As I mentioned above, The Wild Robot is an exceptional film in every way.  Since calling a movie excellent in every way isn’t really criticism, I settled on one aspect that elevates it above other animated films that I also liked.  Its maturity.  The movie never panders to a particular segment of the audience.  Although the movie is one that will appeal to children, it doesn’t contain any jokes just for them.  There are no fart jokes or other examples of simplistic “kiddie humor” designed to make children laugh.  While the movie does have its silly moments, those moments happen within a more insightful context.

For example, there’s a scene where Fink throws a pine cone at a rabbit, followed by Roz throwing one at him.  The scene would have been a funny as pure slapstick, but those actions happen as part of this exchange:

Fink throws a pine cone at a squirrel, knocking it off of a branch. 
Fink, Brightbill and other animals laugh.
Roz:  Humor is based on misfortune?
Brightbill:  Misfortune?
Fink: Yeah!  Here, try it.
Fink tosses a pinecone to Roz, then pulls back some tall grass exposing a rabbit.
Roz throws the pinecone at Fink, knocking him back into the grass.
The rabbit jumps around to look at Fink and laughs.
Fink: Not funny!
Brightbill: Not funny!

Another example is when the possum family first sees Roz and pretends that they are dead.  While seeing the possums fall to the ground with their tongues hanging out is a funny image, the repartee between the children and their mother is what garners the laugh:

Pigtail:  The monster!
Pigtail and all of the children fall to the ground and play dead, except for one who is overacting.
Child: You’ve gotta die faster.
Child: Meningitis. Takes a while.
Child: What did you pick?
Child: Rabies!
Child: Spontaneous combustion!
Child: Nightshade!
Child: Sepsis!
Children: Hey, I picked sepsis!
Pigtail: None of you are doing it right.  We talked about this.  Dead things don’t have to explain why they’re dead.  Now we’re going to be killed for real.
Children: Sorry, mom.

The setup is the one child getting lost in the part.  The punchline is that all of Pigtail’s children are so knowledgeable in various ways to die.  It’s a clever bit, one that little kids probably won’t follow but would make to everyone over the age of five.

The Wild Robot also never panders to adults.  There are no meta references to culture, something that previous films from DreamWorks have in abundance (Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, etc.).  There are also no conspicuous needle-drops of songs from decades ago.  The song that plays during the scenes of Roz training Brightbill to fly, “Kiss the Sky” by Maren Morris, is an original composition for the film.

This is what I mean when I described the movie as “mature”:  it always respects the audience’s intelligence.  The jokes are witty and clever instead of being dumbed-down for kids, and it doesn’t rely on cultural references or the use of well-known songs as a crutch.

A matter of life and death

Another way that The Wild Robot exhibits maturity is in how it addresses death.  After Roz awakens from her fall onto the goose’s nest, she carefully inspects the damage.  She lifts the mother goose’s wing and determines that she is dead.  She also notes all of the broken eggs in the nest.  Like Disney’s Bambi, the movie doesn’t pretend that the animals aren’t dead.  Although it avoids showing us the gruesome details, it still forces us to acknowledge the seriousness of what happened.

Later, Fink protects Brightbill from the truth because he’s just a gosling.  Later, when Brightbill is grown up, he and his “mother” have an honest discussion about what happened to his real mother.  To the movie’s credit, their exchange is direct and emotional.  Since Roz can only tell the truth, she’s required to admit to her part in the death of Brightbill’s mother.  Although Brightbill is angry at finally learning the truth, his feelings don’t lead him to reject Roz as his substitute mother.  Instead, her honesty earns his trust and he accepts her help with teaching him how to fly.

No sugar-coating

I was repeatedly surprised by how all of the serious themes in The Wild Robot were presented in a matter-of-fact way.  Raising children is a demanding and thankless job that wears your body down. When you are unloved as a child (like Fink) you will grow up to be selfish and uncaring towards others.  People pick on those who look and act differently than what they consider to be “normal”.  The natural world consists of predators and prey, with the latter trying not to be eaten.  While Brightbill’s character arc is similar to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, Longneck chooses him as the flock’s new leader not just because of how well he can fly, but because of his courage.

