Get the latest gossip
The Wild Robot Will Ruin You
Chris Sanders’s The Wild Robot has a somewhat familiar set-up. But then you look at the movie — really look at it — and a whole new world opens up.
The robot in question is the ROZZUM unit 7134, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, a relentlessly task-oriented android that’s wound up on the edge of a dense forest in a remote island in the middle of nowhere. “Ready to enhance your lives with integrated multi-faceted task accomplishment,” she declares pleasantly and insistently, even though the deer and the bears and the possums and the birds don’t need any of her help. The movie’s visual journey is mirrored by its sonic one, as Nyong’o’s robot slowly moves from the measured, polite cadences of a machine to something more recognizable — not quite human, but with gathering hints of warmth that allow us to project all sorts of feelings into it.
Or read this on VULTURE