Lost Among the Trees

I think, deep down, we all want to like robots. We want to place emotions upon them and think of how they could be more human, more like us. How a cute, if cold, exterior could learn to have all our best traits and become the best of us. Hell, the second Terminator film explicitly had a plot threat about the heroic kid teaching the heroic robot how to be more human so he can pass and be a better infiltrator droid, and that was a movie about killer robots trying to wipe out all of humanity. But he did learn how to say “Hasta la vista, baby,” so that’s a win, right?

A robot in a movie is expected to become more human. To learn and grow and reach beyond its code to become something better. That was the literal storyline of The Iron Giant, one of the best movies of the genre. Hell, one of the best movies period. We all want another film as good as The Iron Giant, a movie that can make us care about the robot, care about its relationship to others, and get a bit of the feels in the process. We want this so much that when another film comes along with a robot that cares, that is animated, and that promises an emotional storyline, we place our hopes upon the film and think, “yes, this will be the one.” Like a baby gosling (this will be relevant), we imprinted upon The Iron Giant, and we just want to feel something like that again.

Unfortunately, The Wild Robot is not that film. It’s not that it’s bad, per se, it just doesn’t have the same level of care and consideration during its development to be as well crafted or interesting of a story. It requires effort to get invested while the film waffles wildly in tone for its first act, all to get to a story that is mildly affecting and marginally interesting. The end result is a film that can sometimes tap into emotions, but it does so by wandering down well trodden paths we’ve seen before in other, better films. Including, yes, The Iron Giant.

ROZZUM Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong'o) is a helper robot, accidentally dropped onto a remote island densely packed with wilderness. 7134 was designed to assist, helping a family with their daily tasks, doing what needs to be done because, “a ROZZUM robot always completes its task.” Unfortunately it landed in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by trees and animals, and the animals want nothing to do with her. After spending a while learning the language of the animals, 7134 tries to communicate with them, but is still rebuffed. After getting chased down the mountain at the center of the island by a great bear (Mark Hamill), 7134 accidentally lands on a nest, killing nearly the whole family within except a single, unhatched egg.

Taking the egg, Unit 7134 senses a need to protect it, which she immediately has to put into action when a fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal), tries to steal it. She fights him back, but eventually relies on Fink for knowledge on what to do once the egg hatches. Her task becomes clear: she has to raise the little gosling, teaching it to eat, swim, and fly so the bird can move on for the winter, and since it’s a task to do, 7134 must do it. A ROZZUM robot always completes its task. However, as the months go on and her gosling grows up into the young goose she calls Brightbill (Kit Connor), Roz (as she’s eventually known) has to confront what this task actually means to her, and what she may now feel for her young charge.

I’ve got to be honest, The Wild Robot just didn’t work for me. Part of the issue is it’s tonally swings early on. When Roz (because that’s the easiest thing to call her) lands on the island and activates, you expect there to be a journey of discovery, her slowly developing sense about where she is and what her tasks could be. The film, though, doesn’t go this direction. It, instead, veers into silly slapstick (complete with over-the-top sound effects) and a lot of corny jokes. It’s like the setup wants to go one direction and the writing (and voice acting) desperately wants to drag itself into a different direction. It’s an opening act in conflict with itself.

This isn’t helped in any way by the fact that the movie seems to have an almost callous disregard for life. The movie wants to make it clear that out in the wilderness anything can die. Fate is cruel and nothing is safe. That’s fair, sure, but then makes this point by having creatures die and cracking jokes about it. Again, a tonal issue since this is a subject matter you want to feel, to view as something to avoid. The film cracking jokes about it lessens the impact. You don’t worry about death as much because despite the film saying, “hey, don’t die,” the animals seem oddly blase about it.

And, yes, I was thrown by the fact that this is a talking animals film. In part that was because the first trailer for the movie never shows the creatures talking. I didn’t see the second trailer, where the animals do talk, so I went in with my knowledge of the film based on a trailer that wasn’t entirely accurate. But then to have the actual film star a bunch of animals that all talk and crack jokes together like it’s no big deal… that felt weird. Especially so in the context of a human-made robot that can speak any human language suddenly learning that animals have their own, universal language they can all speak. That felt like a bridge too far.

Now, I get it. It’s a family movie. The kiddos out in the seats probably don’t want to watch a 90-minute film free of most dialogue about a robot wandering in nature. That does sound brilliant, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also not the most commercially viable concept. And having not read the book (of which this first story is part of a trilogy) I don’t know if the robot learned to speak to the animals there, also. What I do know is that the first trailer sold one thing and the film didn’t match what was sold. That led to a bit of a perception issue for me on top of the tonal issues I was having with the film as it was presented, and that left me a little cold.

The next two acts of the film are better, once we settle into the story of a robot raising a goose. The film isn’t as slapstick, isn’t as silly, is able to tell a story for more than just the tiny tots in the theater. But arguably it’s not a great story. It’s a pretty rote and basic, “someone finds a youngling and has to raise them and, in the process, discovers something about themselves,” story we’ve seen countless times already. Change it from wilderness to video games and we practically have Wreck-It Ralph. “You are more than your programming,” the robot says at some point, and she could be saying it to Ralph instead. This is a pretty generic family movie when you get down to it, telling the same story with the same morals that every other film of this type has done.

And that gets us back to The Iron Giant, another film about being more than what you were designed to be. That film didn’t have quite as big of tonal swings (Hogarth chasing a squirrel through a diner is the worst it gets) and it hits the core message better, harder, and with more emotion. But that film ended up a failure while this film was a Box Office success (making $323.2 Mil against a $78 Mil budget), getting lauded by critics as “the best Dreamworks animated film ever.” Obviously I don’t agree with that, not with this film taken on its own merits, and certainly not when you compare it to films like Shrek or (especially) How to Train Your Dragon. This film is not better than those movies. It’s a semi-passable time at best.

I didn’t hate The Wild Robot, but I also didn’t fall head over heels for it either. It’s a fine family movie, with some affecting scenes and very pretty animation. But it does feel like middle of the road, pandering, family entertainment, lacking true substance or soul. If you were to take all the films I listed above, grind them through a blender, and then have a committee sift through the pieces to pick out a four-quadrant adventure, you’d have The Wild Robot. It’s a film made to make everyone just happy enough without really saying anything at all.