The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders and adapted from a best-selling illustrated novel, is one of the best-animated films of recent years. Intelligent, spectacular, and moving, the story of a very special mother and son. In theaters on October 10, 2024.
Definitely, The Wild Robot is a film for the whole family and in the best possible way. It speaks to everyone about the same thing but finds a way to scale the emotion and fun (even the emotion) offering each generation the warm and intelligent entertainment they deserve. It is an offering from DreamWorks Animation, the best-animated film of 2024 and one of the most successful in recent years, arriving in theaters on October 10, 2024, for Universal Pictures.
Formally refined, emotionally complicated (but in the right way, beautiful), and thematically clear: the story of parents and children, the story of feelings, and the story of people. Because, of course, the animated film directed by Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon) adapting the bestseller of the same name (The Wild Robot, here it is La Fuga del Robot Selvatico) by Peter Brown may also be the story of a goose and a robot, of mechanized creatures and wild animals. But, look, the real target is us. Original voice cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Kit Connor, and Mr. Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.
The Wild Robot: a goose and a robot overwhelmed by a (not so) unusual destiny
Talking about Target makes perfect sense. The family audience (each of us, then) is the target that The Wild Robot has in mind but in an incredibly less cynical and empty sense than contemporary commercial cinema, animated or not, claims. The family, on whatever side of the screen fate has placed us, is the heart of the feeling, the reflections, and the show - the film has tension, action, and a good pace - and the target audience. The Wild Robot aims at the family not only because it needs a significant response at the box office, to justify the production efforts necessary to set it up, but also because it has something sincere to say - not at all original but that's exactly the point - on the subject.
Neither Chris Sanders, directing, nor Peter Brown, writing, were thinking of disconcerting revelations or uncomfortable truths. Although it speaks of death and pain with an unusual frankness for the animated standard (American, because in Japan it's another story) of recent times, the film has heart, moments of authentic emotion, and a lot of humor. It’s about family and there’s nothing that hasn’t been said before, even by the best animation, from Miyazaki to Pixar, but what matters is how it does it: the precision, the integrity, the ability to combine spectacle and interiority.
The Rozzum 7134 unit, “Roz” for friends, is a robot originally intended to provide support of all kinds – it is programmed for this – to the aseptic, boring, and technologically advanced humans who created it. It crashes into a wild and mysterious, uncontaminated island. It must defend itself from the attack of the local fauna. There is no one there who is happy to see it.
She ends up coming across (better not to spoil how) a newborn goose that by imprinting identifies her with its mother and Roz accepts because she must assist and she cannot back out. At first, it is a duty, then it is something more. Without realizing it, Roz and Beccolustro build the most chaotic, improvised, and sweet of families. There is also the fox Fink, the humorous and happily cynical counterpart that the film opposes to warmth, emotion, and sentiment, with a view to a healthy balance of impulses.
The most difficult thing, for Roz and Beccolustro, but also for Fink and all the animals in the film - from the mother opossum to the bear and beyond - is to understand that the right place is far from where fate or conventions place us, and very close to the heart. At the base of the emotion of a film like The Wild Robot, there is an intelligent and apparently contradictory game, which comes from the pen of Peter Brown and that Chris Sanders' direction does not trivialize. It doesn't happen often. In fact, to tell the truth, rarely.
Balanced and unconventional, the film combines spectacle and reflection
Contradictions can be of two types, happy or unhappy. The contradiction of a film like The Wild Robot belongs to the first category because it is deliberate. But is it really a contradiction? Wouldn’t it be better to call it, more correctly, a broad view? Apparently, it is contradictory to tell nature starting from the harshness and brutality or to explore the cold comfort of technology highlighting its warmth or utility outside the box.
Or, again, to explore the relationship between a mother and a son evoking the shadow of death and the ephemeral sense of all things. Moreover, highlighting the most traditional of bonds in an unconventional light. It is about a goose and a robot; two universes, two different sensibilities. The bond may be traditional, but the family that results is something else entirely. We could go further, talking about the animation, the quality of the animation, dynamic, and spectacular. Warm and very elegant.
Chris Sanders pretends to contradict himself but with The Wild Robot he succeeds in a feat that contemporary storytelling, not only animated, suffers terribly: he tells his truth from every angle, combining spectacle and reflection, finding a way to make them communicate without hindering each other. It is always the same old story but approached with integrity, curiosity, and respect for the potential of the (cinematographic) medium.
In aesthetics and form, The Wild Robot is a devilish, comical, melancholic adventure with a solid rhythm. Emotionally, it is a precise and vital analysis of all the really important things about the relationship between a mother and a son and the eternal dialectic of nature vs. technology and instinct vs. free will. It is profound, without reaching inaccessibility. Spectacular, without trivializing its depth.
The Wild Robot exalts the courage to go outside the box, to choose the right place instead of the one others have assigned to us, without giving in to pure anarchy (the title also tells it, a further example of happy contradiction). It tells the beautiful love between a mother and a son without hiding the gray areas - he reproaches his mother for suffocating him, and she does not stop thinking about how things would have gone if he had not been there - to suggest an idea of cinema that is interesting, accessible but often misunderstood.
Life is complicated and full of happiness and sadness; the task of a good story is to account for everything. The marriage between depth and entertainment is incredibly stimulating and always possible. You can get emotional by reasoning and Chris Sanders' film is not afraid of the prospect. Will American commercial cinema be able to receive the message? Current events suggest pessimism.
The Wild Robot: conclusion and evaluation
In a world, a cinema, different from this one, perhaps the judgment (extremely positive anyway) on The Wild Robot should be slightly revised downwards. What is it about, after all? Tears and laughter, intelligent adventure, the importance of the bond between mother and son. Pure originality is not the main virtue of this storytelling, but insisting would mean looking in the wrong direction.
Even if there were a more wholesome film industry than the one that actually exists, the results achieved by Chris Sanders's skillful direction would be to be highlighted and not to be downplayed. We live in the era of obsessive cinematic seriality, of repetitiveness as a value, of the box office as the only parameter of judgment, and of the demonization of intelligence; it is damned difficult, but not impossible, to reconcile provocation and spectacle.
The Wild Robot chooses this path and follows it without fear because it knows that its emotional heart is in the right place. It tells without hiding, giving depth to reflections but remembering that cinema is an art, of course, but spectacular and respectful of the audience. The film teaches snobs and superficial people.