Fantastic Fest 2024 ‘The Wild Robot’ Review – A Crown Jewel Of Visual And Emotional Animation

ROZZUM 7134, or Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) as she likes to be called, wakes up on an island full of nothing but wildlife after a Universal Dynamics ship crashes ashore. She is the only robot of her kind that survives the wreck in one piece. She is a helper robot seeking ways to help and assist. ROZZUM robots need tasks, because once a ROZZUM robot is assigned a task, they don’t move on until that task is complete.

Roz can learn new languages by simply observing, which is what she does to be able to speak with the animals. After fleeing from a grizzly bear named Thorn (voiced by Mark Hamill), Roz accidentally destroys a nest of goose eggs except for one.

A fox named Fink (voiced by Pedro Pascal) tries to steal and eat the egg, but Roz protects it. Soon after, the egg hatches, and the little gosling imprints on her. He is a runt and is made fun of by the other geese; partially because of his size but also because he thinks a robot is his mother. Roz’s new task is to feed him, teach him to swim, and to teach him to fly south for the winter. Roz names the gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor).

As Roz initially takes the goose-raising task to finally communicate with her manufacturer and be picked up from the island, she begins to bond with Brightbill and evolves in a way that she wasn’t programmed for.

The Wild Robot is based on the middle school children’s book of the same name written and illustrated by Peter Brown. The Wild Robot has a total of three books: The Wild Robot (2016), The Wild Robot Escapes (2017), and The Wild Robot Protects (2023). Thunderbolt (voiced by Ving Rhames), the falcon that helps teach Brightbill how to fly, is a character created solely for the film and didn’t appear in the books.

Written and directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), The Wild Robot‘s animation looks like other recent DreamWorks animated films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys. The animation is basically CGI with hand-animated highlights or a hand-painted look on top of CGI geometrical shapes. Sanders described the animation film as a stylized CG visual style like a Monet painting in a Hayao Miyazaki forest.

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At its core, The Wild Robot is a familiar story. A robot learns the beauty of love throughout the film despite developing something that far surpasses its programming. Apart from its gorgeous animation, The Wild Robot constantly punches you in the gut when it comes to emotional impact and it’s because of a triple threat of character development.

Brightbill grows up and learns that Roz isn’t his real mother. His struggle with her not being related to him and accidentally killing the rest of his family creates a conflict between the two that seems irreparable. Roz begins the film as a robot trying to do one task so she can move on to the next, but her relationship with Brightbill creates feelings and a heart even though her chest is composed of metal and wires. Finally, there’s Fink, a wiley fox that is incredibly smart but selfish and lonely. He’s never had a friend but gets two of them in the form of Roz and Brightbill.

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Not only is the film an emotional powerhouse and gorgeously animated, but you typically care about most of the supporting animal characters no matter how big or how small their role is in the film. Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) is a mother possum to seven babies. Her advice is crucial to Roz as the mother figure of Brightbill. Still, Pinktail’s sense of humor as well as her babies’ fascination with death makes the characters memorable and entertaining.

The Wild Robot was one of my most anticipated films of the year, and it didn’t disappoint. It is a visual masterpiece with sentimental depth and wonderfully deep characters. It is easily the best-animated film of the year.