Director: Chris Sanders
Writer: Chris Sanders, Peter Brown
Stars: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor
Synopsis: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island’s animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.
DreamWorks burst onto the scene in 2001 with Shrek. This film wasn’t just a massive hit of the time but is also famously the first-ever winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar, which they followed up with their second win in this category for 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. All the while, DreamWorks Animation was creating exciting and inventive works that placed them as a giant when it came to animation studios. However, during the mid-late 2010s, it seemed as though DreamWorks was vulnerable because, despite some hits (How to Train Your Dragon, for example), there were some massive misses. Also, a lack of originality became apparent in the studio. Over half (15 of 29) of the films released between How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda 4 were either a direct sequel or spin-off of one of their properties.
While some of them were admittedly good, it started to seem as though DreamWorks was losing the sauce that made them so relevant, falling in the animated race behind Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli, of course, but now it’s arguable that Netflix, Sony, and even Cartoon Saloon are all passing the once colossus studio. This fall has been reflected in the box office. $100 million once felt like the baseline for a DreamWorks box office but has only been reached twice out of the previous nine releases. Because of this, it was announced that starting in 2025, DreamWorks would move entirely away from producing in-house and will instead work with partner studios to save money. I say all this not to teach anyone but to say that DreamWorks needed a win and a chance to prove they still have it when making animated films. This is where The Wild Robot comes in, a film that, for better or worse, will go down in history as the final in-house DreamWorks animated film.
Based on the novel by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot begins with a robot stranded on the beach on an unknown island in the middle of nowhere. Like most animated films involving these types of robots, this one, ROZZUM 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o), is designed to help its customers complete whatever tasks are needed. However, unlike most films revolving around this similar plot, ROZZUM is not around people – there are few humans in the movie and none noteworthy – and instead is surrounded by the island’s animals. These animals are both curious and fearful of the bot, who is hell-bent on helping someone on this island, and after some mishaps, enters into a learning mode to decipher the language of the animals – which, the act of providing reason for why the bot can understand the animals was a distinction I loved rather than it just unknowingly being able to speak with the wilderness. After learning the animal’s language, the bot believes it will be able to reason with them, yet this only makes things worse, as now, not only do these animals think of ROZZUM 7134 as a monster, but the bot also understands that she doesn’t belong, forcing her to activate her tracking beacon to be taken back to her manufacturer. However, the attempt to contact the manufacturer is interrupted. After encounters with skunks, raccoons, and a bear, ROZZUM 7134 is thrown down a hill, causing an accident and destroying a goose nest and all of the eggs inside, except one. The bot gets into a scuffle with a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal) over the egg; not long after safely securing the egg, it begins to hatch, and an orphaned gosling imprints itself onto the bot, believing that the machine is its mother. With a broken tracking beacon, ROZZUM 7134, now just going by Roz, finds a task in taking care of the gosling, eventually named Brightbill (a younger actor plays him at the start, but for most of the film, Kit Connor voices the role), teaching him how to eat, swim, and fly so that he can leave during the Winter migration.
Until this point, the film was already entrancing, with beautiful action scenes and quick-paced camera movements. The beginning sets the stage for the conflict that will happen throughout and, through little dialogue, makes the film visually compelling. However, when Brightbill is introduced, director Chris Sanders takes that next step, crafting a film so visually exuberant it’s hard to take your eyes off it. Some scenes were so powerful from a visual aspect that I was brought to tears – which, admittedly, I was a mess throughout – just by looking at what this film had to offer. Sanders might have an extensive filmography, but the filmmaker hasn’t had many chances to display his style. He served as co-director with Dean DeBlois on Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon and also co-directed The Croods with Kirk DeMicco; it wouldn’t be until his fourth project, The Call of the Wild that he would have a chance as a solo director. Yet, even in the case of The Call of the Wild, the live-action aspect still means we had yet to see what a Sanders animated style was. It was a risk, yet so were many of the choices made in this film, but The Wild Robot gave Sanders the chance to prove himself right as a visionary in his own right, and he did not disappoint. The smoothness of the shots and the intensity matched perfectly with the beauty he could find. I was often left shocked at the beauty of the film, and the stunning 3D visual landscape felt familiar but still different enough to continue to push the medium of animation forward. 2D scenes are included to heighten the emotional moments, and every single one works perfectly. It’s one of the most gorgeously animated films I have seen in years.
The film then shifts as Brightbill, Roz, and Fink, who tags along with the two both out of loneliness and for a better life, grow over the seasons. As Brightbill gets a little older, it is revealed that not only does he not fit in with the other geese, given that a robot raised him, but he is also a runt and, in any case, likely wouldn’t have made it very far. Sanders also served as the sole writer for this film, adapting the novel by Peter Brown, and penned one of the year’s best screenplays. Sanders perfectly captures this story in a way that incorporates heart and emotion without ever speaking down to the audience. The novel version of “The Wild Robot” is a middle school-level book, but Sadners’ script isn’t just for children. I was often left amazed by just how dark the film can get from jokes about an opossum (Catherine O’Hara) losing her children, to deaths, and also the very reason for which Brightbill was orphaned. The occasional darkness of the script doesn’t mean that children can’t view the movie, which they should, but the thematic depths surrounding found family, love, care, and what it takes to be a mother provide enough depth to make anyone feel emotional without manipulating them in any way.
The emotion also comes in the form of Kris Bowers’ score, another aspect of this film that is among the best of the year. Much of the film is told through little dialogue and strong visuals, and Bowers’ score immaculately enchants these moments. As Brightbill gets older, Roz learns that there is only so much she can do to help him prepare for the migration. Still, this doesn’t stop her from giving everything, even parts of herself, to a point in which it becomes dangerous for her to provide what she needs for her child. Bowers delivers the proper sense of emotion, passion, drive, and resiliency through these mute scenes, allowing the audience to remain invested in this story. He captures the epic scale and more intimate moments through extravagant and intimate music. All the while, Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal provide some of the year’s best voice work and performances in general. Each actor displays joy and pain through wonderfully delivered lines and commitment, the commitment that again elevates an already excellent script to become something more. Sanders doesn’t let his foot off the gas as the film ends, delivering necessary but hard endings that, once again, trust the audience enough not to give them the easy route.
The Wild Robot was a fitting end for DreamWorks in-house productions because The Wild Robot is DreamWorks. Everything this company has built over the past two decades culminates in a film of loss, love, and friendship told through Chris Sanders’ stylistic direction, impassioned screenplay, and majestic score from Kris Bowers. The DreamWorks brand has created many phenomenal films and will continue to do so with the help of other studios, but The Wild Robot deserves a place among DreamWorks’ very best.