President Daryl Cheong reviews DreamWorks’ latest film The Wild Robot — a testament to the spirit of kindness and a deserved Oscar frontrunner.

‘Community’ is a useless, ugly word. We throw the word around as a be-all-and-end-all quick-fix solution to aggravating problems, or as an oversimplification of the need to seek similarities with  the desire to come together. As our world grows increasingly individualistic where films once experienced together with others becomes a series of playlists on TikTok played alongside gameplay of Subway Surfers, cinema is losing its communal nature.

After all, what does it mean to label a community ‘LGBTQIA+’ where the letters seem to grow each day, and each identity has interests different from the rest, or each identity cannot encapsulate the sub-cultures and sub-communities within the community at large. Further bastardised by a neoliberal capitalist politics keen on promoting ‘brand identity’ and ‘brand community’, our carelessness in considering and manifesting ‘community’ has rendered this word meaningless.

There is no point in talking about ‘community’. 

It is within this ethos of a world living in isolation, and its over-embracing of individualism that encapsulated DreamWorks’s latest animation, The Wild Robot. Directed by Chris Sanders, The Wild Robot premiered at the recent Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews and has now overtaken Pixar’s summer-hit Inside Out 2 in the race for the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. Inspired by the animated Disney classics and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, the film follows a shipwrecked robot, which was initially designed to serve humans (unit 7134, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), and its journey with adapting to the vicious, wild nature of its new environment. Developing a parental relationship with an orphaned gosling, Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor), 7134, while outcast from the islands’ animals for its ‘monstrous’ and ‘weird’ being, comes to believe in and build a community. 

Evocative in its beautiful animation, it is no surprise that the film’s inspirations look to classic Disney and Studio Ghibli works. In its moments of looking at the trees and waters, where the shades of these colours blend into each other, a sense of life that compels the island into a breathing, living creature of its own is created. Situated in a distant future where nature has overtaken our cities, an exquisite image of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge submerged into water amidst the migration of geese evokes almost an impressionistic image where the world of the story becomes more tactile and visceral, rather than purely fictional or futuristic. Paralleling the coalescence of shades into an evocative lifelike depiction of nature, it is the animators’ ability to simultaneously demonstrate nature’s existence as an idyllic paradise and aggressive wildland that Nature is shown in its full glory and beauty. 

It is against this backdrop that 7134’s journey finds greater purpose in compelling the animals to shift from their inherent primality and move towards a deeper notion of kindness, community, and warmth. 7134 eventually claims the name “Roz”, a stab at taking independent control of her own narrative and revealing her courage to overcome her rigid, pre-programmed nature of pleasing others. In this new venture into her unknown fate, 7134’s cracks in her struggle to care for the orphaned gosling speaks to the larger and potentially universal hardships of motherhood. Referring to parenting as a “crashing obligation,” where a child “makes simple tasks harder,” and it feels like there are  “no assigned tasks”  to be a parent. These are statements that perhaps take wisdom of experience to truly feel the weight of responsibility and caring for another.

It is in these moments that Guillermo del Toro’s reminder echoes true – animation isn’t a medium for children, but a medium for art that reflects the human struggles of showing care. In moments like these where the children in my theater rambled on in their incessant noise-making, one can hear the soft sniffles of their accompanying parents, ironically feeling seen and represented in what has been marketed as a children’s film. Yet, it is perhaps precisely this reaction that compels one to conclude that this film, while an encouragement to children to look out for others, is really meant for adults, with actions that compel our world towards the very same wasteland of the film and the wild aggression of ‘nature’, that there is more to life than to uphold status quo or ignore a potential world built from kindness. 

If dealt with in a less thoughtful manner, these messages could feel overly-cheesy and therefore, meaningless. Yet, it is the ensemble of voice actors whose performances are rooted in such empathy and realism that an audience cannot help but be compelled by the altruistic arguments of the film. Of particular note is Pedro Pascal’s turn as a cunning red fox, Fink, who joins Roz by taking on a paternal role for Brightbill. In equal parts sassy and cheeky, or  lonely and selfish, Pascal’s emotional turns and tonal shifts are articulated so convincingly that moves an audience both emotionally and towards the film’s message.

