Movie Review: The Wild Robot is moving, funny, entertaining and an audiovisual marvel
Animation in the film genre has been greatly devalued in recent years, the classic studio in this area has had serious problems in presenting interesting and original things that appeal to both insiders and outsiders.
Over several decades, studios such as Sony Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros Animation, and some more that are independent have been in force thanks to having good adaptations of unusual stories that have innovated in the field of animation.
With the arrival of CGI and the creation of Pixar, things changed radically, those artisanal frame-by-frame animation works remained as mere references of a golden age in which for months they gave life to those characters and presented them on the big screen in a masterful way.
With the arrival of platforms, the high budgets for this genre were becoming more and more moderate, reflected in their final products. Japan, for its part, has continued with its same theme and line of animation to this day, thus giving a good example that modern technological resources can be at the service of entertainment if they respect their own rules.
In 2024, The Wild Robot comes again to rethink those above, based on the new series of novels written by Peter Brown and that the director and screenwriter Chris Sanders brings to the big screen to discover something completely different from what we have seen before.
What is the movie Wild Robot about?
ROZZUM unit 7134 or Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) is a robot that has been shipwrecked on a desert island and must learn to quickly adapt to the harsh environment, gradually forging relationships of friendship and protection with the local fauna and suddenly becoming the adoptive mother of an orphaned goose baby while the Universal Dynamics company is looking for her, Roz will realize that living away from everything and everyone will make her understand and value everything around her and will make her question her existence.
After a period in which it seemed that there were no new things to tell, this film arrives that rethinks many things in the animation genre. Its story may seem simple and childish to us, but as its plot develops we learn and understand that this is more complicated and deeper than it might seem at first glance.
Another animated film where they use moderate CGI with a friendly-looking robot that makes friends with the animals on an island uninhabited by humans and has to cope with its misfortune is not something that sounds exactly very original. However, if this cliché theme is given the right twist and meaning, things change and that is when there is a strange symmetry between a good story and good animation.
A robot, a goose, and a fox, an idea that is not at all attractive at least for adults who look for something more in animated films and it is quite the opposite, what might seem like a stupid cliché is the premise of one of the best-animated films released so far in 2024, something that could well be defined as a work of audiovisual art, a plot that goes from action to being moving about adaptation, acceptance and the creation of a very unusual family that does not try to continue educating the public on current issues but only graphically presents some of the good values that we as human beings can have.
The good work they have done is perceived from the beginning when we are introduced to ROZZUM 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o), later known simply as Roz, a shipwrecked robot that has been stranded on a remote island, a humanoid artifact built to be completely subservient to its programming and programmer who becomes a stranger in a strange place, the inhabitants in the environment are animals that are afraid and surprised by what they have just discovered, while Roz gets to know and learn from each one of them and in her desperation to complete a task programmed in her functions her purpose arrives unexpectedly in the form of an adorable goose named Brightbill (Kit Connor) thus assuming one more task to her programming, that of the maternal care and protection of this adorable creature.
Although its narrative is slow and advances slowly, we can recreate ourselves in all that setting that has been taken care of down to the smallest details, the combination of the traditional with the digital has been a surprise, they say that this work can emulate without any problem or doubt what Hayao Miyazaki did, landscapes, forests, and environments like those we have seen in Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001), Howl no Ugoku Shiro (2004) and very recently with Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka (2023) are what recreate the adventures of this robot.
The true beauty of The Wild Robot as a film is the exact combination of all its elements, demanding a different level of quality from itself. Its almost painterly style images are captivating, and its panoramic shots show a landscape with more texture and background in proportion to what we are seeing, which contrasts perfectly with Roz and her metallic appearance, which marks the difference between the natural and the technological.
The adventure that Roz undertakes on this island takes her to meet some of the animals of this place, a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), a possum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), a brown bear named Thorn (Mark Hamill) and a beaver named Paddler (Matt Berry), she quickly learns that nature is a place full of beauty and at the same time terrifying and a completely different place where there are no humans and she has no specific task to fulfill, as an adaptation of Peter Brown’s book it is risky and brave to touch very openly but with subtlety and respect the subject of death something that used to be a subject that children’s fiction has handled in different ways over the years, but that now seems forbidden in animation.
