Even though the Oscars are still months away, awards season is slowly ramping up and will soon have dozens of movies competing for your attention on a daily basis. You can’t always watch them all, but one that I believe audiences everywhere should prioritize is the new Dreamworks animated feature The Wild Robot. Based on the book series by Peter Brown, the film is written and directed by Chris Sanders. Lupita Nyong’o stars in the lead voice role as Roz, a robot on a journey of motherhood, learning to experience the purest of human emotions and finding community in unexpected places. I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of “The Wild Robot” featuring a live Q&A with Lupita Nyong’o, and she was very complimentary of Chris Sanders as a collaborative filmmaker and artist.
Speaking to that creative partnership, Nyong’o said, “It’s a long relationship, it’s kind of like a marriage, and I want to make sure that I marry you right… Chris is an amazing director. He’s the one behind things like Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon and he’s amazing, no doubt. But I wanted to know what he was like as a human being and as an artist, you know, how he approached it.”
This film shows us the possibilities that come with swimming against the current of certain expectations and finding your own path – even if it’s the road less traveled. A thematic centerpiece of the narrative is the exploration of our characters’ internal “programming” and “nature” as it relates to Roz and her wildlife compatriots. Not only do robots learn how to love and runts of a litter discover how to lead, but foxes develop honesty and compassion, predators and prey work to live in harmony, and technology and nature seek to function in unison. In addition to Nyong’o, these roles feature stellar voicework from the likes of Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, and Ving Rhames.
The musical score from Kris Bowers is also doing a lot of heavy-lifting, evoking emotions of majesty and grandeur as a complementary companion to the richly textured visual world. And, a couple of original songs by Maren Morris fill out the music landscape. “Kiss the Sky” plays over a very effective sequence in the middle of the film, which is basically Roz’s version of a Rocky training montage. Over the end credits, “Even When I’m Not” is a lovely coda to the adventure.
Watching this film with an audience, something struck me about our collective experience. The best way that I can describe it is that you could practically feel the smiles in the room. This goes beyond just the audible laughter and the occasional oohs and ahhs of the younger audience members. The smiles all around were a living, breathing aspect of the viewing experience. Director Chris Sanders always seems to have his finger on the pulse of stories that can make us feel this way, and The Wild Robot is his latest offering of cinematic comfort food.