First, we watched the opening of the film, showing Roz crash-landing on a deserted island before going up to every single animal she encounters, asking if they need help with anything. In response, she gets mocked, ignored, yelled at or attacked by every animal (many of which also get snatched away by a predator before Roz can even process the horror of nature). It’s one hell of a way to start a movie and implies that “The Wild Robot” will be unlike any other DreamWorks story to date — one that’s more meditative and slower yet still retains a sense of humor.
More than anything, this movie looks absolutely, impossibly, gobsmackingly gorgeous. Before the footage, director Chris Sanders told the audience how he was constantly surprised by looking at what he thought was concept art (that is, a single static image) before the animators clicked play and the scene moved. The backgrounds in the film are incredible, with every surface on the film having a painted look that makes each individual shot look, in fact, like elaborate concept art. Watching Roz walk around the woods, or a shot of her walking at night with the moon right behind her, is awe-inspiring.
Though I kind of wish the studio had held off on showing Roz deciphering animal languages a bit longer, it’s hard not to laugh along when the animals are suddenly capable of expressing just how much they HATE this annoying robot interrupting their lives. Watching an artificial intelligence try its best to appear useful while, in actuality, just making things awkward and uncomfortable to everyone, with her would-be clients kicking and yelling in response and even celebrating the robot’s apparent death, is also weirdly satisfying given the current climate around AI.
