‘The Wild Robot’: DreamWorks’ Glorious Fable About Nature and Solidarity Is a Visually Soaring Triumph

Alci Rengifo

Chris Sanders’ “The Wild Robot” is a wondrous animated adventure that doesn’t shortchange its audience. Slowly but surely, American animation is catching up with the rest of the world to the idea that this genre is a key cinematic craft, not just a distraction for the little ones. This DreamWorks feature tugs at the heartstrings with talking critters and a lovable robot. Such familiar ingredients are used by Sanders for a story that features some real moral dilemmas, challenging topics like honesty and a rich animation style that is brilliant artistry. Some adults might just be inspired to go see the movie without the excuse of taking along the kids. 

Sanders adapts a book by Peter Brown, bringing it to life like a modern fable. On the rocky shores of a wilderness island a robot, ROZZUM 7314 (Lupita Nyong’o) aka Rozz, crashes in from an unknown origin. Following her programming, she scans the terrain, seeking an owner to give her a task. What she finds instead is the vast array of animals which live here and are instantly terrified of the machine’s presence. They try to knock Rozz over and get rid of her, but she persists, eventually finding herself in possession of a goose egg. When it hatches, the emerging gosling instantly takes to the robot as his mom. Now with the help of a cynical fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal), Rozz learns to override her original programming and develop a maternal bond, as well as a deeper connection to the ecosystem of the island.

Sanders has an impressive animated catalog that includes famous titles like “Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Croods.” He goes beyond the more traditional animated and CGI style of those films, and has acknowledged the influence of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki on “The Wild Robot.” Unlike the typical, at times bland look of some U.S. studio titles, this one has the look of moving art, with hints of brushstrokes on a vast canvas. The wilderness Rozz lands in is a gorgeous terrain of all of our grand national parks fused into one. You want to sit closer to the screen to drink it all in. One could almost smell the pine off this movie. 

On a storytelling level, the narrative works like an amalgam of those classic fables where the passing of seasons is a metaphor for our cycles of life. Sanders’ screenplay has a unique level of maturity, sneaking in difficult life lessons in its humor. Tink explains to Rozz how in the wild, being kind is detrimental to survival. Predators eat to survive and everyone else makes tough choices as well. The gosling grows up with the name Brightbill (Kit Connor), who has no idea Rozz accidentally caused the death of his original family. Should he know? It’s one of those tough questions the film handles admirably, along with themes about death. Brightbill is also a runt, meaning technically he’s not meant to survive. Yet, like Rozz defying her own programming, a potent message here is that sometimes we have to defy the supposed order of things to make it through. Though, adolescence is always a pain and when he tries to make contact with the local flock of geese, they instantly shun poor Brightbill for being raised by “the monster.”

If Brightbill happens to have shorter wings and needs to prove himself, then he can learn to fly with a tutor like Thunderbolt (Ving Rhames), a tough-talking falcon. Sanders and the animation team fill the movie with wonderful animal characters like this. There’s an opossum, Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), with a constant littler who gives Rozz lots of motherly advice. Paddler (Matt Berry) is a proud beaver determined to chew through the biggest tree in the forest despite everyone’s skepticism. Thorn (Mark Hamill, yes, that one) roams around like the island’s big, rough grizzly bear. There are many more, such as Longneck (Bill Nighy), the wise leader of the geese. Smaller animals are purposefully given hilariously dark one-liners (“let us divide the robot meat amongst ourselves”). “The Wild Robot” combines much of the traditional norms we expect in animated adventures with better, slightly edgier touches.

There is a deeper, ecological angle that never turns the film into an outright message movie. It’s all there if you just pay attention. Migrating birds fly over American cities now sunk underwater. One of the film’s great images shows whales swimming over the Golden Gate Bridge. Rozz finds another shipwrecked robot on the island’s shores, with stored memory files of futuristic cities where humans now depend on robots like Rozz to do most of our chores. Programmed to feel nothing, Rozz symbolizes how technology is making us more detached as we continue discarding the importance of the environment. Yet, everyone has to learn to be more accepting and communal. Tink also must learn to care for Brightbill and actually make friends. How can we care about the world when we don’t care about each other? In Rozz’s case, motherhood becomes the ultimate lesson in solidarity. What she learns from caring for Brightbill she later applies when the animals face major threats. 

Since its founding in the late 1990s, DreamWorks’ animation department has consistently put out impressive work, from epics like “The Prince of Egypt” to those pop culture classics such as “Shrek.” “The Wild Robot” is one of their best and one of the year’s animation gems, proving the studio is not shying away from going against the norm. Not a single frame lacks richness. Too many animated films, if not live action as well, are timid about touching on subject matter that is genuinely piercing. This film is telling its young audiences that life is indeed difficult, death is a reality, but that doesn’t mean we should retreat into cruelty. Come to think of it, that’s a lesson a lot of the adult audience will benefit from as well. 

“The Wild Robot” releases Sept. 27 in theaters nationwide.