It has been said many times that it is impossible to make a perfect movie. This is probably true. Even the greatest cinematic masterpieces have flaws, however tiny they might be. Every once and awhile, however, there comes a film so artistically pure and so skillfully executed that one is tempted to say that it is truly flawless.
The 2024 DreamWorks Animation film The Wild Robot is one such movie.
Nearly everything about this movie is beyond excellent. The writing is superb, blending genuinely witty humor with strong drama. The score is rich and emotional, as it ought to be for a film like this. Every voice actor is perfectly cast. The animation is unique and artistic, with a gorgeous watercolor aesthetic that dazzles the eye. What stands out most about The Wild Robot, however, is its sheer warmth. This is a movie so gentle and inviting that it makes most other contemporary animated movies look bitterly cold and cynical in comparison. Somehow, every single character in this movie is likable (aside from the main antagonist, of course, but she gets very little screentime). This movie makes no obnoxious jokes and never talks down to its audience. The film’s writer and director, Chris Sanders, was already widely respected for previous hits like Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, yet this film might be his strongest yet.
The Wild Robot has more going for it than charm and entertainment value, however. As I have reflected on it, I have become more and more convinced of its incredible thematic richness. In this article, I hope to break those themes down as well as I can. Unfortunately, this will require me to spoil the plot, so if you have not seen the film, I would suggest that you do so before reading this article.
“Programming” and the Immaterial Soul
The atheist author Samuel Harris famously argued in a book aptly titled Free Will that there truly is no such thing. Free will, according to Harris, is an illusion. Instead, we are determined by our biological programming. As difficult as it is to believe, The Wild Robot directly engages with these very ideas.
Throughout his filmography, Chris Sanders has had an interesting habit of deliberately setting up close parallels between his characters. In his widely acclaimed 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon, main characters Hiccup and Toothless are two adolescents from opposing sides of the same war. Both are forced to fight one another by their superiors, even though neither of the them are natural killers. Both are physically disabled, with Hiccup’s missing leg mirroring Toothless’s broken tail. In the two sequels, these parallels continues, with Hiccup’s growth into a chief in How to Train Your Dragon 2 mirroring Toothless’s rise to become an “alpha” and a leader among dragons. Finally, in the the third film, both of them end up developing close romantic relationships, and must separate from one another in order to lead their respective tribes to a new homeland.
So far as I can tell, Sanders has taken this same style of deliberate parallelism in a novel and extremely intriguing direction with The Wild Robot. At multiple points throughout the film, Sanders chooses to parallel the programming of a robot to the instincts of a wild animal. At the beginning of the film, the main character, a robot who goes by “Roz”, finds herself washed ashore on an island that lacks any civilization. Since she was designed to work as a personal assistant to the members of a futuristic human community, this puts her altogether out of her natural element. After upsetting a local grizzly bear, she is pursued through the woods, and in doing so, accidentally crashes into the nest of a mother goose, inadvertently killing her and leaving her egg without a mother. Rather than leaving it to die, she then takes the egg herself.
After attempting to steal the egg which Roz is guarding, a shifty fox named Fink attempts to excuse this action by saying, “I’m a fox. I do foxy things. It’s in my nature.” Roz replies by comparing Fink’s instincts as a wild animal to her own programming as a robot. Notably, at the start of the film, Fink uses his evolutionary programming as an excuse for what Roz perceives as immoral behavior. He has no choice but to follow his instincts, and thus cannot be held responsible for doing so. In this regard, his attitude seems to echo that of many contemporary secular moral philosophers. For instance, Robert Sapolsky wrote the following in his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will:
We need to accept the absurdity of hating any person for anything they’ve done; ultimately, that hatred is sadder than hating the sky for storming, hating the earth when it quakes, hating a virus because it’s good at getting into lung cells. This is where science has brought us.1
Already, Sanders has found himself in very interesting philosophical territory. But the parallels that the film draws between a robot’s programming and an animal’s instincts only get stronger as the story develops. After the egg hatches, Roz finds that the gosling treats her as his mother. Naturally, we associate maternal qualities with compassion, nurturing, and of course, love — all of which are qualities that a robot, by its very nature, cannot possess. However, her programming also forces her to complete whatever task she is assigned, and so she is determined to help the gosling to “eat, swim, fly” as she puts it.
However, in completing her task, Roz ends up overcoming this programming. She slowly develops an emotional connection with the gosling, whom she names Brightbill. In one scene, she explains, “the processing that used to happen here,” she says, pointing to her head, “is now coming more from here,” she finishes, pointing to her heart. Ultimately, she admits, “I have been overriding my code for months. It was the only way to complete my task.”
Just as she overcomes her robotic programming, the animals overcome their own basest instincts. Amidst a freezing cold winter, the only shelter that the animals can find is the one that Roz has built for herself and Brightbill. Unfortunately, natural predatory instincts quickly kick in, and the animals find themselves at each other’s throats.
At this point, Roz delivers some of the most thematically weighty dialogue in the entire film. She says, “I know you all have instincts that keep you alive. But sometimes, to survive, we must become more than we were programmed to be.” Touched by her words, the animals then agree to a truce for the winter.
The central idea here seems clear enough. The Wild Robot is a firm rejection of the determinism that plagues so much of modern moral philosophy. Animals have instincts and robots have programming, but in this movie, both move beyond those instructions in order to form attachments and love one another.
