The Wild Robot Renewed My Love of Film After Megalopolis Nearly Destroyed It

I was sobbing, fam.

As an autistic man, I am the first to concede that I can be a little robotic and a little alien. Neurodivergent people are, by definition, outsiders. If they weren’t, they’d be neurotypical. 

I find human beings complicated, confusing, and overwhelming. Sometimes, honestly, it seems like the world might be better off without them. This confusion extends to myself. I’ve devoted my life and my career to trying to understand the world in all of its exhilarating, terrifying complexity, with mixed results overall. 

Because autistic people tend to behave in a manner at least a little bit robotic and alien, it’s commonplace for robots and aliens in pop culture to be autistic-coded. The most famous example is, of course, Mr. Spock from Star Trek.

Roz, the unforgettable protagonist of The Wild Robot, is definitely on the spectrum, or the robo-spectrum, as it were. Like myself, she sees existence as a series of tasks that must be satisfactorily performed. She’s confused and overwhelmed when she ends up in a world where her programming means nothing and instinct and emotion mean everything. 

The lovely adaptation of Peter Brown’s 2016 novel of the same name stars Lupita Nyong’o as a robot in the future who crash-lands on an island uninhabited and corrupted by people. 

She was created to serve humanity, to be the perfect unthinking servant/helper/friend/slave. She is a space-age consumer product who gets bruised and battered in the fall. 

On an island where she is seen as a threat and a monster, Roz encounters a nest of geese she mostly destroys accidentally. She saves a single egg that grows to be an orphaned goose, Brightbill (Kit Connor). 

Roz is the first parental figure that Brightbill sees. He consequently sees her as his mother. The overwhelmed metallic being has assistance in the sly form of Fink, a fox voiced by Pedro Pascal, who initially takes the form of a predator and a mortal threat to Brightbill. 

Fink turns out to be far nicer and more sentimental than he appears. He’s got a prickly exterior and a dark sense of humor but the proverbial heart of gold. He doesn’t just help Roz with a task she is utterly unprepared for; he serves as a loving surrogate father to Brightbill as well.

Brightbill takes after his mother. That means that he’s a goose who talks and acts like a robot. This separates Brightbill from the rest of the flock and his ostensible peers. 

Brightbill, Roz, and Fink are all outsiders who form an unlikely but loving surrogate family. Granted, that is the premise for roughly ninety percent of the films that play Sundance. It’s not a new or original theme, but it’s handled here with great sensitivity and care. 

The Wild Robot follows Roz as she becomes less robotic and more human and empathetic. Thanks in no small part to a powerful voiceover performance from Nyong’o, Roz is a non-human who is more achingly, poignantly, and unmistakably human than the human characters in ninety-nine percent of all live-action movies.

The Wild Robot is bracingly, refreshingly dark in its treatment of death. This is unmistakably a children’s film yet filled with darkly comic references to death as a universal in the animal kingdom and a more specific threat to the characters in the film.

The whole voice cast is terrific, but Catherine O’Hara deserves to be singled out for her sardonic performance as a possum mother who provides invaluable assistance when Roz is trying to understand what is happening to her and how best to handle it.

The Wild Robot is initially about the joys and hazards of connection. Connecting with other people just isn’t as easy for neurodivergent people as it is for the neurotypical. It can feel like friendship is a language that everyone speaks but you. The same is true of parenthood. 

Nobody is ready for parenthood. Nobody. That is particularly true if you are a robot and your progeny is an adorable goose who doesn’t just want to fly; he needs to fly south for the winter along with his non-robot family in order to survive a world that, The Wild Robot reminds us repeatedly, is overflowing with death and danger. 

Then, The Wild Robot becomes a potent allegory for the other great challenge of adulthood: letting go. Roz has to let Brightbill be himself and live his own life instead of being a reflection of her. 

The Wild Robot’s painterly exploration of the wild is so powerful that it almost seems like a shame when humans enter the fray as the villains in the third act.

Watching The Wild Robot with tears in my eyes for a good half hour reminded me that I am a soft touch. My wife and I both cry easily and often. I am particularly moved by unlikely friendships and the passage of time. 

My son Declan, who accompanied me to this and every children’s film I’ve written about for this newsletter, will turn ten on October 12th. That has me feeling all kinds of intense emotions, but primarily a sense of bittersweet melancholy. I’m so proud of who Declan has become, but I also miss the baby, toddler, and child that he once was. 

There is part of me that would like to make time stop, even if I am going through a particularly difficult time right now. Part of me wants my children to remain children forever, so I never have to let go or say goodbye. I know that’s impossible, but emotions are not logical, and people and animals alike are not logical. As good old Mr. Spock might observe, they are, in fact, highly illogical.

The Wild Robot renewed my love for film after Megalopolis nearly destroyed it. That Coppola creep nearly destroyed my passion for art, but The Wild Robot is a powerful reminder of film’s ability to move us to tears with the story of a metallic being who cannot cry but, ultimately, seems human in every other way. 

Four and a half stars out of Five