Roz faces death when she accidentally falls into a nest, killing a mother goose and almost all of her eggs except one. This is where things begin to change in Roz’s program. When the egg breaks, a chick is born, which Roz calls Brightbill (Kit Connor), who sees this creature without fear and as her mother. If things were different and the message of the tape were very different, then Brightbill as a newborn bird would not survive and the story would be different.
The studios are making robots fashionable again, nothing has been as endearing as Iron Giant (1999) by director Brad Bird until now, it is clear to us that we are facing a moving film, with a concrete and clear message full of unexpected humor, with jokes and phrase games about how easy it is for animals to die in nature, this film defines perfectly well when a big-budget film project is made for profit and when it is made out of artistic passion as in this case, this already marks a before and after in contemporary animation and the modernity of our times.
It is very plausible to see that all those involved put their heart into it, you can see and feel it and that is what matters to transmit to the viewer, a completely different experience that involves us from the first moment and makes us direct participants of what is happening, that plays with our emotions and captivates us candidly and sincerely leaving aside the stupidity of messages between the lines or poorly carried out or that it is just expensive and empty entertainment, especially in an era in which childishness feels more like a cynical resource to get money at the box office and not for telling a good story as it should, it is so well done in every sense that that is what allows us to connect with what is happening.
Its message is very clear from the start, it is a film about mechanical beings, technology, and wild creatures but it is also a film about parents and children and the changes that can occur if we are aware that we can be something more, Roz learns the great difficulty and responsibility of being a mother and discovers that sometimes the best way to care for and raise children is to discard the “programming” that we thought would teach us to do so and this is a great direct criticism of today’s society in which these advances harm us more than they help us, a message that sincerely conveys that everything you do is right as long as you have heart and conviction, adaptation to the environment and constant changes and overcoming the obstacles that come our way.
The clearest message and where all its charm lies are in seeing the simplicity of life and all its beauty, that as human beings we have filled ourselves with unnecessary things, that we can have a good quality of life with very little less, of the complexity that we have as humans to overcomplicate things, a message that does not pretend to educate but to openly show what is happening and what can happen, at last we move away from stupid speeches about feminisms and consequences and poorly carried out hero’s paths that only complicate and hinder the plots and stories that are made around this.
Perhaps the only flaw it has is that it plays too much with the feelings and emotions of the viewer, the excess of this may or may not be good depending on each one’s perspective, the director and writer of the same Chris Sanders knows perfectly well what he has in hand and takes it to the highest and unsurpassable point of the genre it occupies, this being an adaptation of a children’s novel, let’s hope that if there are other installments they will be of equal or greater visual quality than this one.
The stunning design is paired perfectly well with the artistic talent needed to ensure that this film stands on its own and has its personality as a classic in its genre, Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames and Mark Hamill, each of these great actors manage to deliver on their role, Nyong’o is captivating in her performance, Pascal is delightfully cynical and witty, Connor adds excitement and adventure to the character, Hamill proves once again that he can be as versatile as he wants doing what he wants and what he loves most.
The music composed by Kris Bowers is without a doubt another character that has the right and necessary pieces to frame each scene, each shot, making what we see audiovisually a whole experience that can transmit feelings to us, a work that competes effortlessly with others that pretend to be without being and without transmitting absolutely anything.
In conclusion, we can ask ourselves at this point a question: is this the most original story ever brought to the cinema? The answer may not necessarily be, we are faced with a very honest and sincere work in itself, which gives us the message that we must have a purpose in life to be able to appreciate it as it is, with its good and wonderful things as well as the bad and how we will overcome that, this is without a doubt one of the greatest and most pleasant surprises that DreamWorks has given us in a very long time, something that is already a classic icon in animation that enriches and perfects the genre, let’s hope that the studios have already understood what their mistakes have been and we can continue to see more films like this.
Wild Robot is now available in movie theaters in your country.
