‘The Wild Robot’: An Eloquent Exploration of Self, Technology, and Nature

Published in 2016, The Wild Robot, by the multi-award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown, was not only a New York Times bestseller, but was named one of the best children's books of the year by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, among others. Initially crafted for young readers, but swiftly recognized for its universal truths, it is, says DreamWorks Animation President Margie Cohn, “the kind of story that becomes a narrative and emotional touchstone for young readers and their parents, who then will share it with every subsequent generation to come.”

DreamWorks’ much-anticipated adaptation of Brown’s literary sensation, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8 and opens in theaters nationwide today, has been acclaimed by critics, boasting a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Produced by Jeff Hermann and written and directed by 3X Oscar nominee Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, Lilo & Stitch), The Wild Robot stars Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Kit Connor, and Stephanie Hsu, and also features the voice talents of Mark Hamill, Matt Berry, and Ving Rhames.

A powerful story about the discovery of self, the bridge between technology and nature, and what it means to be alive and connected to all living things, The Wild Robot follows the journey of robot ROZZUM unit 7134, or “Roz” for short (Nyong’o), that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings. Gradually Roz builds relationships with the animals on the island, including becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling (Connor), who, after a number of false starts, Roz names “Brightbill.”

With a visual style that’s been described as “a Miyazaki forest painted by Monet,” The Wild Robot pushes the visual boundaries of aesthetics and style, while sensitively exploring the themes and emotional landscape of Brown’s celebrated book. To learn more about these aesthetic and dramatic achievements, we spoke with director Sanders and producer Hermann.

You can find 17 trailers and featurettes from the film here – take a few minutes to enjoy the final trailer before reading on:

Dan Sarto: I’d been anticipating this film for a while, and when I finally got to see some excerpts, my first note was "it's got otters." You had me at otters. I’m guessing there was more to your own reasons for choosing this project. What drew you to it to the point where you decided, "Okay, I'm going to spend five years of my life making this film"?

Jeff Hermann: We all read the book and one of the very first things we agreed on is that it was a very different sort of project. And we needed to know if everybody was okay making this book. We didn't want to change it; we wanted to be true to it. I think it was the gentle nature of it, and the strong emotional through line that everybody was really attracted to. I mean, we were attracted to it for the same reason that so many people read it.

Chris Sanders: There's something different about it, and it's in its sincerity. And the other part that was appealing is, it doesn't shy away from difficult issues or topics. I mean, there's sadness and tragedy in the story, and it doesn't shy away or sugarcoat those moments. It shows kids, and audiences, how to navigate those situations. And that's something.

DS: It provides a little bit of a safer space, a little safer template, for bringing those types of topics to audiences, especially kids.

CS: Yeah, absolutely. People want to feel a range of emotions, and cinema is a safe means of experiencing sadness and fear and those kinds of things. And these are little morality tales, in a way, that provide everybody with a foundation to get through life.

DS: How long did it take you to come up with the look of the film, from the color scheme to the visual style? I feel that, if it had been presented in a pristine 3DCG way, it would not have had the same impact.

CS: I very much agree. I think that it was fortuitous timing that the book arrived at DreamWorks when I did. It was the perfect studio, not only because of the talent of the artists, but also because of what they had already been achieving. With Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and with The Bad Guys, they had managed to take a great leap away from that standard CG look that we have been so habituated to. For this story, which is about a piece of high technology lost in the forest, if we don't have the strongest contrast possible, the story is not going to work as well. So we asked these artists to take the style that they created, and all these advancements that they achieved, and go way further than that even.

Probably the best way to describe it is that they took the painterly and illustrative style of Puss in Boots, and they softened it. They put a good deal of [Golden Age Disney artist] Tyrus Wong back in. So these forests feel more like Miyazaki, they feel more like real forests. There's a believability that they achieved in this painted style – and it is painted: the skies, the trees, the ground. It's all done by human hands. There's no substitute for that, and you can tell. So, and I think it's safe to say this, we have closed the loop between where animation began and CG has gotten us, and brought it full circle to achieve the most perfect look I've ever seen.

DS: What was involved in figuring out how to bring emotion to a robot, without making it too cartoony?

CS: There were two different aspects: part of it was Lupita, and part of it was the limitations that we gave the animators. As far as the animators, we didn't give the robot a mouth, for example. We were insistent that it not have too much articulation on its face. That kept the robot in a more robot-y, dignified place, and didn't allow it to go too cartoonish with the way it acted.

DS: And what about Lupita, from the acting standpoint?

JH: Lupita was actually quite thoughtful as a collaborator on this. We had many conversations with her for quite a long time before she ever even stepped behind a microphone, because she really wanted to understand every aspect of Roz, and how to portray a robot, and give a performance through her voice to an entity that comes with no emotion. Obviously, there's an evolution in the character and in the story, where emotion does become a part of her vocabulary or part of her acting style. But it’s a journey to get to that, and she has to start from one point and progress to another. And so there were a lot of conversations and debates that we all had together all the way through the process. I mean, right up to the very last record, there were still conversations around word choices in a sentence to help her find the right angle to approach it.

DS: Chris, in the press event, Lupita spoke very emotionally about how you worked with her, and how you gave her the confidence that enabled her to find the emotional center of this character. Tell me a little bit about that dynamic.

CS: Because it was 100 percent on her to produce this performance, the most important thing that we could all do was listen. She had some really unique, fascinating, and intelligent ideas about how to approach the character. Rather than looking at machines, she looked at different types of people and personality traits that could shift within the character. We were all incredibly impressed with what she could do with her voice. She could modulate it very subtly, but powerfully, to sound more controlled and uptight, and then, later on, become much more expressive and more emotional.

But that's the thing I really want to put a fine point on: In a lot of these stories with a robot, we assume that they're going to go from machine to sentient. There’s tons of that in this, but it's a much more complex thing that Lupita is doing. One of the things that we all agreed on is that Roz understands the definition of love, but she has not really experienced it and doesn't understand what it means. And that's the kind of thing that Lupita is doing.

There's a great moment in the film where Longneck, the goose [voiced by Oscar nominee Bill Nighy], mentions something about Brightbill's heart, and Roz says, "His heart is 48 millimeters," so she's like, "Oh, I know what this is." And he gently corrects her and says, "There's more to it than that." And, throughout the film, she's opening up inside. She's not becoming “emotional,” because she does react emotionally in the beginning, but she doesn't understand quite what that means. So she's gaining an understanding of this, and that's a much more subtle and powerful thing that Lupita's pulling off.

DS: What do you hope people come away with from Wild Robot?

CS: I want them to be impressed with where this takes them, and to be impressed with the audacity of what we did. This is not business as usual for an animated film, or for a studio. This is an extraordinary film, I think, and I can say that because of all the people who worked on it. Everyone – from the actors, to the artists, to the engineers, to our composer Kris Bowers – really adopted this film, and they worked harder and produced much greater things than they really needed to. They could have brought in less, and we would've had a great film, but they far exceeded the assignment.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.