Chris Sanders’ “The Wild Robot” (2024) is what happens when someone mixes Brad Bird’s “The Iron Giant” (1999) with Don Hall and Chris Williams’ “Big Hero 6” (2014). The result is a visually stunning film that is the top candidate for the best-animated film of the year.
The titular wild robot is voiced by Lupita Nyong’o and accidentally crashes on an island full of various wildlife creatures. The setting is a futuristic Earth where advanced technology and robots are the standard. The robot, whose technical name is ROZZUM Unit 7134 (“Roz” for short), is activated by a group of sea otters.
Like “The Iron Giant,” Roz is the odd one out on the island. Her entire purpose is to assist humans, not animals. Due to her programming, she insists on learning about every species on the island and how she can help with whatever task she is given — similar to Baymax in “Big Hero 6.”
At first, all of the animals see her as a monster. With no one needing her assistance, Roz decides to signal her manufacturers but accidentally destroys a goose nest after falling from a cliff. There’s only one remaining egg in the nest, and Roz protects it from predators such as a sly fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal).
The egg eventually hatches a newborn gosling and it imprints itself onto Roz. Roz meets a mother opossum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara), who tells Roz the gosling needs to fulfill three requirements in order for it to survive: feeding it, teaching it how to swim and ensuring it knows how to fly before winter migration.
Roz and Fink do their best to make sure the gosling, named “Brightbill,” meets all three needs and lives a stable, healthy life as a goose who wasn’t raised by his own kind.
Where “The Wild Robot” succeeds is the relationship between the characters. The best relationship in the film is the one between Roz and Brightbill.
Though she isn’t Brightbill’s biological mother, Roz does her best to be sure Brightbill succeeds in adapting in his environment and befriending other geese. Brightbill (Kit Connor) loves Roz but does wish he was raised by his biological mother so the other geese wouldn’t make fun of him.
Nyong’o and Connor have a relatable mother-son dynamic, and the two do an amazing job portraying it. Plus, when Brightbill does figure out Roz accidentally killed his mother it creates a separation between them.
When Brightbill is a gosling, he and Roz are a bond the audience doesn’t want to see break. When it does, it’s only by the end of the film that the two reconnect their shared love for each other. This level of drama is needed more in family movies.
Second to Roz’s relationship with Brightbill is her friendship with Fink. Pascal is channeling both Mr. Fox from “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009) and Nick Wilde from “Zootopia” (2016) when playing the character.
Fink is nothing but someone who cares for himself and isn’t well-liked by the rest of the animals at first. However, the audience gets to learn more about Fink and why he’s the way he is after he befriends Roz.
With any other director and writer(s), Fink could have been nothing more than for comedic effect. Here, he’s a fully flesh-out character with a tragic past, and Pascal plays him perfectly.
Even though it's animated, “The Wild Robot” should be considered for the Best Cinematography nomination at the Oscars. The film is flat-out gorgeous to look at, and every frame, character design and location is done with meticulous thought.
Any gripes with the film come with its pacing and an unnecessary villain in the third act. The pacing is fine, but there are times when the film feels a little rushed to be done. When the third act arrives, the audience meets a villain who serves no point other than to shoehorn some more drama. What came before was already enough for the audience to care about what was going on.
“The Wild Robot” is the best-animated film of 2024 due to great voice acting, breathtaking animation, and a wonderful message of becoming more than you're programmed to be. It is currently playing in theaters.
Rating: 4/5
