Many remember reading the fantastic novel and picture book “The Wild Robot” back when they were in elementary school. Well, now you can watch “The Wild Robot” too.
Dreamworks released a wonderful animated film based on the beloved book. “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown. It follows the heartwarming tale of a robot named Roz who wakes up on a remote island after a ship carrying helper robots sunk in a storm. While Roz learns how to adapt to life on a wild island, a series of events leads Roz to find herself with a baby gosling to raise. Throughout the story, Roz builds strong bonds with the animals on the island and ends up bringing them together.
Right away fans of the original book will notice the movie has kept true to the illustrations and pictures portrayed in the novel. The animation looks wonderful. The animals look lovely and the island looks fantastic with the trees, waterfalls, and rocks looking almost real. The great animation helps you really feel like Roz the robot is in a truly wild place. It keeps the novel’s “storybook feel” and transforms it into movie format. While Roz’s design has been modified slightly to fit the 3D animation, her design still stays true to the book’s illustrations. It really feels as though “The Wild Robot” has been brought to life.
Being a movie with a limited time meant that certain portions of the story were condensed and minor pieces were removed. Oftentimes in a book’s transition to a movie the writers of the movie miss out on what made the book truly great. Luckily, this was definitely not the case for “The Wild Robot.” Even with minor adjustments and condensing of parts, “The Wild Robot” seems to capture the essence of the book and seems to evoke the same emotions and feelings that reading the book did. The movie made sure to include major bonding moments between the animals and Roz the Robot. It captures many of the struggles and moments of growth for the animals on the island as well as Roz’s Journey to care for her chick and understand the world around her. The movie includes more emphasis on certain characters than the book, but the changes seem to work well with the story.
In addition to animation quality, music is an important part of a movie. Bad or no music can make even the best movie feel very weird. Luckily for “The Wild Robot,” they hit it out of the ballpark in terms of music. The music for this film was composed by Kris Bowers. The soundtrack works seamlessly with the movie scenes and really adds emotion to the film. The music sounds almost “symphony-ish” in a way, and really makes you feel like you are immersed in what is going on. There is a perfect amount of lightheartedness in the music for scenes with Roz and her gosling and there is great dramatic music for some more intense scenes near the end. Overall, the fantastic music makes it feel like you are listening to some sort of symphony along with the movie.
To sum up, The Wild Robot has great animation, a well thought out story and fantastic music. It is refreshing to see a movie that really lives up to the book it was based on. People who loved the original picture book novel as well as those hearing “The Wild Robot” story for the first time are sure to love this movie. “The Wild Robot” is definitely worth the watch.