However, the movie gets a chance to develop these ideas even further. During the climax, Roz is taken away by the company that manufactured her, and has her memory wiped. A now mature Brightbill comes to rescue her, only to find that he is too late. Almost miraculously, however, she is able to hear his words of affection for her, and regains consciousness, whereupon the two then escape. Afterwards, Roz tells Brightbill, “Remember when you talked to me on the ship? They cut my power, but I still heard you, because I was listening with a different part of myself. Wherever that is, that’s where I keep me. And I promise, they’ll never, ever find it.”
The Wild Robot is a film that clearly wants to affirm that it is possible to overcome one’s biological instincts and live a life centered around loving others. Yet even more importantly, the story makes it clear we cannot do this solely through our own material bodies. Instead, what allows Roz to override her programming and become a mother is clearly something akin to an immaterial soul, since it allows her to function even when her power has been cut, and can’t be pinned down to any physical location within her body. Her case almost feels reminiscent of real-life near-death-experiences, in which people with no brain activity whatsoever remain conscious, and even acquire information about what happened while their brains were non-functional that they could not possibly have known beforehand.
At its beautiful philosophical core, then, The Wild Robot is a story about how that special, immaterial something that makes us who we are can allow us to rise above animalistic savagery, and learn to love others. As Catholics, of course, we know that something as the immaterial soul, but even hearing it described indirectly in a mainstream animated film is deeply satisfying.
Expanding the Moral Imagination
Without question, the most important relationship in this story is that between the gosling Brightbill and his adoptive mother. Uniquely, however, our primary point-of-view character in this relationship is Roz, not Brightbill. As others have pointed out, most animated family films tend to take the perspective of a child, often one struggling against an overbearing parent who functions like an antagonist. Although not every such story is irredeemably bad, I think they miss an important opportunity. A great deal of scientific research has been done which indicates that fictional stories can increase empathy within their audiences. Through a story, you can put yourself in the shoes of a person with radically different life experiences, and see the world through their eyes. This is especially valuable for children, since kids have limited experiences and are highly impressionable.
The trouble is that stories which portray children burdened by overbearing parents who ultimately are proven to have been on the right side of their conflict don’t meaningfully expand a child’s moral imagination. Many children, especially younger children, tend to view their parents as unnecessarily constricting their own desires. Telling them stories which only reinforce this natural belief can be positively harmful to their development.
In contrast to this, The Wild Robot takes a more morally edifying approach. Brightbill is a central character, and he has his moments of great heroism within the film, but for the most part, this is Roz’s story. It’s a story about parenthood, told from the perspective of a parent. I have no doubt that any mother who watches this film will find tremendous catharsis in it, but it will prove even more edifying for the children for whom it was primarily written. Through it, they will see the struggles and sacrifices that come with motherhood portrayed clearly and movingly. Perhaps, through exposure to this and other stories like it, they will come to appreciate and love their parents all the more.
In one of the film’s strongest scenes, we see a montage of Roz teaching the undersized Brightbill how to fly. Their relationship has previously been deeply strained after Brightbill’s discovery that Roz mistakenly killed his biological mother, and it remains so for most of the movie’s runtime. Yet in spite of all that, we see Roz’s selfless devotion shine all the brighter. She is solely focused on her task of making sure that Brightbill can survive his migration in the Fall, and is willing to damage herself in the process in order to see that through.
Any mother will inevitably experience serious bodily strain in the process of giving birth to and raising children. The film portrays this metaphorically through Roz’s own physical sacrifices — breaking her leg, losing fluids, and persevering through the elements because she loves her son so deeply that she cannot give up on him. Despite her relative inability to express herself emotionally, Roz remains a deeply loving parent.
Many have interpreted The Wild Robot as a metaphor for neurodivergent parenting, since Roz’s initial struggles to show emotion seem very much like the struggles that an autistic parent might have. However, I think it can also be interpreted more broadly as a metaphor for the nature of heroic parental love in general. Love isn’t necessarily about feeling a certain way — it’s about willing the good of another, even at the expense of yourself and your own needs. This point is hammered home particularly well during a conversation early in the movie, when Roz tells Brightbill “I will not leave until I have completed this task, which has delayed me, damaged me, and violated my protocols, potentially voiding my warranty.” Fink then clarifies, “which is robot for: she loves you, very much.”
Rather than leaving that emphasis on the beauty of parental self-sacrifice hanging, however, the movie manages to bring it home in my personal favorite scene in the film.
Immediately prior to Brightbill’s departure, Brightbill talks with an older goose named Longneck, who tells him that “this flight is a gift Roz has given you.” Brightbill initially agrees, saying that he understands, but Longneck reacts sharply to this, saying that he doesn’t. The truth is that any child cannot really understand the sacrifices made by their parents in raising them. Their life experience is too limited for that. Whenever any child struggles with ingratitude or feels unloved by their parents, they should recall that they simply cannot understand how difficult and sometimes painful it can be to raise a child.
Movies this special have no business existing in our present-day popular culture. The Wild Robot is philosophically insightful, morally edifying, and deeply moving, and yet manages at the same time to be funny, charming, and entertaining even for young children. It is one of very few films that I can confidently recommend to literally anyone, because that’s how universal its appeal truly is. No matter your age, this is a movie that you should see, because as Samwise Gamgee would put it, it is story that really matters.