In many ways, Fink represents the exact human experience of believing nature and the dog-eat-dog world to be selfish, individualistic and unkind. Yet, in charting Fink’s development throughout the film, especially rooted in such pathos and truth, Pascal makes cheesy dialogue commonplace in such animated films believable. Amongst the talented ensemble of voices, particular praise also goes to Catherine O’Hara, who voices a mother possum seeming on the verge of losing her children  to bigger predators. Reminiscent of her role in the television series, Schitt’s Creek, of a selfish sometimes-uncaring mother, O’Hara’s jokes about the impossibility of motherhood and keeping her children safe becomes a dramatic foil to Nyong’o’s Roz, both of whom demonstrate that in being underprotective or overprotective, there is no one way to be a mother.

Yet, in the same vein of trying to root the film’s message in believability, The Wild Robot also exposes its shortcomings in a need to overly-signal to an audience how to feel and think. In key moments of the film, the score by Kris Bowers (of Green Book, King Richard, and Oscar-winning The Last Repair Shop) can feel overwhelming in its dramatic punctuations that distract and drag on rather than to inspire and suggest. While the noise of the score allows for silent moments, such as a symbolic one of Roz touching her empty neck where Brightbill used to sit or Roz contemplating a departure from the island, particularly meaningful, these moments are also short-lived when seconds later, an orchestral cacophony drowns out its relevance. Such heavy-handedness is also seen in the film’s denouement, where many plot points come in rapid succession and require resolutions within minutes, leaving no space for tension, complexities, or intrigue.

Perhaps such artistic choices, reminiscent of other recent animations like Kung Fu Panda 4 and Inside Out 2, imply a need for animators to resolve nuanced adult themes into easy bite-sized resolutions for children-audiences, which studios seem overly-intent to market to. Nonetheless, we must also question if such simplistic treatments of important issues do a disservice to adult audiences.  If the tragic answer is “yes”, then these important messages would be whittled down into the misconception that such animated films  “are just for children,” infantalising the film’s aspirations and message of kindness into that of childlike naivety and impossibility. 

Simultaneously, in an age of (supposed) enlightened gender discourse, it also perhaps feels reductive to impose a paternal (Fink) and maternal (Roz) figure upon Brightbill. As one would note within this review, the pronouns referring to Roz transform from “it” to “she” as Roz develops her own sense of identity and will. Yet, one must question that for an asexual and gender-neutral robot, why the filmmakers felt a need to impose only one gender. Recalling possibilities of robots in being non-binary or even intersexual, this reduction of gender does more than hurt gender discourse, but also implies that the building of communities, and executing of care must be reduced to a role performed by women and specifically, mothers. While the film celebrates  motherhood, it  also potentially excuses male-identifying figures from these responsibilities. While Roz takes on non-maternal roles in the community, particularly that of a community builder, the constant reminders that she is in service of Brightbill and to nurture her community continue to enforce a restrictive identity for a character bent on building their own will and their own identity/identities. 

Nonetheless, the film is still a response to and product of its times. For an audience still rooted in capitalist notions of exploitation, such ideologies and discourse, while still necessary, may be worthwhile when the film’s argument for and faith in kindness is first regarded as a necessary value. At a time when it is much more materially rewarding to dissent and stir divide, this is perhaps the film we deserve in reminding us of the need to believe in kindness. For a group of predators and prey to co-exist on the same island, one must  first believe in ‘good faith’ before harmony and community can ensue.

The film’s celebration of stories as both a source of safety and comfort, and a source of narrative-building in overcoming our basic primal ‘programming’ is a reminder of storytelling’s power and influence in shaping our psychological and moral values. As an allegory to encourage humans to look beyond our individualistic conceptions of our Selves and the world, the film necessarily hand-holds the audience in a manner afraid of pushing past its boundaries. For an audience yet to believe in the film’s core values, that is perhaps necessary to guide them towards their first steps to believing in community. The onus, then, is on interpretations like these to compel such audiences to relook at their personal values and philosophies as spaces which can be greater refined. After all, the film’s incessant reminders to Brightbill to “fly like you, not like them,” lends for possible queer and neurodivergent readings that suggest an awareness of complex identities and considerations.

This is the final DreamWorks animated film which was produced entirely in-house before the studio relies on external production companies for its animation output. For a studio that produced childhood classics like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, that have inculcated  necessary humanitarian values in such subtle ways, the refreshed DreamWorks logo that starts the film with all the studio’s classic intellectual properties becomes both a celebration of its offerings and a nostalgic reminder of the changes to come.

In many ways, the crowd-appealing and crowd-pleasing nature of this film perhaps should not be roadblocks to watching or appreciating the triumph of kindness, but a reminder that there remain many who still need to be convinced of the way humans can be. What better way to be convinced of the beauty of coming together than a film that demands for us to come together and believe in our better natures? Against cynicism, perhaps these are the kinds of kindness worth celebrating.