Wild Robot: An Out-of-Touch Fantasy

Wild Robot, for its warm message of love knowing no bounds, wrongly personifies and heroizes a robot in a world where humanlike mechanical figures are all too prevalent.

Rating: 6.1/10

Highlights

• Visually beautiful

• Heartwarming (I suppose)

• Energetic characters

Lowlights

• Unrealistic 

• Personifies robots

• Doesn't even have a happy ending 

Now, I had high hopes for Wild Robot, so my review may be more critical than the film deserves, particularly since it does deviate a bit from the actual substance of the film in its critique. However, this is my movie blog, and I'll write what I'd like. First, I find it odd to promote a film that personifies and glorifies robots to children, particularly in this time period. How will Wild Robot impact how these kids, surely still learning about AI and its place in their lives, view technology and its ever-increasing infringement on human creation? And, not to compound my dated complaints, but this film was quite unrealistic! Robots can't feel love. They don't have emotions. Telling a story where a robot somehow learns how to be a caring mother would be quite confusing, I imagine, for someone just learning about technology in the 21st century. It's a heartwarming story of love and family, sure, but I wish it didn't center on a robot. Any other being — human, alien, monster — could have been supplanted for the robot to tell a similarly warm story of a foreign being coming to belong in a different world. I would have been much less distracted and mildly disturbed throughout the film had this creative decision been made instead. Thirty years ago, robots were a far-off foreign form, abstract and harmless. Now, they genuinely pose an existential threat to the sacred methods of independent thought and creation once prized by humans. Painting them in such an innocuous light for children feels out-of-touch.

Liked Wild Robot? Watch Paddington, an incredibly moving and fantastic film about a loveable bear who's looking for a new home (yes, I know bears can't talk, so yes, this movie is also unrealistic, but I'd rather children go around thinking bears have feelings than robots). 

Watch the trailer!