Hello, cousin

As someone who has seen Wall-E many times, I couldn’t help notice all of the similarities between it and The Wild Robot.  Both films tell the story of a robot who:

• has very expressive eyes that communicate their internal “feelings” like silent-movie actors.
• exhibits a human personality.  Wall-E is already a “person” before the movie begins, while Roz becomes more and more human over the course of her story.  
• has an appreciation for certain aspects of human existence.  Wall-E is drawn to humanity’s creative side, including singing and dancing.  He also yearns for love and romance.  Roz learns what motherhood is all about.  She also learns how to improvise, deal with uncertainty and understand the importance of self-sacrifice.
• appreciates nature.  Wall-E cares for his cockroach and safeguards the plant that enables the humans to return home.  The shelter Roz builds for Brightbill and Fink later becomes a refuge for the animals during winter.  
• reminds humanity of their responsibility to the environment and the planet.

Remember, it’s not just our home

Wall-E’s presence on board the ship triggers the ship’s captain’s curiosity about what life on Earth is like, and he spends hours asking the computer questions on a variety of topics, including farming.  This gets the captain excited over returning to Earth.  However, when he sees the recordings of Eve’s mission, he realizes that humanity left the planet in horrible shape when they took to the stars seven hundred years ago.  Whether out of a sense of guilt or shame, the captain realizes that he and everyone on the ship must go back to clean up the mess they left behind.

The Wild Robot also has an environmental message, but instead of communicating it indirectly through human characters like in Wall-E, it speaks directly to the audience.  Although there are human characters in The Wild Robot, they appear briefly, don’t speak and have no impact on the story.  This makes Roz the audience’s surrogate by default, and the movie reminds us through her actions of our responsibility to the environment.  Unlike the humans, who have separated themselves from humanity and above the flooded surface, Roz interacts directly with the natural world and all of its creatures.

Humans are animals too.

Both films are also concerned with how humanity in the future has chosen to live a  technology-driven, antiseptic existence that is completely segregated from the natural world.  In Wall-E, humans live their lives with their every need being met by service robots and spend their days immersed in technology.  Likewise, the humans In The Wild Robot have service robots perform all their chores so that their masters will have more free time.  Even the physical labor involved with cultivating orange trees is handled by robots.  Subtly, both films are trying to warn humanity that a future where we are far-removed from our natural origins is not in anyone’s best interest.

It’s interesting how the assumed existential threat to life on Earth has changed in the years between the two films.  In Wall-E (2008), the ecological concern back then was the buildup of trash.  Sixteen years later, The Wild Robot subtly reveals that climate change has made life on the surface of the planet inhospitable.  Unlike the omnipresent mountains of trash that greet us when Wall-E begins, The Wild Robot holds-off revealing that the world is under water until we see the Golden Gate Bridge submerged in the background.  The move then relies on the audience to put two and two together and realize that Fink incorrectly described his home as an island.  Instead, he and the others are actually living on a mountain top surrounded by water.

Technology as (potential) savior

Both Wall-E and The Wild Robot share a moderately optimistic view of the role of technology in human life.  Both don’t see technology as eventually supplanting us and possibly killing us, as is the case with the Terminator and other science-fiction films.  Instead, they consider technology as a benign element in our lives, content to do whatever humanity asks of it.  This isn’t a good thing, however, because it means that technology is a passive enabler for good and bad decisions made by their human masters.  We can only hope that if our technology one day becomes sentient, it will help us remember what it means to be human like Wall-E and Roz do.

A purpose-driven life

Where Wall-E and The Wild Robot differ is with their life philosophies.  Wall-E enjoys his Zen-like existence, taking pride in his menial tasks even though they don’t make a difference in the larger scheme of things.  His happiness comes from being productive, regardless of the results.  Roz, however, pivots from a task-driven existence to one that is purpose-driven.  Instead of feeling rewarded by checking items off of her to-do list, she devotes her energies towards a single, urgent, life-altering goal: raising Brightbill.  In doing so, Roz shows us that while completing tasks are important, we can feel more fulfilled when we focus on accomplishing something significant.

It was a dark and stormy night.

I’m old enough to remember when this phrase was a running gag with aspiring author Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip.  The fact that The Wild Robot is confident enough to kick things off with this well-worn cliche speaks volumes.

Animals as friends (not food)

I’ve read a lot of children’s books over the years, so I wondered if The Wild Robot was perhaps partially inspired by Karma Wilson’s series of bear books.  Instead of having an adversarial relationship, the bear and his fellow woodland creatures are friends and work together.  Check them out here.