2. The Wild Robot
Ranking these last two films was intensely hard for me but I did ultimately make a decision. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make when it came to constructing this list, which shocked me. I didn’t foresee my top two spots being Dreamworks films that came out in the 2020s. This renaissance for Dreamworks needs to continue. Yes, they’re still creating films that aren’t that great but every studio does that. The more important thing is that, seemingly unlike Disney, they’ve tapped into something vital that’s allowing them to create films that radiate excellence. I’d be more forgiving of Disney’s trajectory if, alongside all the live-action remakes and sequels, they were making films like The Wild Robot. However, they’re not. Not anymore.
This film broke me in a way that only a few films have. I can count on one hand the number of films that made me cry as hard as this one did. The other one was It’s A Wonderful Life when I saw that for the first time.
Directed by Chris Sanders, of Lilo and Stitch fame, this film’s first and foremost objective is to drive home the importance of not only motherhood but family. Familial relations via a community of animals that start off either hating or tolerating each other because it is within their nature to do so and allowing them to grow and realize that sometimes survival has to come at the cost of putting your guard down and risking putting your trust and faith in others.
It couldn’t have come from a more surprising guest too. A lone island away from civilization sees a couple of Universal Dynamics’ ROZZUM robots wash up on its shores after a storm causes the cargo ship carrying them to capsize. Only one of them manages to survive and this is where we meet ROZZUM Unit 7134, nicknamed "Roz" , voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, on her quest to find her master and be of service to them.
A Rozzum always completes its task, she says. With that being her prime directive she sets out to find one.
Through a series of harsh but refreshingly honest events about the nature of animals within their habitats, Roz ends up accidentally killing a family of geese except for a lone egg. She makes it her task to take care of the egg until he’s hatched and once he is she tries to abandon him because she’s still treating him like you would a normal human being.
It’s not until an opossum mother comes by and explains the merits behind motherhood and how the baby geese thinks Roz is his mom now that she takes it within herself to take care of the child, treating his growth as her new task. The set-up is incredibly interesting because even by this point in the film Roz is still very much just a robot looking for an objective. Roz even tried to contact Universal Dynamics with a signal device but it was busted and she’s been left stranded here because of it. Her apathy towards this island and its inhabitants couldn’t be any more business-like. There were never any hard feelings towards how consistently she’s been attacked because her reaction is always just confusion. She has to rewrite her code by analyzing their speech patterns to learn how to talk animal at one point and it’s done in a sequence that takes a very long time simply for the sole purpose of finding out who ordered her.
Of course, no one did and with her return signal broken, she acquired the assistance of a mischievous red fox named Fink, voiced by Pedro Pascal, and set about her new journey. With Fink’s very sarcastic, but well-meaning under the surface, help she gives the goose a proper name, Bright Bill (Kit Conner), and sets about raising him to the best of her ability.
We see this develop in the only way it naturally would with Bright Bill growing up to be a very odd goose who converses in computer speak and even, at times, acts a bit robotic.
The changes on display by this point have been extremely subtle but you are able to notice them. The film doesn’t front load itself with the characters acting a certain way and flip them on a dime when time passes to excuse them being where the story needs them to be for an oncoming climax. Preconceived notions about the film stopping where you think it would once Roz completes her task would likely make you think it’d be at risk of being paced a bit strangely but no. Because the story is allowed to continue past that point it doesn’t need to rush anything.
Naturally, because time passed, some changes were inevitable between the three of them but they’re so small that it really does feel appropriately gradual. One of the greatest things about this film is how it shows the characters changing and justifies it with its themes. You’re not told that they’ve changed. You just know that they have because of what they’ve been through and how confronting these new emotions are changing them.
Roz is a character that fascinates me in particular because seeing her growth from some robot looking for a task to do because she was programmed to do that to a concerned mother whose basis for motherhood was completing a task but is no longer certain that’s even the reason she’s doing what she’s doing anymore is wonderful to witness play out. She had no objective so she gave herself one and was convinced that once it was complete she could return to whence she came. The irony there being that because she had to rework her code so much to complete this task, the new her thought and felt things that weren’t possible for her to think or feel before this.
Fink’s change is a lot more traditional in a sense. He goes from mischievous fox to loveable friend with a bit of an edge to him. The way the film mixes this with his discovery of Roz and him growing alongside Bright Bill makes watching him change a serious investment. There’s something more charming about how the film just shows it to you rather than focus distinctly on it. He’s one of the three main characters of the film but because the film isn’t about him, his progress happens without too huge a spotlight directed distinctly at him. It makes how natural his change is feel even more impressive.
There’s a lot to say about Bright Bill in terms of how he relates to people with disabilities and even people who are wired differently within modern society. Commentary about how smaller and weaker he is could easily be gleaned from his story. He’s an outcast with tiny wings who goes through intense training to be a part of a goose migration. It’s something that he has to do in order to properly grow up and survive and without all the people who’ve seen him, gave him a chance, and loved him despite how unimpressive he might seem to be at the start he never would have made it as far as he did.
Resentment for himself and what he is can be easy to have. He goes through it a few times within the film but the care he’s given from his loved ones pushes him forward. It can be incredibly easy to just let a person like this fall to the wayside when you’re a member of what’s typically considered to be normal society. In an era where people see taking care of your fellow man, especially the disabled or less fortunate ones, as more of a burden having a film like this out there to emphasis the importance of why those people need and deserve love rather than to be thought of as work resonates with me quite a lot.
For a long while, I’ve personally wondered if there’s been something off about my own mind. Why do I think and act so differently from everyone else and why do I find it troubling to think about the idea of seeking advice or help from others?
In the end, I tend to bite the bullet and do so if I must but there’s something truly heavy about the pressure society puts on us to be successful on our own merits that makes people sometimes think that the act of getting help is something to be ashamed of. Even if you know it in your heart and soul that it isn’t, your mind and body will sometimes do things that don’t make any sense. Convincing yourself to put the things that don’t matter aside for the sake of your happiness isn’t a matter of logic though. It’s a matter of the mind.
I find myself really wishing to be the kind of person Roz is. Someone who can be open and willing to help the people around them better themselves while also taking care to better myself as well. It’s an inspiring story that made me cry heavy tears as I thought about it’s themes and characters.
That said, everything this film does, despite doing it as well as I feel it’s possible to do a film like this, was surpassed by another film in a way that I couldn’t ignore. Despite this film making me cry harder, the film I have at number 1 did all that and then some. With a heavy heart, I had to put this one just a step behind it but I cannot emphasize enough that this film is in the number two spot because it truly is a masterpiece of work. I cannot stress enough how good it is at achieving the, on the surface, basic premise behind it.
If anything, the fact that I consider there to be a Dreamworks film better than this one by a small margin is a testament to how impressive Dreamworks’ work ethic has been lately.
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27 Apr 2025 22:07 CEST
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