Movie Review - The Wild Robot (2024)
John Wintroub reviews the animated science fiction film, The Wild Robot.
2024 has been a fantastic year for robot movies. First, Robot Dreams in June and now The Wild Robot and Transformers One in September. I had the chance to catch both new releases this weekend.
Based on the children’s’ book of the same name by writer Peter Brown, The Wild Robot follows a shipwrecked robot named Roz as she attempts to find purpose in an island that refuses to give her one. The wildlife she is surrounded by deems her a monster, wanting absolutely nothing to do with the robot whose sole drive is to help others. After a tragic accident, Roz finds herself taking care of an orphaned gosling, learning how to love in the process.
The Wild Robot appeals to me in much the same way all stories about robots or artificial life forms learning to be more “human“ does. It joins a long list of media containing such characters including movies like WALL-E or Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation or even a video game like NieR: Automata. I have even written an article about this specific character trope before!
Since then, I learned that it was likely because I am autistic and have a difficult time understanding and expressing my own emotions. Nevertheless, I dubbed this trope the “Emotionless Character that Discovers Emotion.“ Roz falls under this umbrella perfectly as she rewrites her own code throughout the course of the movie to be more motherly to her gosling.
As a movie filled with emotion, it certainly had me feeling it across the board, whether it was the jaw-dropping animation or the wonderful score by Kris Bowers (Green Book, King Richard).
This heart-touching story is beautifully animated with a traditional painting aesthetic clearly harkening back to the art of the original book. Although, the unique art style and utopian design of Roz helps build a nature vs technology narrative visually, that is grows increasingly apparent in the film’s third act. While much of this is thanks to Chris Sanders’ (Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon) direction, the entire animation team brought this film to life.
Sadly, as this was the last film made in-house at Dreamworks, it is unlikely most of the animation team will work on another movie for the studio.
The whole cast is filled with celebrity voice actors. However, they all feel like they are giving a serious voice performance. As opposed to using their natural voice for the role and taking the easy payday, something that has been happening far too often over the last twenty years.
Much of Roz’s appeal comes from Lupita Nyong’o’s voice performance as her. Nyong’o has been a talent on my radar since her performance in Us (2019) and this film would not work without her. The way her performance evolves over the course of the film as Roz becomes increasingly human-like helps define the character and her interactions with the rest of the animal cast.
Much of the runtime is spent on Roz’s dynamic with the selfish trickster fox Fink (Pedro Pascal) and her gosling Brightbill (Kit Conner). Pascal ditches his more rough voice work as Din Djarin in The Mandalorian, which is why he so easily disappears into his role as Fink.
Conner, comparatively is a quite the voice talent, having a solid history of video games, like Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This is represented in how varied his work is, both as an on-screen actor and as a voice actor.
The secondary cast is filled with talent too, with the likes of Bill Nighy, Mark Hamill, Stephanie Hsu and Matt Berry. However, the standout to me was Ving Rhames, whose character came out of nowhere for me and had me smiling ear-to-ear.
The Wild Robot is an emotion-filled beautifully-animated movie from one of the best animation directors in Hollywood. If you have not seen it already, do yourself a favor and watch it in theaters!
Rating: 10/10