M. The Wild Robot (2024)

2025-09-23

The Wild Robot is a lovely film from Dreamworks. It was chosen for the September IndieWeb Movie Club hosted by Zachary. I think it reminded me of Big Hero Six with the same importance placed on the robot. The cadence of Roz especially mirrors Baymax, I think the animators likely paid homage or used similar techniques to animate her movements. I was reading some reviews on Letterboxd, and I'm surprised that people are comparing it to WALL-E. Roz was definitely more robotic while WALL-E already had a love for humanity, though I guess Roz can be a spin on EVE. She has a strong return protocol once life is found?

I already watched it through once so this would be my second watch through. I think it's interesting that the movie is a hero's journey from the mentor's perspective. We have a plethora of mentors like Roz, Fink and Longneck who supervise the odd duck out, Brightbill. I like that it demonstrates how "it takes a village" to raise a child. Brightbill is the "real" hero but I liked the outside perspective of what it takes to be a mentor, and more specifically for Roz, a mother. It was heartfelt to see how many "hero journey" loops that both Roz and Brightbill go through. She gets the call

I don't think the Wild Robot is Dreamworks' best like everyone was hyping up about it as and as the reviews say it is. I think it could partly be the animated movie prejudice speaking where people will only watch animated movies that come out from the large studios so any recent animated film will be their best one. Otherwise, the Wild Robot was riding the coat tails of the more bombastic releases with Puss in Boots 2 and uplifted by Disney's disappointments like with Wish. Animated movie wise, I think Wolf Children (2012) and Maquia (2018) are a cut above in how they portray the motherhood themes but Wild Robot was great for it's community building aspect!