What happens when a robot meant to help human beings finds itself amongst wild animals in a lush North American forest island? In “The Wild Robot,” writer/director Chris Sanders (“Lili & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon” which Sanders co-wrote and co-directed with Dean DeBlois)  exposes us the reality of the food chain and its cycle of life and death before taking us on a wild fantasy where a robot forms a friendship with a fox as it mothers a gosling runt in this adaptation of Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” series.

Unlike DreamWorks “How to Train a Dragon,” the world of “The Wild Robot” is painterly with lush greens of a forest welcoming spring. Yet with spring comes showers and we enter this world from the skies, in the midst of thunder and lightning. A family of otters accidentally turn on the robot, ROZZUM #7134. ROZZUM (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) was programmed to help its owner, but in this world, it doesn’t speak the lingo. To escape the rocky shores, ROZZUM quickly learns from a bright blue crab how to crawl up a steep vertical black stone cliff that might be named despair. The crab has escaped the waves, but can’t escape the predatory claws of a bird.  There’s more death (which is likely the reason for its PG-rating) but nothing gruesome.

ROZZUM is ready to communicate in English, Spanish, Japanese, etc., but this robot needed help from Dr. Doolittle. In time, through observation, ROZZUM is able to crack the codes, but that doesn’t mean the fauna of this island see the robot as anything but a monster. The resulting mayhem of fight and/or flee responses results in ROZZUM tumbling down a cliff into a next and accidentally killing all the inhabitants, but there is a singular unhatched egg. The egg, however, has caught the eye of a solitary red fox.

The fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal) tries to fool Rozzum, but while Rozzum might not yet have maternal instincts, the robot is persistent and good at problem solving. Soon the fox, will settle into a co-parenting position with Roz after the egg hatches and the gosling, Brightbill (Boone Storme as a baby and later Kit Connor), imprints on Roz. Yet the problem with raising a Canadian goose is that come fall, the gosling must be prepared to migrate, something that Roz learns from the mother opossum, Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara).

Roz has already taught Brightbill to swim but Brightbill’s introduction to other geese hasn’t gone well. He isn’t well socialized and Roz’s command of the languages of animals, just like Roz’s command of English is stilted and strange. With the help of an elder goose, Longneck (Bill Nighy) and a falcon, Thunderbolt (Ving Rhames), Brightbill prepares for migration.

The film also follows Brightbill’s migration and the tough winter that the animals on the island survive thanks to what Roz learned from the beaver, Paddler (Matt Berry). The geese will return in their migration back, but the animals of the island will be threatened by other intruders.

While Roz is a friendly robot, the storyline does include more sinister robots, particularly Vontra (Stephanie Hsu). After all, a robot is a precious item and the manufacturer Universal Dynamics must be concerned about the loss of the precious cargo.

Fans of the book will understand that the robot ended up on the island as a result of a boat wreck. Some of the details of the story were changed as did the design of Roz. Brown’s illustrations are very simple, but attractive. His Roz had sharp-cornered shoulders, but the Roz of the film is an assemblage of spheres.

The name of the robot pays tribute to a 1920 science fiction play by Czech writer Karel Čapek, “R.U.R” which stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots. Brown uses both the name of the robot and its manufacture, Universal Dynamics to allude to Čapek’s play. The play introduced the word “robot” to the English language. Brown’s 2016 “The Wild Robot” was followed by “The Wild Robot Escapes” in 2017 and in 2023, “The Wild Robot Protects.” The film ends with the possibility of a sequel and this is just a wonderfully, joyful and beautifully nuanced world, that I do hope the sequels will be made.

For diversity, Academy Award-winning Nyong’o was born in Mexico and raised in Kenya. Pascal was born in Santiago, Chile. Hsu is Chinese American (Her grandmother fled Mainland China for Taiwan and Hsu’s mother came to the US). Rhames is African American.

“The Wild Robot” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2024 and was released on 27 September 2024.

Do stay for the post-credits scene.