Review: 'The Wild Robot'
Chris Sanders has only directed four animated features (plus a live action adaptation Call of the Wild), and the previous three (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train your Dragon and The Croods put him in four way tie for most nominations without a win in the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars. It feels pretty certain that The Wild Robot will be the movie that finally wins him that Oscar, but we'll keep such speculation to a minimum.
Sanders's first feature, Lilo & Stitch, is probably the only truly great movie to come out of Walt Disney Animation Studios in the first decade of this century. (To be clear, you're allowed to like other movies from that decade, but most were flawed.) Anyway, the upshot of Lilo & Stitch becoming a beloved classic is that its directors, Sanders and his writing and directing partner, Dean Deblois, were driven out of Disney by John Lasseter a few years later (I don't like that guy).
Sanders and Deblois took their talents to DreamWorks Animation, where they delivered How to Train Your Dragon to the studio, often seen as one of the highlights of its output.
I've often seen Sanders cast as the "idea guy" in the Sanders/Deblois partnership, as well as being the guy who brings a lot of unique visual aspects to his projects, while Deblois is the more story-driven member of the partnership, bringing in the emotional aspects. I'm not so sure about that, especially after this movie, which features an emotional story just as potent as Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, sans Deblois. The Wild Robot also features a visual design that echoes the original illustrations of the book it's based on, by Peter Brown, showing Sanders is more than just a recognizable art style.
The Wild Robot presents Lupita Nyong'o as the voice of the titular wild robot, a ROZZUM Unit with the designation 7134, soon dubbed Roz for short. After an accident leaves her stranded on an uninhabited island, Roz, in her quest to complete some sort of task for anybody, becomes a caretaker for the animals of the island in general, and a gosling she names Brightbill specifically. It features Kit Connor as the adult Brightbill (Boone Storm voices the gosling as a hatchling) and Pedro Pascal as the voice of Fink the fox, Roz's first ally on the island.
The story is fairly simple; basically a science fiction update of the Robinson Crusoe story with a robot in Crusoe's role, except the movie is also a talking animal fantasy. Roz, early on - realizing she can't talk to the animals - takes a page out of Doctor Dolittle's playbook, and simply takes the time to learn their language. She (and Roz is always referred to with female pronouns, despite being a robot) soon finds herself taking on tasks she was not programmed for, most especially the role of surrogate mother to Brightbill. The story of an outsider from the human world becoming adopted mother of a young waterfowl reminded me strongly of the Korean animated movie, Leafy: A Hen into the Wild, though the parallels are probably unintentional.
At the start of the movie, Roz's voice is chipper and enthusiastic; this friendly programmed demeanor is explained as easing the process of helping robots to complete their tasks for people. During the course of the movie, if anything, Roz becomes less outwardly artificially emotional. It turns out she has a subdued personality, and even though it feels like this would make her more robotic, it feels truer than her original bubbliness, which has interesting consequences when we meet other robots later in the story.
At first, all the animals of the forested island are quite intimidated by this clanking mechanical creature that crashes into their midst. The only animals who don't flee or attack are Pinktail (voiced by Catherine O'Hara), a mother opossum whose children's bad acting at playing dead makes her realize Roz is actually harmless; Paddler (voiced by Matt Berry), a cranky beaver so obsessed with cutting down the island's largest tree that even the other animals think he's a bit odd; and Fink, a fox nobody likes, who realizes Roz will feed him if he agrees not to eat Brightbill and "helps" her raise the gosling. Fink soon becomes Roz's main ally, eventually realizing he's lonely, and becoming Brightbill's odd pseudo-uncle.
The movie deals frankly with the fact that these are wild animals who are not separate from the food chain. A small woodland creature is violently, if a bit bloodlessly, decapitated onscreen within minutes of the movie's runtime, and predation is often played for very dark laughs. There's no question that the animals eat each other, at least in the beginning. As the animals become more united due to Roz's actions, it becomes unclear, for example, what the obligate carnivore lynx background character is actually eating. But the sometimes-cruel reality of nature is stressed; one of the few animals who is not himself some sort of outcast who respects Roz early on is the elder goose Longneck (voiced by Bill Nighy). He points out that the accident that killed his mother was actually very lucky for Brightbill: as a runt, his own goose parent would have abandoned him.
