The first trailer for The Wild Robot presented a visually stunning sci-fi adventure between Avatar and Wall-E. The finished film fulfills this promise in cinemas from today October 3, 2024 and gives us a wonderful story that succeeds in merging nature and technology in a visually intoxicating film.
Sci-Fi highlight of the outsiders: The wild robot brings machines and animals together
The basic idea of the sci-fi film The Wild Robot is quickly told: Rozzum Unit 7134 is named after one Shipwreck on a deserted island washed up, which is inhabited exclusively by animals. Here in the wilderness the robot lady powers up for the first time. “Roz” is programmed as a service machine to complete tasks. Unfortunately, the deer, beavers and birds that she identifies as potential customers run away from her.
However, Roz is capable of learning and adapts to her surroundings. First she studies the language of animals. Then she does everything she can to stay away from the shy islanders metallic monster to be noticed. But only when she faced the Raising a parentless gosling prescribed, she begins to understand the nature around her better and better.
How to Train Your Dragon director Chris Sanders stages the sci-fi adventure with his usual style Feeling for lovable outsiders on both sides: While Roz quickly becomes an unusual robot due to her environment who reinterprets his programming, wild goose boy Brightbill is, in the best Finding Nemo style, an undersized specimen of his species that would never be able to survive in harsh nature under normal circumstances would have survived.
Neither the fact that The Wild Robot is based on a children’s book nor the fact that this is an animated film should deter adult sci-fi fans from watching it thrilling, beautiful film add.
The Wild Robot: Marvel at a methodical visual sci-fi spectacle
At first glance, the sci-fi film is astonishing distinctive look: While Robot Woman Roz’s straight and round shapes would fit into any other animated film of our time, the rest of her surroundings appear strangely washed out and frayed.
But of course there is a method behind this dichotomy that is reflected both in the character drawing of the figures and in the drawing of the figures at the picture level. The The clear lines of the machine stand in clear contrast to the soft contours of natureenvironment and animals. Everything that isn’t artificial on the island seems to have come straight out of an impressionist painting.
This initial visual dissonance quickly becomes a visual feast in its duality as both sides first collide and then approach each other. You can’t get enough of it a robot buzzing with butterflies or its hard lens capturing the soft moments of a beach sunset. As moss builds up and signs of wear and tear, Roz slowly loses her menacing, austere shapes.
Sci-Fi highlight: The wild robot first conquers your eyes and then your heart
If The Wild Robot first captures us with its visual lasso, in the end it is the characters that we are happy to persevere with. Because next to the robot, which slowly discovers its heart beyond its programming, there is also this Animal staff simply stunning. There is a ridiculed beaver who has been wanting to cut down a sequoia tree for years. A possum mother whose children argue about the best methods of death (“I I died of sepsis! Find something else!”). Cute otters, mangy raccoons, a hungry fox whose relationship of convenience with Roz turns into something more – you don’t know who to give your heart to first.
Just like Peter Brown’s book The Miracle of the Wild Island *, the sci-fi film doesn’t ignore the fact that Nature cruel can be, with their survival instincts of eat-and-be-eaten. After all, Roz only cares about the little goose because she accidentally destroyed its nest and its parents. And when frightening bears storm out of caves, bird heads briefly fly through the picture or a mother animal jokes about the death of her offspring, the FSK 6 rating is definitely justified.
The friendship between Roz and the chick Brightbill is somewhat reminiscent of the giant from space, but develops its own dynamic that will soften everyone’s spirits at the latest when autumn comes along with the departure of migratory birds. What’s pleasant and unusual for the sci-fi genre is: People only exist on the margins here perception, for example when the geese fly over a flooded Golden Gate Bridge in a bird’s eye view.
The last third with a machine enemy who wants to pluck Roz from her new home was not necessary in the film. But that one perfect science fiction fusion of nature and technology, heart and mind that doesn’t detract. Because at the end you leave the cinema with one certainty: The wild robot is not only a visual delight, but also a sci-fi wonder in terms of narrative.