{"id":4191,"date":"2024-09-28T17:12:13","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T17:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4191"},"modified":"2024-11-23T23:05:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T04:05:01","slug":"the-wild-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/28\/the-wild-robot\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Robot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Wild Robot <\/strong>(2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Sci-Fi-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (action\/peril, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Sanders\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Sanders\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Kris Bowers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Chris Stover\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 27, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lupita Nyong\u2019o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O\u2019Hara, Boone Storm, Alexandra Novelle, Raphael Alejandro, Paul-Mikel Williams, Eddie Park, Dee Bradley Baker.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Two of this year\u2019s biggest hits, Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4, are computer-animated family films. They\u2019re both good, but let\u2019s face the truth. Both of them are cash-grab movies that did exactly what the makers intended. They made money, a lot of it. That\u2019s all well and good, but where\u2019s the heart and soul? Like most of today\u2019s big studio releases, they left me with an empty feeling. I didn\u2019t feel emotionally fulfilled like I did with The Wild Robot<\/strong>, a brand-new CA feature from Chris Sanders, the writer-director of How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m going to go ahead and make a prediction followed by a wish. I predict The Wild Robot<\/strong> will be among the five titles nominated for Best Animated Feature at this year\u2019s Oscars. My wish is for it to be the winner. It absolutely deserves it. It\u2019s the very epitome of artistry. In an interview, Sanders described his approach to the animation as \u201ca Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest\u201d. He speaks the truth; it\u2019s not the usual assembly-line CA we get from Pixar or Illumination. It\u2019s rich and textured like paintings in a museum. It\u2019s art in motion. The TLC put into every frame is palpable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess you could call The Wild Robot<\/strong> a robot out of water story. Adapted from the acclaimed middle grade novel by Peter Brown, it tells the story of Roz (Nyong\u2019o, A Quiet Place: Day One), a ROZZUM 7134 robot who finds herself stranded on an island inhabited entirely by wildlife. With no humans around to assign tasks, she learns to speak to the animals in their languages. They refuse to accept her and she\u2019s all set to activate her communicator so her manufacturers can retrieve her. That\u2019s when something happens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Roz accidentally destroys a goose nest, killing the mother and all but one of the eggs. She goes into protective mode until the eggs hatches. The baby gosling, a runt she later names Brightbill (Connor, Heartstopper), imprints himself onto Roz as his mother. Such a thing isn\u2019t exactly in her programming, especially the part about caring for a living being, but Roz accepts the challenge of raising a child. The biggest challenge will be teaching him to fly in time for winter migration.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It takes a village- or in this case, a forest- to raise a child. Roz gets help from a few friends like the mischievous fox Fink (Pascal, The Mandalorian), expert mother opossum Pinktail (O\u2019Hara, Home Alone 1 & 2), grumpy grizzly bear Thorn (Hammill, the Star Wars movies) and falcon Thunderbolt (Rhames, the Mission: Impossible movies). Working together, they try to get young Brightbill ready for his first migration. He faces the additional hurdle of not being accepted by the other geese because he\u2019s different. That tends to be the case when you\u2019re raised by a mechanized mama.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s more to The Wild Robot<\/strong>, but I\u2019ll leave it to you to discover it for yourself. You should absolutely take your kids to see it. It\u2019s definitely worth the price of admission and concessions (kids love their popcorn, don\u2019t they?). What\u2019s more, the parents will love it just as much as their young. I\u2019m not ashamed to admit it nearly brought me to tears at the end. \u00a0It\u2019s such a beautiful story. What\u2019s even better is it doesn\u2019t pander to kids by sugar-coating the realities of nature, especially when it comes to death, a natural part of the cycle of life. Every living thing eventually dies and it\u2019s always sad. In addition, the threat of dying is a very real one for runts who typically don\u2019t survive in the wild. It makes Roz\u2019s job all the harder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s also a great sci-fi adventure in The Wild Robot<\/strong>. In the third act, Roz\u2019s makers come to take her home and it isn\u2019t exactly a pleasant encounter. The creators, represented by corporate drone Vontra (Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once), want to completely wipe her memory which would also erase all the emotional knowledge she gained. It\u2019s nice how all the animals band together and fight for her against an army of unfriendly robots. It\u2019s a rather bleak view of the future, one in which technology has replaced the beauty of nature, but it doesn\u2019t weigh things down.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The voice talents, Nyong\u2019o in particular, do a marvelous job in The Wild Robot<\/strong>. She brings nuance to what easily could have been a cold, emotionless voice job. Pascal has fun as the foxy fox whose sarcastic attitude is a defense mechanism for the loneliness he feels. Bill Nighy (Love Actually) is terrific as an elder goose who offers up words of wisdom to Roz and Brightbill. Connor is great as Brightbill, a young goose experiencing the same growing pains as his human counterparts- i.e. the pain of not fitting in, the feeling of betrayal upon learning the truth about his background. Hammill is perfect as the grouchy grizzly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s a lot of love about The Wild Robot<\/strong>. It reminds me of The Iron Giant (1999), a splendid animated movie (hand-drawn) that didn\u2019t find its audience until later. I hope that\u2019s not the case with The Wild Robot<\/strong>. It deserves to be a big hit and it just might be. According to Wikipedia, it grossed $11.3M opening day. That\u2019s pretty good. Here\u2019s to it becoming a new animated classic.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wild Robot (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Sci-Fi-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (action\/peril, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Sanders\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chris Sanders\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Kris Bowers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Chris Stover\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 27, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lupita Nyong\u2019o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Catherine O\u2019Hara, Boone Storm, Alexandra Novelle, Raphael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/The-Wild-Robot-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C981&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5608,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4191\/revisions\/5608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}