The Wild Robot
Hearing the title "The Wild Robot," it's expected that a robot protagonist, representing the soulless machine world, becomes righteous after learning to survive in the wilderness alongside cute animals. This isn't the case, as the film presents a more nuanced storyline of the clash between the machine and the natural world.
The Wild Robot's story involves Roz, a robot who starts up in a sprawling evergreen forest. She goes around the forest, asking, "Do you need assistance?" and angrily upsets the animals. The film doesn't avoid dark elements, with the animals harshly damaging Roz, and themselves often dying from the forest or being eaten by other animals. Her programming to assist humans with accomplishing tasks appears obtrusive to the forest animals. After being "tasked" to be the "mother" of a gosling, eventually named Brightbill, when its family died, Roz must use her physical mimicry and assistance skills. This learning of motherhood changes her to be more natural, as the completely inchoate task of parenting, with her mimicry and adaptive learning skills, matched with "forest intelligence," allows her to thrive. Portrays the parents as good people.
Initially, Roz's idiolect is as automated as the writing in computer manuals or instructions. However, as the story progresses, she speaks more naturally yet still somewhat robotically, presenting how the environment she's in has changed her. Roz doesn't only train Brightbill herself, as the forest comes together to help. The animals themselves, though, aren't perfect. With good people in your life, you can triumph. Feels realistic, as not everything goes perfectly once mastered, but it becomes a better experience by having good people.
The representation of nature isn't superficial and is presented as what it sometimes coldly is, of destructively crashing waves. Fall in real life doesn’t look like fall in paintings. Real fall has dark browns, dark greens, and dead leaves; paintings of fall have lots of orange, yellows, and colorful dead leaves. Animals, while somewhat anthropomorphic, feel distinct from humans and act more like real animals. Through their behavior, all the animals have to come together to survive the winter.
With a different environment than she was built for, Roz began to think there was something wrong with her. However, when she decided to partake in this new environment, she was able to find herself and change the place for the better. This heartfulness is what makes The Wild Robot endearing in a way that will always make the natural world better than the machine world.
