Spoiler alert
Peter Brown’s famed novel has found its way to the big-screen that too in an exhilarating and irresistible way as Dreamwork animation’s latest film The Wild Robot has hit the cinemas worldwide. The Wild Robot, a refreshing animation exploration from the creators of How To Train Your Dragon seems to have almost snuck up on the audiences beyond the age barriers. With its impressive animation scenes and a softer ‘wild-human’ touch, the film has certainly done better than the expectations.
With its impressive animation scenes and a softer ‘wild-human’ touch, the film has certainly done better than the expectations.
The Wild Robot is not a robot film operating on the macho-ism and heroic adventures of some machine city of distant future with running robots and a fight against an attacking force of vicious aliens intent on destroying the human race. The film is being lauded as one of most beautiful animation productions of the year. For the first time since 2001, after many not so up to the mark projects, Dreamwork studio has been successful in becoming the talk of the town as The Wild Robot is catching everyone’s attention.
Directed and written by Chris Sanders, The Wild Robot is undoubtedly worth a watch. The film comes with a message. Through its tender touches on human (or rather, wild) connection, on adopted motherhood, on being an outcast among one’s own kind and surviving in the world of prey and predators where kindness is anything but a survival skill, the film has done a great job of engaging with relevant questions of our dystopian times. By nudging us on the bond between the child and the caregiver with its struggles and conflicts, the film has risen above the level of an ordinary animation film which typically intends to be two hours of amusement for a younger audience. The Wild Robot does make a case of its own and distances itself away from that pitfall.
A task-enthusiastic “heartless” robot becomes a mother
A robot Rozzum 7134 (voice over by Lupita Nyong’o) washes ashore on an island when her carrier ship gets crashed. The accident leaves the robot stranded in the wild, only to later find the meaning and purpose of her existence, to find a heart in her. This is the journey of Roz the robot becoming The Wild Robot. Overly-programmed to finish tasks for humans in their daily lives, the Robot tries harder to find a task on an island whose wild inhabitants, not very welcoming to their strange guest, run away from her.
In her sneaky efforts to get a task, Roz ends up killing a nesting goose and here starts the bumpy ride of motherhood that suddenly falls upon the AI programmed feelingless robot. In the now destroyed nest, Roz sees a lone survivor egg and thus stumbles upon the task of adopting the orphaned gosling who turns out to be young Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor).
‘I do not have the programming to be a mother,‘ utters the Robot Roz while being relentlessly followed by the newborn gosling who now identifies her as mother. ‘No one does,‘ replies the Mom Opossum Pinktail, ‘We just make it up‘. This highlights the social construct of motherhood in a light-hearted way. ‘As a mother of seven… six… babies, it’s a full-time thing. But it’s not all bad. Just mostly bad.’ Roz finds a task – ultimately a purpose – and a space which will eventually embrace her and will become a home. It is a forged relation that will not only change the robot but also move the whole forest.
Roz, quite robotically, goes on teaching the gosling what all it needs to survive – eat, swim and fly – with the help of a self-assigned ‘goose expert‘ Fink the Fox (voiced by Pedro Pascal), as the young Brightbill has a clock ticking fast till she is fully able to join the coming big migration.
Roz, quite robotically, goes on teaching the gosling what all it needs to survive – eat, swim and fly – with the help of a self-assigned ‘goose expert‘ Fink the Fox (voiced by Pedro Pascal), as the young Brightbill has a clock ticking fast till she is fully able to join the coming big migration. The film shines through little gestures of the gosling lovingly nestling around Roz’s neck, causing a spark of energy in the AI system of Roz or the chaotic conglomeration of the shelter home that Roz builds to avoid stormy and deadly winters.
The tale of Roz, a seemingly futuristic version of Amazon’s Alexa with a sneaky task-oriented programming goes beyond just an advanced technology serving the human purpose of leisure. Here the robot goes on its own journey. The storyline does recognise the crude realities of a world running on harsh principles of survival but amidst all that it does not forget the urge for a connection – a friendship that the ‘foxy’ Fink finds in Roz. The Wild Robot touches upon the issue of adoptive motherhood and its dilemmas and reckonings.
Story of misfits finding their home and belongingness
The Wild Robot is a story of a misfit, not welcomed among its own kind while being embraced by the unfamiliar. When it is revealed that Roz was not his ‘biological’ mother, the sense of uncertainty and agony Brightbill faces and its exquisite presentation is worth admiring as the now grown kid must confront the fact of adoptive parenthood. It takes some time for him to not only recognise this but also realise that he might not have survived as a smaller than average goose in his natural surroundings.
The idea of chosen family is also sketched delicately – those who are not welcomed either in their kins or the neighbourhood, be it the hated Fink, ostracised by others or Brightbill raised by a “monster” and looked down upon by his own kinds, find acceptance in the once-strangers. The question of where one belongs – whether it is the young Brightbill or Roz has been addressed by Chris Sanders in a way that fills the heart with a sense of joy and content. To find these answers for oneself, one has to go on a long journey of doubts and dilemmas, sometimes a literal long winter migration as in the case of young Brightbill.
The question of where one belongs – whether it is the young Brightbill or Roz has been addressed by Chris Sanders in a way that fills the heart with a sense of joy and content.
When Dreamwork studios exploded onto the scene back in 2001, the animation studio had the motive of being the antithesis to the industry giant Disney animation which was churning out fairy tales and typical tropes rooted in outdated cultural norms. It was reflected in its standouts Shrek (2001) but the studio could not keep it up in previous years.
Now the production has again come up with an authentic storyline using a hand-painted animation technique, part classic Disney, part Hayao Miyazaki. As Ekta Sinha for Elle.in writes, ‘A dumb robot with a goose in a film made me cry.‘ Animated films are not just for kids, and director Chris Sanders has conveyed it so well.
A message of kindness among the crude reality of survival
This film is based on Peter Brown’s much loved 2016 children’s book of the same title The Wild Robot. The film is not another silly science fiction with robots on a giant space shuttle, but it goes deeper and possesses some human touch. A robot learns to adapt and form bonds with the local wildlife. Darker moments of despair and anxiety have been suitably incorporated into the frame.
But Sanders is really enthusiastic about providing hope on multiple occasions and a message of goodwill, perhaps intended for human societies. Climate change also seems to have been highlighted although just anecdotally. The film, for a moment, diverts our attention from the impending dark cloud of AI and tech supremacy on our world which many believe are going to destroy the world as it exists. It presents a story which has a heart and tenderness, involving a generative AI style Robot amidst confusing, hostile and sometimes fatal surroundings.
