The new animated movie, The Wild Robot, released on Sept. 27, is based on the book by Peter Brown. The movie consists of the main character Roz, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, a robot designed to help people with their household, family and work needs. However, while being delivered, Roz was caught in a typhoon with packages of other robots. Roz was the only one to survive the storm but washed up on an island without people to help her.
Instead of helping people, Roz tries to help the animals all around the island. After some failed attempts to be helpful, the robot learned how to connect with the animals and learn their language. Along the way, it made a few friends, like a little goose named Brightbill, voiced by Kit Conner, and a fox named Fink, voiced by Pedro Pascal.
The Wild Robot was directed by Dreamworks animator Chris Sanders, who also helped make How To Train Your Dragon, The Croods and Lilo and Stitch, a childhood favorite to most. Sanders likes hand-drawn pieces and wanted to emphasize that in his work with The Wild Robot. This was shown to the audience perfectly with paint-like animation, an animation style used to show emotion.
On the visuals, Sanders told Variety, “From the very beginning, I was concerned that people wouldn’t see this movie the correct way if you treated it like a normal CG film,” Sanders also said, “It’s a deceptively sweet and simple book, but with incredibly complex things going on emotionally, and we wanted that to be reflected in the visuals.”
This looks like none of his previous works, but it is a well-made movie. Critics gave it a whopping 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and the audience also gave it 98% with the Popcornmeter.
However, the book made by Brown had a different ending to the movie. In the book, the ending consists of three robots coming to get Roz, but there is a fight between the animals and the robots over her, leaving Roz with just a head and a torso. She then goes with them anyway to be repaired and the book is left with Roz thinking of a plan to return to the island.
Sanders tweaked the ending to make it more cinematic. Instead of three robots, there is only one named Vontra, voiced by Stephanie Hsu, to take Roz away. There was also a fight, but instead, there were more complex emotions coming from some of the animals. In the end, Roz leaves, but only so they don’t keep coming to the island. She still thinks about a plan to return to the island, similar to the book.
The Wild Robot is a greatly animated film and loved by the public and critics. However, it discusses complicated emotions, making it difficult to think of it as a kids movie.
