A helpful robot needs to have a purpose. Roz wakes up on the shore of an island with no one to ask for her help.

The beautiful graphics of The Wild Robot are appealing. Even in the trailers, the art design elements of the film are evident. The story shows Roz developing in her relationship with the island’s wildlife. Her initial attempts to be useful end up catastrophically and cause all of the animals to fear her. Eventually Roz learns how to communicate with the animals and they interact with less conflict.

The corporation which sent the robot presents a utopian vision of life in the future. They have shiny mockups of robots and corporate cities in their marketing materials. They resemble futuristic designs by Disney from the 60s. They offer perfect robots to do everyone’s work and liberate citizens. It was interesting the how the Universal Dynamics marketing videos in The Wild Robot have a similar cadence and tone to the corporate messages from Buy n Large in the animated film Wall-E.

When the city was disrupted by “contamination” by wildlife, the robots react violently. They override their purpose of enhancing the city and start damaging it to defend their (presented as) idyllic synthetic environment.

There are some pointed moments in the film such as the scenes that show the Golden Gate Bridge. The explanation for an extreme winter is also left unstated. The wildlife on the island seems to be healthy and Roz helps them thrive. The baby opossums are pretty funny when they meet Roz.

The movie is unusual in that the title screen occurred at the end of the film. The openings of DreamWorks films show the studio’s logo of a boy fishing off the crescent moon. Here, the animation leading up to that logo included vignettes alluding to other DreamWorks films before resolving to the logo.

The Wild Robot is very violent. When it is amongst anthropomorphized animals, it doesn’t seem to hit as hard. However, the interactions with Universal Dynamics always devolve to extreme violence, causing explosions and fires, firing guns at the animals with one animal’s death all but shown in an especially intense moment of conflict. Roz is defiant in her relationship to Universal Dynamics and titles herself a Wild Robot when they try to retrieve her. It’s always a source of tension when she uses the module to help them retrieve her.

The Wild Robot is definitely a movie worth watching.