The Wild Robot: One of the Best Animated Films of the Year

DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders.

DreamWorks Animation has another home run and Oscar contender because The Wild Robot is one of the best animated films of the year.

There is a scene at the end of the credits.

I went into the screening hours after my first-ever viewing of The Iron Giant. Given that this film dealt with a robot, it was a fitting day-night double-feature. The films are not quite the same but they are both touching with how the robots in question end up bonding. Suffice it to say, this is a very different film than any animated film I’ve seen before. I’m used to watching films that have a hero and villain but we don’t exactly have those here. There’s certainly an antagonist but it’s not one who is around for an entire plot as is usually the case in other films.

Filmmaker Chris Sanders bases his script on Peter Brown’s bestselling middle-grade novel, The Wild Robot. The book is the first in a trilogy and if everything goes well at the box office, the film will likely be a franchise-starter. It also has everything that an animated film needs. There are laughs and depending on your age, it might get emotional at times. If you ask my opinion, I’d love to continue hanging out with these characters on the big screen! I would be remiss if I did not mention that I did not look at my watch at all during the film.

Ever since CGI was introduced to the world of animation, the genre has never been the same. Sanders and company do their best to take advantage of the current technology at hand. They take inspiration from recent DreamWorks films, Bambi, Hayao Miyazaki films, and artists Syd Mead, John Harris, and John Berkey in how they approached The Wild Robot. As Sanders puts it: “Leveraging DreamWorks’ technological advancements, we’ve created a film with a completely unique animation style. Imagine a Miyazaki forest brought to life through the work of Claude Monet.”

Because of how the industry works, film adaptations are almost always different from the books. Brown discusses the matter in the film’s production notes: “Books and movies are very different art forms, so it’s only natural for The Wild Robot movie to differ from the book, but I had numerous discussions with the filmmakers, and I knew their goal was to capture the spirit of the story that I had dreamed up years ago.”

I’m going to discuss a bit more about the film–and plot–below.

ROZZUM unit 7134 aka Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) requires a bit of time to find a task to complete but when she does, it’ll be hard to not override her programming. Unlike other ROZZUM units, she one has found herself marooned on an uninhabited island. The units in question are not meant to be living in the wild. In theory, they should be helping families with tasks. Alas, that’s not quite happening here. In looking for a task to accomplish, Roz scares off whichever animal she comes into contact. They all think Roz is a monster! Everything changes when she finds a goose egg after accidentally destroying its nest–a gosling soon hatches and bonds with Roz. Task acquired!

Eventually, Roz is able to build a relationship with the other animals. It is not in Roz’s programming to be a mom and that’s where some of the other animals come in, including red fox Fink (Pedro Pascal). Roz does have programming that allows the robot–audiences, too–to communicate with them. Well, once they learn not to be so scared of the robot. Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) offers advice on how to be a mother. Roz eventually understands that the gosling needs to learn how to eat and swim before flying off for the winter migration. But first, she needs to give this gosling a name and no, numbers will not do! Brightbill (Kit Connor), it is. Will Roz be ready to say goodbye when Brightbill flies away for winter? What will happen to Roz as far as finding a new task or returning to wherever she came from?

There are life lessons in this film that will probably resonate with many people. The film’s themes almost certainly will: attachment, commitment, responsibility, love, and the essence of emotion. The beauty of nature means that we’re not dealing with the traditional family unit. Found family is something that comes to mind. You have animals working together that maybe would not work together in the real world. Whether it is surviving winter or rescuing one of their own, they come together when it counts. But much like robots, animals have programming of their own. Take dogs for example–eat, sleep, their work is complete. Border collies might require something to herd because it is in their programming.

Oscar winner Kris Bowers handles scoring duties and gives the film an emotional touch. Roz, Brightbill and Fink all get their own themes. There’s a main theme that sometimes plays in the background, depending on what the film needs at the time. Even during sequences without dialogue, the score finds a way to tug at our emotions.

Easter egg alert! A-113 makes frequent appearances in Pixar films. It also shows up in this film, too, since both Chris Sanders and head of story Heidi Jo Gilbert attended CalArts. As such, they stepped foot in the animation classroom at some point or another. It comes up in the film when we learn that Roz’s processing unit is referred to as an Alpha One One Three Processing Unit (A-113).

The Wild Robot could rival any of the animated films that I grew up watching. I’ll let Mark Hamill have the last word because he’s not wrong in his description of the film: “Finding a film with universal appeal is rare and valuable, and this movie is definitely a gem in that regard.”

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Chris Sanders
CAST: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, with Mark Hamill and Catherine O’Hara