1 of 5 | Roz (L) takes care of Brightbill. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures/Dreamworks Animation
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23 (UPI) — Robots in film tend to be vehicles for exploring humanity. In animation particularly, The Wild Robot joins The Iron Giant and Wall-E as a poignant tale of human growth through the eyes of a sentient robot. Rossum-7134, or Roz (Lupito Nyong’o) for short, crashes on a future Earth. In the forest with only animals around, Roz tries to adapt her task as a human assistant to nature. Advertisement
Roz deciphers animal language so the film can present spoken dialogue as English. When Roz accidentally crushes a goose nest, she takes it upon herself to raise the surviving gosling, which she names Brightbill.
Many films, animated or otherwise, deal with chosen families when something happens to the one from which the characters were born. Roz’s robot programming adds a layer of a computer trying to analyze natural, essentially human, behavior as if it were data.
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Roz needs to teach Brightbill how to swim and fly in time for him to migrate for the winter. Not only does Roz try to teach from an outside perspective something that should be innate for a bird, but she has trouble processing why this is challenging for Brightbill.
Science-fiction stories from Terminator 2 to Star Trek have explored trying to explain love to a data-based computer. Roz translating emotional processes into technical terms does a sly job of exposing human needs and foibles.
Brightbill is an outcast both for being a runt and for having a robot