One interesting aspect of the movie is that, as it is set in the future, it's one of the first I've seen that deals with climate change so matter-of-factly. During the geese migration scenes, they pass over the Golden Gate Bridge. Also passing over it, is a sort of reverse of San Francisco set, "save the whales with time travel" Star Trek: The Voyage Home; whereas in this future, humanity successfully saved the whales, but not San Francisco. But The Wild Robot doesn't really preach anything, or linger on it – Longneck doesn't take Brightbill aside and explain the city wasn't always underwater.
The Wild Robot follows Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in that it has an overtly painterly style. To be clear, by that, I mean the movie is designed to look like it was physically painted, with some apparent brushstrokes visible, especially in the backgrounds. Obviously, this is a very in vogue look, but I find it more appropriate here, as this is a first entry in a new series of movies; and it's set in the wilderness, which has been a frequent inspiration for real painters since time immemorial. Roz herself uses charcoal to make some crude drawings of her animal friends. She doesn't have access to a database of art to copy from, so her drawings are AI art I can get behind.
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Comments
Just to be clear, this (terrific) movie is not "sans Deblois". He's on as an Executive Producer -- whatever that catch-all phrase happens to mean in this instance.
Aw, you beat me to reviewing it! Pretty much agree with all your points. I went to a Saturday 7:30 pm screening and the theater was pretty full - more adults than I was expecting. Standard plot, but they do it really well! Yup, the predation was addressed really quickly, etc. Really liked the robot design and its movement, and all the art direction in general. The music really fit. The film is deliberately trying to pluck on your heartstrings - not too heavily, and that's fine. I didn't like Fink the fox at first, but gradually warmed to him. One of the main themes of the film for me was that of belonging.
Voice acting - also good. After getting my Bill Nighy fix as Danzi the elderly dragon in Dragonkeeper, here he was again playing Longneck! Except... well, he sounded more like his regular Bill Nighy-ish voice, delivering cliche words of wisdom. So my brain reverted to its default Bill Nighy setting, which pictures him as Charles Paris, a middle-aged, largely unemployed alcoholic stage actor who keeps getting caught up in murder investigations. Who is not goose-like. So that took some mental adjustment.
There's a really short thing if you stay for the end of the credits. I watched the movie in 3D, but it didn't really take advantage of the medium.
What else... oh yeah, trailers! "Live action" style Mufasa: The Lion King. Then Hitpig, which last I vaguely heard about in early 2022. And then Dog Man, which looked good! The difference of the writing quality between those last two trailers was huge! Of course it could be they spoiled all the best lines for Dog Man, but I hope not. As much as I enjoyed Berkeley Breathed when I was growing up, I'm much more likely to go see Dog Man instead.
(Also I'm kicking myself, because I completely missed a screening of Flow in the area, and since it's doing the art-cinema circuit, I probably won't get the chance to see it again until maybe a year from now.)
I think you have a better local theater situation then mine, Flow is right out and even Hitpig sounds like a miss, but we are getting something called Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue ... which seems to be only getting kid friendly matinee times, so I'll probably pass, if you want it (it apparently does star Bill Nighy!).
(Watches trailer) Oh no, that looks... not good. Crap, it's playing here too, also only matinee times, at two theaters in the far distant suburbs. Hey, The Garfield Movie... maybe I'll just hide at home. I'm working on an English fansub of Icarus.
At least it's robots, not fluffy animals.
Less chance for furfaggotry
You must have a huge (if I had to guess, quite the opposite) hate boner considering how often I see you on this furry magazine.
There's already talk of a sequel!
movie looks like shit to me :) some robot thinks hes "part of the nature"
I'mma do some Oscaring, okay?
Well, anyway, there was some early buzz that The Wild Robot might finally get an animated movie back into the Best Picture category, but, ha, no. It needed to do and/or have happen at least one of four things:
1. Win the People's Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival where it had it's premiere. (It didn't even get one of the two runner up spots.)
2. Make like a billion dollars at the box office. (It did well, but it was helped by having a relatively small budget; it's box office was never really a story.)
3. Wicked, Universal's main contender for Best Picture, needed to flop, causing them to pivot to The Wild Robot as a back up. (It didn't, and is in fact contending for the win rather than just a nomination.)
