The Wild Robot: Kindness Is a Survival Tactic

Recommendation ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️	Imagination 💡💡💡💡
Artistry 🎨🎨🎨🎨	Drain Factor 🩸🩸🩸

What It's About

(Non-spoiler Section)

As a major fan of Wall-E, I have high standards when it comes to movies about robots with big hearts navigating environmental disasters. Somehow, this movie manages to have an incredibly endearing robot as a central character, impactful blink-and-you’ll-miss-it climate change commentary, and a poignant take-home message without feeling like a redux of the Pixar movie. The Wild Robot stands on its own merit, with jaw-dropping visuals (seriously, my jaw actually dropped several times) and a beautifully developed storyline. 

Rozzum 7134 is on her way to be delivered to a high-tech human city when the cargo ship carrying her encounters a typhoon and crashes on an island. The robot, who will eventually ask to be called Roz, finds herself in a wilderness but follows her programming to find a “client” and acquire a “task.” After some misunderstandings with the local animal residents, she settles in for the first of many seasons-changing-before-our eyes montages to learn the languages of those around her. As she adapts to her surroundings and the animals teach her about the red-in-tooth and claw laws of nature, she winds up acquiring a task in the form of raising an orphaned gosling. In raising him, she discovers that we are stronger together than apart, and that, in the words of the film, “kindness is a survival skill.”

Is it Enjoyable?

Though this movie has some Pixar-level tugging at heart strings, the level of psychic damage inflicted is more equivalent to an Inside Out Two than an Up. The several times I welled up had more to do with recognition of what it feels like to be a mom rather than some tragic plot turn; other than some food-chain related animal deaths that are played for laughs, the kids will have had an easier time after the film has ended than the parents. I saw this with a group ranging in age from 5 to 65 and we all laughed a lot.  

Is it Good?

The Wild Robot is gorgeous and deserves to be experienced on a big screen. At turns verdant and technicolor, this film made me gasp out loud several times at the beauty of certain sequences. The plot is enjoyable but has weight and the film is fun for both kids and adults. The voice acting performances are exceptional, with some utterly delightful vocal cameos from the likes of Catherine O'Hara as an exasperated possum and Matt Berry as a disgruntled beaver.

What It’s Really About 

Spoiler Section - analyzed using my ID(ology) Decoder Ring.

This film deals deftly with several present-day anxieties. Perhaps most obviously, the film centers on an AI character. Of course, whenever we think about AI in film, we are actually being asked to think about what it means to be human. Roz becomes less robotic and more human as she learns to change her programming, think with her heart, and care about those around her.

This feeds into a larger narrative about how we treat each other in society. The animals try to initiate Roz into their red-in-tooth-and-claw ideology, but she resists. Eventually this community-forward caring attitude is rewarded when the animals come together to save the forest from a wild fire.

Finally, film has some glancing but hard-hitting climate change commentary. As the geese migrate, they fly over a submerged Golden Gate Bridge and past a sunken city. The villain of the film - Universal Robotics - trumpets that their robots have given their clients 40% more leisure time, but the film asks us to contemplate the cost of our comfort.

Roz is having an existential crisis at the beginning of this film, which is very relatable at this moment in time. She wanders the wilderness at the beginning of the film asking "did anyone order me?" She eventually finds a meaningful task in raising the gosling despite the fact that the process takes a huge physical and emotional toll on her. Even though the skills for motherhood aren't "in her programming," she literally lights up the first time she sees the gosling, and literally glows with pride when he begins to fly.

The ethics of care promoted by this film are represented by motherhood, but the implications are larger than that. All the characters that are most admirable in this film care for others, break the rules, and sacrifice themselves to better others and the community. They learn and adapt.

The "villain" of this film is Universal Robotics, and its rhetoric and activities are coded as destructive. The constant advertising, the emphasis on mechanistic obedience, and the fact that their ideal customers are "people who dream of a pre-planned" life are painted as rediculous and implicated in the destruction of community and the planet.

Universal Robotics demands compliance and conformity; when they eventually find and attempt to recover Roz, they tell her “You are defective. You are in the wrong place. You are the wrong thing.” However, the characters that save the day are the ones that defy their "programing" and learn to think with their hearts.

The Wild Robot asks the viewer to grow and adapt, to value nature and community, and to recognize that "kindness is a survival skill." The salience of these messages at this moment in time is eerie.