The new DreamWorks film “The Wild Robot” was officially released on Sept. 27 and has been on show at the Nugget Theaters in Hanover since mid-October. The film features Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o as the voice of Roz, a robot designed to complete tasks for humans. In the film, Roz crash lands on an island devoid of human contact and must learn to survive amid dangers she was not originally programmed to handle.
Roz’s advanced technology — far more sophisticated than what could be feasibly created today — allows her to perform complex tasks in service of living beings. Yet she is also ill-equipped to handle the forces of nature. The animals who inhabit the island, sensing that she does not belong, frequently attack her. In one scene, as Roz tries to escape a bear who is chasing her, she crashes into a tree and kills a family of birds.
It was interesting to see how technology is portrayed as a dangerous force during these early stages of the film. By contrast, many other animated films have portrayed technology as the solution to the story’s dilemma. In “Wall-E,” “Despicable Me 4” and “Big Hero 6,” technology is initially portrayed as a positive force even if not perfectly adapted to its environment. New technology also tends to be glorified by the media, whether mainstream or social media. However, in “The Wild Robot,” Roz is initially presented very differently. We do not know where she is from, but we do know that she is capable of causing irreparable damage. Humanity’s best technology is portrayed as clunky at best and dangerous at worst.
However, after this jarring beginning, the filmmakers begin to demonstrate Roz’s humanity. After Roz comes to her senses from the crash, she discovers that one gosling egg from the family of birds survived. As she inspects the strange object, she becomes increasingly curious about the animal inhabitants around her. In one of the most striking montages of the film, Roz personally works toward reprogramming her code for the first time in order to understand the language the animals are speaking. The significance of this scene is twofold. This is the first time Roz exhibits any ability to go against her original design. However, the montage sequence is also a clever nod to deep learning — the process by which modern large language models generate content that appears human-like in response to user input. And while LLMs as they exist today are certainly not sentient, Roz’s “deep learning” scene asks us to imagine her as a stand-in for what technology could be in the future.
It soon becomes Roz’s task to raise this gosling — who she later names “Bright Bill” — and ensure that he is able to migrate with the other geese in the winter. However, Bright Bill is abnormally small and his chances of survival are very low. In fact, he is often referred to as a “runt” by the other animals on the island. When Roz teams up with a conniving fox named Fink to teach Bright Bill how to swim and fly, Bright Bill is humiliated and ostracized by the other geese. It becomes clear that all three characters must engage in some version of literally and figuratively rewriting their programming — going against their natural inclinations — in order to achieve who they want to be: Fink wants to be loved, Bright Bill wants to fly and Roz wants to discover her capabilities beyond her programming. As Roz becomes more and more invested in Bright Bill’s progress, teaching him to fly becomes much more than completing a task for her. In one telling scene, Roz explains that her processing system has shifted from her head to her heart, revealing her newfound ability to feel emotion and deep connection.
When Bright Bill becomes strong enough to successfully migrate with the other geese, Roz’s newfound uncertainty about her purpose prompts her to send out a signal to the company that designed her. But when the retrieval robots arrive to help, they try to reset her programming back to the factory settings. It is clear that Roz’s sentience proves threatening to humanity, since the robots are now able to subvert humanity’s demands by acting according to their own agendas. Furthermore, the company wants to take away Roz’s memories of Bright Bill and Fink — effectively stripping her of her identity — so as to capture the data for humanity’s future product development. After a dramatic showdown between the crew of retrieval robots and Roz’s team of animals, Roz is brought back to civilization. However, many years later she is able to recognize Bright Bill when he comes to visit her, implying that her sentience — and the consequences that ensue — cannot be truly undone.
While Roz’s human-designed purpose was to serve humanity’s needs without discretion or dissent, it is clear by the end of the film that the only way Roz is able to enact meaningful change is by subverting the wishes of humanity. In fact, by going against her original programming, she paradoxically develops more qualities that we consider human. She develops moral values, an identity and emotions that all work to create meaning in her life. In contrast, humans — represented in the film by the retrieval company — are portrayed as not only irresponsible, but also insufficiently prepared to accept the consequences of creating technology that is capable of making its own decisions. Though the film concludes with a heartwarming ending when Bright Bill and Roz reunite, it also serves as a cautionary tale for humans to prioritize the philosophical and ethical considerations of technological creations, especially when the consequences remain unpredictable.
Rating: ★★★★
