REVIEW: The Wild Robot [2024]

Rating: PG | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: September 27th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: DreamWorks Animation / Universal Pictures
Director(s): Chris Sanders
Writer(s): Chris Sanders / Peter Brown (book)

We must become more than we were programmed to be.

When an island of wild animals discovers a giant talking robot roaming its forest, they have every right to be scared. Maybe it’s a predator. Maybe it’s their destroyer. No one would anticipate it might actually become their friend and protector—not even it. Because Rozzum 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o) isn’t supposed to feel or care. This is an AI task completer meant to fulfill whatever its human owners request without question or failure. So, of course, “Roz” attempts to find whomever it was that ordered her. She doesn’t know a typhoon stranded her on an uninhabited patch of land. She must assume this is where she’s meant to be. Maybe that squirrel ordered her. Maybe that turtle. Definitely not the bear.

Adapted from the first book in Peter Brown’s illustrated trilogy, Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot begins with a lot of humor before deftly introducing its immense wealth of heart. This is a stranger in a strange land narrative, after all. The fun is in Roz trying to find her owner and the woodland creatures trying to survive whatever chaos she might bring. Things don’t get much easier when she spends days learning their sounds and translating their “language” either. All that does is let her know they all fear and/or want to defeat her. If not for an accident that leaves one last egg in a nest of dead geese, Roz might have just been stranded to rust and die herself. But when Fink the fox (Pedro Pascal) tries to steal that egg, she makes certain to protect it.

The result is a trio of “ugly ducklings” banding together to survive the harsh winters of an obvious post-climate disaster world (we eventually get a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge submerged under water). Not only does little Brightbill (Kit Connor) not have his biological family, but he’s so small that the other geese wouldn’t bother raising him anyway. Fink is a lone fox scavenger who makes as many enemies through trying to eat them as he does bigger animals trying to eat him. And Roz is the de facto pariah simply because she does not belong and has seemingly done more harm than good when attempting to endear herself to the wildlife. So, they might as well stay close, help each other adapt, and fulfill Roz’s first task: keep Brightbill alive until he’s strong enough to migrate.

An inspiring journey towards love commences as Brightbill is forced to come to terms with the fact that the thing that made him an orphan is also the thing that ensured his survival, Fink is forced to accept that he could use a friend, and Roz is forced to alter her directives and learn to let her heart lead. Does that last part make any sense? No. She’s a robot. She has no heart and her constant pointing to her chest and its battery doesn’t help matters considering she eventually decides to reach in and throw that out. But this is a children’s story. It’s personifying Roz as much as the animals to teach kids about empathy, affection, and humanity. It’s centering the idea of a heart rather than the physical muscle—the notion that our emotional connections should guide our morality, not flawed doctrine.

That’s an important lesson. Especially now with the world fracturing into tribes that would rather sabotage their own survival than believe someone on the other side has a right to exist. The initial violence threatening to tear down Roz’s giant wooden igloo after a blizzard rescue mission epitomizes where we are right now. A bunch of predators and prey living under the same roof with zero interest in each other beyond the base instinct to slaughter. It’s the “The Scorpion and the Frog” on a large scale where self-preservation is somehow overridden by fear. We fear that someone with no interest in hurting us will hurt us so we attack first and inevitably become the reason they retaliate. And rather than admit our error and listen, we double-down by seeking to eradicate them.

Yes, the message is still reduced to “they’ll finally understand the error of their ways once it happens to them,” but you do have to start somewhere. And, again, this is a movie for kids, so simplicity goes a long way. Sometimes that means finding another element everyone can love to hate (cool kids and pariahs alike)—see Matt Berry’s determined outcast Paddler. Sometimes it means injecting a wizened elder to arrive deus ex machina style as a bridge towards universal enlightenment—see Bill Nighy’s Longneck. As long as you also have examples of one-track minds possessing complex reasoning (Mark Hamill’s Thorn and Ving Rhames’ Thunderbolt), pure compassionate souls (Catherine O’Hara’s Pinktail), and a communal villain (Stephanie Hsu’s VONTRA), there are enough avenues to teach by example without any preaching.

Add themes on home and family of the nurture rather than nature variety and there’s a lot to love about Roz and company’s emotional evolutions. The whole flirts with tragedy (and, in one instance, does deliver), but parents shouldn’t be too worried that the suspense inherent to protecting those we love will fall into despair. Every sacrifice is a price willing to be paid and one that those who benefit won’t forget. It’s the blueprint of a civilization born from chaos thanks to the unwavering support of a parent towards its child … whether the latter rebels against it or not. And while that impulse may start as obligation, it’s supposed to be impossible to not let it transform into an unbreakable passion. Love conquers all—the sort that keeps you together and the sort that keeps you apart.