From Terminators to R2-D2 and C-3PO, Hollywood has long wrestled with the dramatic potential of personal, industrial, and military AI-driven robotics, often hinging its optimism or dread on whether such manmade creations will be evil, good, or at least ambivalent to their makers. Which kind of robot does Chris Sanders’ “The Wild Robot” give audiences?
In the future, Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a robot programmed to assist humans with various tasks, is accidentally marooned on a remote island filled with wildlife. In the absence of humans, Roz tries to help various animals with little success until an orphaned goose hatchling latches on to the robot as its mother. Eventually the island’s wildlife embraces the robot as a protector and in turn band around Roz when the company returns to collect its now “wild” missing product to analyze its unique data.
Sanders, director of “Lilo & Stitch” (2002), “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010), “The Croods” (2013), and “The Call of the Wild” (2020), is no stranger to the genre of children’s entertainment focused on family dynamics and “fish out of water” stories. In many ways, Sanders’ “The Wild Robot” is like Brad Bird’s “The Iron Giant” (1999). In both films, mass-produced robots isolated from their intended purpose and use are nurtured beyond their nature into something more than the sum of their parts, transcending their programming.
Where the inventive and well-made animated “The Wild Robot” truly shines is in its depictions of the anxiety surrounding the sudden life-changing responsibility of parenthood and the heartbreaking and heartwarming nature of parental failures and successes experienced in rearing a child. For older children it may provide encouragement to grow in their appreciation for the challenges and struggles of parenthood. Not all children’s films treat their parental figures with as much humanity!
Parents don’t always know what to expect from Hollywood. Will the mother be absent? Will the father be inept and the butt of every joke? Will family life be depicted as darkly dysfunctional? Will it teach children to distrust their parents, or will it be warm and encouraging?
Moms and dads will have watched a little bit of everything ranging from Anna and Elsa’s loving if misguided parents, King Agnarr and Queen Iduna, in “Frozen” (2013) to Princess Merida’s dismal mother, Queen Elinor, in “Brave” (2012) to villainous, devouring mother figures like Rapunzel’s Mother Gothel in “Tangled” (2010). So, it’s particularly nice to find a film like “The Wild Robot” showing the wonders, virtues, and sacrifices of motherhood in a positive light.
It’s equally impressive to see a film that depicts its mother character growing into motherhood alongside the child as the child grows through adolescence into adulthood. Roz is not a static or two-dimensional character. Sanders deftly shows Roz’s sorrow at being rejected by the hatchling Brightbill (Kit Connor) when he eventually chooses to leave his “mother” for his own kind when the geese migrate. He does so even after Roz had taught him — with the help of Fink the fox (Pedro Pascal) and Thunderbolt the falcon (Ving Rhames) — how to eat, swim, and fly.
Along with presenting motherhood in a positive light, “The Wild Robot” also supports traditional gender roles and is not critical of traditional forms of masculinity or femininity. Also notable is a theme of pulling together as a community in the face of trouble and not indulging temptations to retreat from public life to go it alone in a kind of toxic hyper-individualism.
Characters are allowed to improve and aren’t required to stay just as they are. Due to the wilderness setting, the film regularly deals with both death and the fact that the animal world is full of predator and prey animals. Even so, Sanders provides viewers themes of reconciliation between sworn animal-world enemies. Such themes will be encouraging for young viewers dealing with challenging classmates and acquaintances in their daily lives.
All of this is extraordinarily positive! It is only when taking a step back to look at the film in the cold light of day that a concern emerges. “The Wild Robot” comes in a long line of children’s films, from “Short Circuit” (1986) to “The Brave Little Toaster” (1987) to Pixar’s “WALL·E” (2008), where robots, droids, and appliances are imbued with a heart of gold and something approximating a human soul. From goofy films like “Heartbeeps” (1981) to more serious films like Neill Blomkamp’s “Chappie” (2015), aimed at an adult audience, movies press this idea of treating robots as humans based on the notion of robots having human-like feelings and emotions.
A film like “The Wild Robot” isn’t troubling by itself; it only becomes concerning when placed in a long line of fiction like Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) adaption of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Alex Proyas’ 2004 adaption of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950). This only scratches the surface of the continual cultural conditioning toward considering robots as equal or superior to humans.
Couple the charming presentation of the robot Roz with the island’s delightful, fun, talking woodland animals, and “The Wild Robot” subtly provides a world where humans are not that special and their absence is even preferable. Or worse yet, where humans are deemed the problem by artificial intelligence, like in Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015). Of course, in that case, Ultron is the villain the Avengers fight against, but real-world misanthropy has similar masochistic goals that value the environment and wildlife over and above the needs and desires of humans — upending humanity’s God-given role as steward over those things.
If this seems harsh, consider how children’s fiction regularly presents bigger ideological or philosophical ideas, remembering that children do not make children’s films — they are made by adults for children. The question is whether the makers of such media (whether made for children or adults) want simply to entertain audiences, or to inform and shape public sentiments.
Is “The Wild Robot” just one more brick in the pavement leading to Auto Robot Unions and marches for equal rights for robots? This may seem farfetched now, but who wants to live in a world with armed drones policing streets and fighting wars because it’s safer to have robots do it than to place humans in harm’s way?
Each of these films, including “The Wild Robot,” becomes part of the conversation about the approaching reality of these ideas put into practice. Parents should take the opportunity to talk to their children about what makes humans unique and beautiful and warn them to be wary of anyone or anything seeking to demote humanity from being the pinnacle of creation.
Ted Giese is lead pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; an award-winning contributor to The Canadian Lutheran and movie reviewer for the “Issues, Etc.” radio program. Follow him on Twitter/X @RevTedGiese.
