off after the flock. She pushes past the trees until she is met with a cliff and all she can do is stare out longingly for her son who is now all grown up, ready to leave to become a full-fledged goose. She stares longingly as she feels something she could only possibly guess could be…love.
So with Brighbill on his way to the summer nesting grounds, Roz is left alone on the island. All the animals, including Fink the Fox who has become Roz’s friend, are burrowing and preparing for hibernation through the winter. However, this cycle’s winter turns out to be the worst one the island has ever seen. Many lives are being threatened. True to her kind nature, Roz goes out of her way to trudge through perilous environments to save the animals from certain death. One by one, Roz goes out and tries to save as much wildlife as she can and bring them back to the warm home that she had built for Brightbill, Fink and herself. Despite the way she was treated, she knew that she was their only chance at survival. Keep in mind, at this point in the story, Roz has become fully sentient. No one gave her this task. Her kindness isn’t to serve her function. She wants to save these animals because she cares. In her newfound sentience, Roz’s light of kindness burns even brighter. Now all confined to a tight space, the predators and prey agreed to a truce, at least until the end of winter. Sometimes, in order to survive, we must become more than what we were programmed to be…
Once we reach the action-packed climax of the film, Roz’s kindness pays off. When her creators come to the island to try her back, Roz resists and they resort to violent means. Seeing their beloved friend being threatened, the animals all rally to her aid in the emotional culmination of Roz’s journey. In the book and in the film, this moment was unsurprisingly very moving. The animals being protective over the kind robot was so effective because over the course of the story, we not only see Roz acclimate to the island and carve her own place in the wilderness, but we also see the animals slowly warm up to her as she raises Brightbill. Their initial fear of her turned to curiosity and eventually became genuine love and care. It felt…sincere. Moreso in the book than the film but that’s a discussion for another day. The point is, in the movie, the animals standing up for Roz damn well got my chest tightened.
“They want me to come with them,”
“Tell them you’re already home!”
If you can’t tell yet, I absolutely adore The Wild Robot. I love everything about this story. The book will now forever be a warm blanket on a rainy day and the movie will always be something to remind me that I have a heart. Like I said at the start, it’s quite rare for me to find something that affects me to this level. I think it’s rare for anyone to find something that achieves this feat. It usually happens when you’re young and something moves you so much your soul kind of gets attached to it. Like my girlfriend with Tangled or like my best friend with Kung Fu Panda. I myself was and still am absolutely in love with How to Train Your Dragon, co-directed by Sanders. So to have a film (and book) like this come along that absolutely steals my heart is very exciting for me. This story balances so many different themes and lessons, from the obvious themes of parenthood and kindness to the subtle themes of community and the relationship between technology and nature and even climate change, it’s a wonder how they didn’t trip over themselves making this.
Now, all I’ve talked about up until this point has been the story, which is really brilliant. However, I very specifically chose the word “breathtaking” in the title for a reason. I am in no way being hyperbolic when I say that The Wild Robot just might be the most visually gorgeous work of moving pictures I have ever had the blessed pleasure of watching. Okay, maybe I am being hyperbolic but I’m also not kidding. This is one of those movies where the phrase “every frame a painting” really does apply. I’m not just using that as a way to say that the movie is really pretty. The movie is literally a painting with every frame. In an interview with Polygon, Chris Sanders emphasised their new approach to animation. Chris mentions that he saw the concept art for the movie which looked like paintings and asked their production designer, Raymond Zibach, if they could make the film look entirely like that. Gone are the days of 3D CG elements, replaced with what sounds like hand-painted 2D elements done in a 3D space. I’m no animation expert so I might be wrong there. Any animation experts or students out there, check out that article and tell me if I got that right.
Sanders described it as “painting dimensionally,” and that there’s no more geometry in the animation. So in a sense, I think that means no 3D elements or models except for the character models. Even then, they painted textures onto the models instead of creating flat textures wrapped around the models. Instead of hyper-realistic fur simulations like we’re used to, the furs are stylized brushstrokes. All this results in an animated picture with this painterly quality to it and it really stands out. It’s beautiful from start to finish. The cinematography too is absolutely gorgeous. Aided by Dreamworks’ own Chris Stover, they wanted to approach the film’s look like wildlife photography. It’s the look you get when you have to use really long lenses to capture images of wildlife because you don’t want to disturb them by getting too close. The way each character is animated, they have so much expression in their faces and their body movements. The character animations for Roz are especially fun to watch as her body twists and contorts in funny, expressive and creative ways, making full use of her fantastic character design that perfectly balances cold and robotic with soft and nurturing. You just wanna hug this big white ball of love.
The movie isn’t just a treat for the eyes, but also the ears. The score, composed by Kris Bowers, enhances every scene and accentuates every emotion the filmmakers are trying to get you to feel. From Roz’s initial exploration of the island to the absolutely breathtaking migration sequence, the music here rivals some of Dreamworks’ best scores like John Powell’s How To Train Your Dragon or his and Hans Zimmer’s Kung Fu Panda. The sound design is absolutely incredible. The voice cast is absolutely perfect, with Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal being absolute standouts. Mark Hamill as Thorn, Kit Connor as Brightbill, Matt Berry as Paddler, Catherine O’Hara as Pinktail, Bill Nye as Longneck, Ving Rhames as Thunderbolt, and Stephanie Hsu as Vontra, this article would be too long if I just started gushing over each and every one of them. I could talk about every little scene that I found adorable or funny and we’d be here all day.
So again, it’s very obvious at this point that I love The Wild Robot. It will forever hold a special place in my heart and this is definitely going on the list of “Things to show my future kids” alongside Kubo and the Two Strings. The Wild Robot is a timeless tale of love, kindness, and community. Watch it with your kids, parents, friends, or by yourself. The Wild Robot will steal your heart the way it stole mine. I hope you’re moved by it the same way I and so many others were. Take care and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.