16 Years Later, Dreamworks' 2024 Movie is the Perfect Response to Wall-E
We just can't get enough of loveable robots.
Summary
- Dreamworks' new animated movie is based off a bestselling book series.
- Early trailers are giving us amazing WALL-E vibes.
- Both movies feature beautifully animated robots searching for connection away from the world of humans.
- A stellar voice cast suggests that this won't be a silent movie, in spite of the dreamy trailer.
What's It About?
A new animated Dreamworks movie hits theaters this September. Although the early trailers don't give too much away, we know that The Wild Robot is based on a series of children's books by Peter Brown.
A robot, ROZZUM unit 7134 (or 'Roz' for short) is shipwrecked on an island uninhabited by humans. The conditions are harsh and Roz must adapt to survive, but the robot eventually learns to connect with the beauty of the natural world around her. She also makes friends with the various local animals, and becomes a surrogate parent for an orphaned gosling.
Although the trailer doesn't have any dialogue, we're already guessing that this one's going to tug pretty hard at our heartstrings.
A Familiar Idea
If an animated movie about a robot surviving harsh terrain sounds familiar to you, you might be thinking of Pixar's gorgeous 2008 classic WALL-E. Although The Wild Robot has a different setting, the themes look similar: a robot looking for connection and belonging in an isolated and treacherous world.
WALL-E was a notoriously beautiful movie, and The Wild Robot looks to follow in its footsteps there, with animation that illustrates the harshness and majesty of the natural world. The haunting cover of What A Wonderful World that accompanies the first official trailer underscores this feeling.
Falling Into the Wall-E Trap?
The first half of Wall-E is considered an almost-perfect film experience. The Pixar team took a big leap and dared to make a kids movie that, for the first twenty minutes at least, had no dialogue: all of the action was portrayed through the little robot's beeps and movements. It's a visual, imaginative masterpiece that challenges our assumptions about how we connect to characters.
Although the second half of Wall-E (where the little robot goes to space and discovers a ship full of humans) isn't bad, it also abandons the idea of marvelous silent film and returns to more traditional forms of storytelling. Some might argue that WALL-E is still a masterpiece, but many of us wish that the creative team had been brave enough to follow through on the promise of its first half.
Although there is no dialogue in the initial trailers for The Wild Robot, the film boasts an impressive voice cast including Catherine O'Hara, Pedro Pascal, Lupita Nyong'o, Stephanie Hsu, and Mark Hamill. With a prestige cast like that, it's pretty much guaranteed that The Wild Robot, like WALL-E before it, won't be able to commit itself to being a low-dialogue movie – which is a real shame.
Although not all of the voice cast is connected to particular roles, some have been attached to characters with names like 'Pinktail' (O'Hara) and 'Longneck' (Bill Nighy). That means that not only will The Wild Robot have dialogue in it, it looks like it will feature a number of talking animals.
Where Can I Watch It?
The Wild Robot will be released on September 20, 2024. When it moves to streaming services, it will be available exclusively on Paramount+ for the first four months, followed by a 10-month stint on Netflix. After that point the movie will return to Paramount+.