“The island was teeming with life. And now it had a new kind of life,” writes Peter Brown in The Wild Robot. “A strange kind of life. Artificial life.”
The extraordinary film adaptation of Brown’s The Wild Robot bursts with life and energy. It gives a jolt to studio animation in a sea in which the very best works too often include sequels, reboots, remakes, or intolerable IP cash grabs. It’s a warm and rambunctious adventure sure to enliven viewers young and old.
The film finds a novel fish-out-of-water story as robot Rozzum Unit 7134 crashes onto the shore of an island. Rozzum, or Roz for short, serves to help people. She’s programmed to obey orders and see them through completion. But Roz struggles to find her purpose amid an island avoid of humans. Her only potential customers chirp, growl, and squeak.
Voiced with deadpan humour by Lupita Nyong’o, Roz follows a script, yet she can’t help but view her new environment with wonder. The first sign that there’s something unique behind her robotic affectation comes when Roz flips into learning mode. She soaks in the sounds that surround her. When she wakes up, she can translate a goose’s “honk” to plain old English. It’s a fun Judgment at Nuremberg-style transition that drolly builds the world that this robot inhabits.
Understanding the animals’ speech, however, doesn’t improve matters for Roz. They all fear her. They think she’s a monster, which sets her running for her battery life in a chase fuelled by Kris Bowers’ movingly energetic score. The dizzying dash ends in a tango with a sly fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal), and a lone goose egg saved from a nest Roz squished.
Fink, sensing a chance to fatten a future meal, gives Roz three simple instructions: feed the gosling, teach it to swim, and make it fly before the winter comes. Roz gamely accepts the assignment. It’s what she’s programmed to do.
As Roz and Fink gradually set aside their differences and co-parent the little gosling, which Roz names Brightbill, The Wild Robot unfolds a touching fable about working together. A ’bot and critter haven’t made such good friends since, well, Robot Dreams. As Brightbill (Kit Connor) grows and tries to flap his wings, he becomes the ugly duckling of the island. People mock his “monster” mommy and laugh at his speech learned from Roz’s robotic accent. His struggle to fit in sends Roz’s zeroes and ones into overdrive.
Aided by a beleaguered mother possum (Catherine O’Hara) with a litter of kits that love playing dead, a stealthy falcon (Ving Rhames), and a wise old goose (Billy Nighy) who takes Brightbill under his wing, Roz endeavours to complete her task. She, too, needs to fly south for winter—or wherever in space robots need to go.
The Wild Robot finds a moving odyssey in Roz’s awakening. Writer/director Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch) finds a wonderful parable for the age of artificial intelligence. Roz can only do so much with her preassigned mind. Her journey requires her to defy the algorithm and think for herself. The Wild Robot offers a cheeky spin on the trope of autonomous robots. As Roz becomes self-aware, she’s no HAL 9000. Quite the opposite. She learns kindness, compassion, and empathy—traits that exceed binary code.
Nyong’o has a lot of fun capturing the range of Roz’s emotions within the limited design of Roz’s voice. Roz, even as she learns to think with her heart, speaks like a script word-vomited by Chat GPT. The film takes the pulse of AI and humorously gives it humanity. Roz’s imperfections therefore make her part of the herd. Nyong’o adds warmth and heart to her metallic creation, which accentuates the flurry of pixels computing in the lenses of Roz’s ever-so-active lens-eyes.
Pascal is especially fun as the wily fox in a vocal ensemble that includes Stephanie Hsu as a killer robot and Mark Hamill as the grouchiest of bears. Sanders injects a world of wonder into the environment of The Wild Robot. It’s all-ages escapism at its finest. The cutting-edge animation contrasts the sublime creations of man-made productions with the lights, lasers, and doohickeys of Roz’s design contrasting with the simpler fashion of the animal world. Computer-generated animation rarely carries such an artisanal feel. Roz might be a robot, but this magical adventure has a mighty heart.
