The Wild Robot
Rating – 2/4
**SPOILERS**
The best Pixar movie of the year was made by Dreamworks.
That was the reputation I was sold on for The Wild Robot. Now I have a LOT of respect for Pixar, and greatly enjoyed Inside Out 2, so I was certainly interested. Now as you have probably noticed, I have not given The Wild Robot 4 stars.
Evidently, I feel lied to.
The Wild Robot was released in September of this year. It is based on a novel of the same name written by Peter Brown, and released in 2016 to wide acclaim. It takes place on an island without humans, where a hurricane causes a box to wash up on its shores. Inside the box is Roz, a robot designed to help humans, who’s programming is entirely based on doing tasks and finding tasks to complete in lieu of them. Ensuing hijinks leaves Roz in the care of a baby goose, forcing Roz to adapt to her surroundings and question her priorities between her programming and her personal relationships.
This film has a stacked cast featuring Lupita N’yongo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Nighy, and Mark Hamill (among others). It was written and directed by Chris Sanders, the man responsible for creating Stitch, as well as the certified modern classic How To Train Your Dragon. The film has an undeniable amount of talent attached to it.
It would feel wrong to complain about the things I didn’t like without addressing the film’s considerable strengths. The voice cast does solid work all around and there are plenty of moving moments. However, the quality of the animation is one HELL of a strength. I don’t think I’ve seen animation this stunning outside of the Spider-Verse. Every frame is simply gorgeous to look at, largely due to a handpainted aesthetic and perfect coloring that captures all of the beauty of the natural setting. If there is one field The Wild Robot beats Pixar in, it’s animation. An utter feast for the eyes (making a bunch of magenta fire was a weird choice though).
The trouble is that in spite of this cast, well regarded source material, and beautiful animation, the script completely lets the story down. The story clearly wants to be a Pixar level emotional rollercoster, and to do that the most important thing is to nail the central relationship between Roz and her goose (also the goose is named Brightbill, I should probably mention that). However, their respective arcs (Brightbill finding his place as a goose and Roz coming to prioritize those she cares for) are executed separately from each other. The way the film presents it, these characters don’t go through these changes together. These changes are happening in the same time and place, yes, but the two characters don’t share those moments. When you’re banking this hard on a relationship between two characters, their stories need to feel intertwined, and I just didn’t get that here.
On top of this, the conflict between Roz and Brightbill comes from a cliche “liar revealed” storyline, which is executed too early to have any real tension behind it. The movie even seems to joke about how obvious it is, but then makes no effort to set up emotional stakes regarding Brightbill discovering the truth. Therefore, any emotional conflict completely falls flat. After that, the main characters are separated for an extended period of time, exacerbating the issue of non intertwined character arcs. The film wants us to keep understanding that these two have a connection, but their storylines feel even more separated now. By the time we get to their reunion and the emotional arcs conclude, I found another problem to overshadow this.
By god the third act of this movie is terrible. Basically the company that made Roz just kinda shows up and wants to take Roz away for unclear reasons (“we need your data Roz. The company needs to know how you . . . raised a baby goose . . . I guess”). It’s just a tacked on ending to try and excite children with big robot fight, with no build up or anything. It reeks of studio execs thinking the ending wasn’t exciting enough. And it includes a shockingly lazy title drop.
Roz literally stands up and says “I am . . . The Wild Robot” and I don’t know why that caused me to start swearing at a children’s movie in the middle of a movie theater but it felt so forced. It made me angry.
Was I supposed to cheer? Who was that for? It’s like they expected someone to stand up at that moment and say AWWWW SHE SAID THE THING THAT’S THE NAME OF THE MOVIEEEEEE, and that’s DUMB. LAZY STUPID AND DUMB. IT WAS A DUMB MOMENT CHRIS SANDERS.
I’m sorry, that line really rubbed me the wrong way. I’ll move on now.
(Also, the original book absolutely could’ve included a forced big robot fight and lame title drop at the end. I don’t care I don’t have time to read the book.)
I feel as though this movie deserved a stronger script to support the story, and what’s worse is that I feel like it was there. There’s a scene where Roz is attempting to save the animals on the island during a snowstorm, and it doesn’t shy away from the fact that she doesn’t save all of them. I feel that one brief, little moment offers so much for the story. The movie hints at the tougher parts of caring for others, that it’s not always easy but worth it all the same. And it’s frustrating that underserving the story between Roz and Brightbill, and randomly throwing in a flashy action set piece for a third act seriously undercut the resonance for me.
In the end, The Wild Robot is gorgeously animated and well made, but its creative choices don’t always maximize the impact of its emotional beats. That being said, The Wild Robot has been met with tremendous critical acclaim, and if most people do feel really moved by this movie, awesome. If you think you’ll feel differently than me, go ahead and watch it (I promise the animation is good enough to make it worth your time). However, I personally would recommend waiting for it to come out on streaming.
She really was a Wild Robot (still a stupid line, I’ll die on that hill).
