FANTASTIC FEST: ‘The Wild Robot’ Excels In Emotional Storytelling

The Wild Robot isn’t your traditional Fantastic Fest film. It’s a little sci-fi, sure, but on the surface, it just seems like another children’s animated film. Truthfully, though, The Wild Robot is a thoughtful narrative that uses its genre to propel its theme in a moving way.

After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot named Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh environment, gradually bonding with the island’s animals and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling whom she names Brightbill. Feed him, teach him to swim, and make sure he flies before winter. That’s her task. But those three simple things propel her into motherhood and a life she didn’t know was possible.

When I first walked into The Wild Robot, I didn’t expect it to land completely for me. The score is beautiful. The animation is breathtaking, but motherhood? I mean, how many films about motherhood and connection have we seen in recent years, especially in animation of all ages? That said, The Wild Robot takes those expectations and blows them out of the water. As much as the film is about being a mother and not understanding what that entirely means, it’s also about being a kid.

Without hesitation, The Wild Robot makes jokes about motherhood that continuously allude to the fact that sometimes you just have to figure it out. It’s rough and thankless, but it’s also terrifying. How do you fulfill your task of keeping this fragile life alive when everything is rigged against it?

At the same time, however, Brightbill also learns how to be a child. It’s a weird situation and way of looking at coming of age as something that doesn’t necessarily happen when you transition stages in your life cycle. Still, instead, at the relationship you have with your parent. The film is comedic and warm. It’s fit for parents and children, and when you let it wash over you, the theme becomes engrossing. But it’s not something realized at the moment.

At the middle point of the film, I just started crying. We all know that Roz is not Brightbill’s mom, at least not biologically. We see his differences, but up until he meets people who should be his community, he realizes them. I don’t think I stopped crying after that point and when I walked out of The Wild Robot, I didn’t know why. It took calling my mom and talking to a fellow critic who is also a stepchild to realize why. I had been Brightbill. I’m a brown-skinned Latina, and my dad is biracial and presents entirely as a white man. He’s my stepdad, but writing that, even saying that, just feels too detached. He’s just my dad. But being so different phenotypically, my cousins, my friends, and pretty much all of childhood were defined by people we knew and even strangers questioning our relationship. Was he my dad? Was I his daughter? Did it matter?

Right now, parenthood by choice, those stepparents that walk into lives and step into spots that others left are being vilified. It’s being treated as a path of parenthood that is less than biological in terms of importance or validity. But in that space, The Wild Robot radically validates those of use with parents who chose us. It looks at our families and says, yes, you belong together. And that’s why I cried and kept crying until the film ended.

The Wild Robot may be one of Dreamwork’s most beautiful animated films, but more importantly, it’s the most emotionally salient. Every bit of the film feels necessary and every scene builds on the other. While you can take small moments and see their beauty out of context, The Wild Robot is meant to be viewed whole. In a cinematic time where it feels that more and more animated films by Western studios are built with curated TikTok clips in mind for viral marketing, this is one of the few times I have watched a major studio all ages animation and felt like I had returned to what made me fall in love with the medium.

A true all-ages film, The Wild Robot sees even its youngest audiences as worthy of dramatic storytelling and dynamic emotions. It trusts them to understand the narrative without musical numbers or exposition. Instead, it immerses its audience, young and old, and makes you feel deeply for its characters. You can identify with Roz, Brightbill, and Fink. Or, you can even find yourself in the spaces in between. With a stunning cast of characters and performances that never felt phoned in or stunted for the star power, it reflected that my heart was bigger on the inside.

Family is what you make it, what it chooses it to be. The Wild Robot understands that nurture is stronger than nature and that our parents imprint on us as much as we do them. But more importantly, it doesn’t matter if we share our DNA. The Wild Robot solidifies the beauty and impact that Dreamworks has been delivering in animation. It’s the animation we need right now, and it feels like they know that.

The Wild Robot screened as a part of Fantastic Fest 2024 and is in theaters nationwide September 27, 2024.