4. The year end critic's groups get behind it. (They did not.)
So, it's 0 for 4 for that, and even with the re-expanded back to a solid 10 nominees, the Up/Toy Story 3 run is looking more and more like a fluke (or even, a bit more conspiratorially, something the Academy was embarrassed by and has tried to make sure doesn't happen again). We've had three years of movies bubbling just under the since the re-expansion (Pinocchio went nowhere two years ago, and has mostly been forgotten, as I predicted, so honestly good call on that one, while last year Spider-Verse 2 and Boy and the Heron seem to have canceled each other out). So, no Best Picture nod for The Wild Robot, but still odds on the favorite to win Animated Feature. Just premiering at TIFF, even if it didn't get People's Choice, is still a rarity for animated movies; the only other one was The Boy and the Heron, which worked out well for it. It also became the first animated movie to score four nominations at the Golden Globes this morning, though two are for music (Song and Score) while the other two are Animated Feature and, uh, "Box Office Achievement", whatever that means (I repeat, it did do well at the box office, just not well enough). Add in Disney's just got sequels this year, and there's a bit of a "hey, DreamWorks is due for another one of these things" narrative, and it feels like a shoo-in.
Other competitors include Flow, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, kind of even in competition (in Un certain regard, which is like a "best movie at the festival that we aren't going to give the big prize to because it's weird somehow" award). On one hand, Cannes is a more prestigious film festival than Toronto; on the other hand, more Academy voters actually attend Toronto, so it's still more important for Oscars films to attend. That being said, it's racking up critic's groups Best Animated Feature awards, so it has maybe an outside chance at winning the Oscar, even, and will probably take the Annie's "Independent" category (meaning that the Annies won't tell us crap about it's chances as an upset, unfortunately).
Inside Out 2 seems the safer choice for Disney/Pixar, and its status as a Pixar box office success means it could still win in an (actually upsetting) upset, or its status as a Pixar sequel means it could be a surprise snub come Oscar nomination morning. Same thing with Moana 2, I guess, though I think actual animators actually being part of the voting process may not appreciate it's behind the scenes "we cobbled this together from what was originally supposed to be a TV script in like six months" story.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is also a contender to win, but it's late start (it won't actually come to America until next year, other than whatever it played in order to qualify) and the fact that it's from a series that's already won one doesn't give as compelling a narrative (not that that hurt Toy Story 4). Super safe nomination.
Fifth spot playing just for nomination is probably Memoirs of a Snail, a stop motion movie from Australia from a director with a bit of cult following in indie animation. Feels like there's a narrative to get him nominated, but not enough to win.
So, Flow, Inside Out 2, Memoirs of a Snail and Wallace & Gromit nominees with Wild Robot winning (basically, the Golden Globe nominations, minus the spare sixth Moana 2) is my (pretty safe) predictions.
(Oh, Disney did not submit Lion King -1 for consideration, by the way, so don't worry about that. Not even the Globes bit this time.)
Is it just a foregone conclusion Mufasa is that bad?
The director gave an interview with I think Variety saying, as close as it ever gets in Hollywood, basically, "Fuck that movie and fuck me for taking it." a d it's tracking to get creamed by Sonic 3 at the box office.
However, Disney didn't submit the first one as an Animated Feature, so that's not a vote of no confidence, and they are advertising the heck out of it, still.
Okay, so the Critic's Choice Awards (another important precursor award) picked the five I have up there ... which makes me nervous, because the Oscars usually actually go against the consensus in the Animated category. But, anyway, Flow also got a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the CCAs, which I guess means it is counting the various animal's sounds as a foreign language. It is a European production, mostly Latvian, of course, but there is no (human) dialogue in the entire film. It and The Wild Robot are the only two movies to get out of Animated Feature, with The Wild Robot taking the Music combo platter with Song and Score.
Well, Flow was Latvia's actual submission for Best International Feature. To be clear, this is the category formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film, and it is still a requirement that a majority of dialogue not be in English. It's made it to the shortlist, meaning it has 1 in 3 shot of being Latvia's first nominee for the category. If it's made it this far, the fact there is no human dialogue has already been discussed and allowed; apparently, there ain't no rule that cat isn't a foreign language!
Also, I managed to see it and should write a review sometime this week.
Aw, I just got a pirated copy! Haven't watched it yet. Much Christmas break prep going on.
Well, it's a good movie, so enjoy that.
And, also, I got experimental with my review, so don't feel afraid to take a second pass at it if I got too weird.
Sonious or GR will need to greenlight it, if I copy-edit I'll get spoiled before I can watch it!
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