I may write about movies and TV shows for a living, but there’s only so much time in the day to watch things, and inevitably I’ll miss out on certain big and small screen hits. For example, while I’d heard last year how amazing The Wild Robot was, it was only just a few days ago that I finally streamed the DreamWorks Animation flick with my Netflix subscription. Well, not only am I now joining in on singing The Wild Robot’s praises, I’m kicking myself for not watching it sooner because of how it reminded me of The Iron Giant.
The Brad Bird-helmed The Iron Giant is one of my favorite animated movies. I remember seeing it in the theater while I was visiting my grandparents in the summer of 1999, and apparently I was one of the few who did, considering that this movie bombed at the box office and only started getting popular when it was released on home video and syndicated on TV. There’s a lot to appreciate about The Iron Giant, but for me, one of its main appeals is watching Vin Diesel’s titular protagonist overcome his programming and become something more than what he was built to be. The same thing happens with Lupita Nyong’o’s Roz in The Wild Robot.
Of course, the circumstances in which they change are very different. The Iron Giant was designed to be a killing machine by forces we never see in the movie, and it was only because he bumped his head when arriving on Earth and lost his memory that he didn’t immediately start murdering humans in 1957. Roz, on the other hand, was a Universal Dynamics robot who remembered her purpose when she washed up on that island, but was forced to adapt to her forest surroundings.
Ultimately it’s when these two meet specific people that they’re able to truly start evolving and become better robots… people… whatever. For The Iron Giant, that was Hogarth Hughes, the enthusiastic boy who teaches his metallic companion about things on Earth and life in general. For Roz, that was Brightbill, as she was told that because she accidentally killed his mother and the freshly-born goose imprinted on her, it was her responsibility to take care of him.
Now, granted, there were those periods in The Iron Giant where the robot’s defense systems would activate and he’d revert to his base purpose. But in the end, he channeled his inner hero and intercepted the nuclear missile that was launched at Rockwell, Maine. Even better, the movie’s closing moments show him slowly reassembling somewhere in Iceland, so he’ll eventually get to reunite with Hogarth.
With Roz, her love for Brightbill was enough for her to maintain her memories of him and the other forest animals when she was taken by Vontra. Roz also made a big sacrifice when she willingly returned to Universal Dynamics after Vontra was destroyed to prevent the island from being attacked by more of the company’s robots. We last see her working at a Universal Dynamics greenhouse pretending like she’s a normal ROZZUM unit, but she still has those cherished memories and embraces Brightbill when he sneaks in to see her.
While I don’t think I’ll end up holding The Wild Robot in as high of esteem as The Iron Giant, given the nostalgia factor at play with the latter, it’s still an exceptional movie I’m glad I made the time to watch. Now I can look forward to The Wild Robot 2, which is in development.