STACK #242 December 2024

FEATURE MOVIE

“There was just something about it that appealed to me,

and as I read the book I realised that it was a good fit for me. The funny thing is that I mentioned to my daughter that I was going to be working on this and she said, 'I read that book' and she pulled it out immediately. And I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I do remember now, that a couple of years prior she had read it at school. And that's really not unusual. It's common for kids in the United States to have The Wild Robot as part of their curriculum.” The moment we saw the movie we were struck by its textures. There was something almost tangible about the elements, though not being technically adept with animation lingo, we couldn't quite articulate what caught our attention. Thankfully, Sanders knew exactly what we meant and offered insight into the process. “That's one of the most extraordinary stories behind the making of the movie,” he says, fully comprehending our curiosity. “I knew from the very beginning that the only way this movie would really work is if we had a tangible feeling of a piece of high technology that was lost in the forest. It couldn't be business as usual with the CG look that we've all become very habituated to. “In any animated film, what you're seeing onscreen I guarantee represents the very outer edge of that studio's technology, and what we've been fighting from the very beginning with CG is the computerised look that keeps

The long-awaited movie adaptation of Peter Brown's beloved book The Wild Robot sends our imagination into a spin with its unique design and lifelike wonders. Words Glenn Cochrane

T he man behind the movie is director Chris Sanders, known for his previous work on The Call of the Wild (2020), The Croods (2013), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), and Lilo & Stitch (2002). It would be an understatement

very next thing I would be doing,” he tells us, explaining his movements following his time on The Call of the Wild . “I dropped into DreamWorks and they showed me all the different things that were in development at the time. They laid them all out on a table in front of me and they gave me a very brief description of what each one was about, and the

Director Chris Sanders

to say that he has his finger on the pulse of animation, and we caught up with him to suss out what The Wild Robot is all about, how it came to be, and what to expect. “You know, I was looking around for the

moment they said that this one was about a robot lost in the wilderness, I was like, 'That's the one I want to do.” Based on the popular book series of the same name by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot is an epic adventure that follows the journey of a robot - ROZZUM unit 7134, or “Roz” for short - that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building

things from looking organic. And, the fact is, that's what it has been now for decades. We were just so incredibly fortunate with The Wild Robot that we were at a point where DreamWorks had finally gotten away from that CG look, if you will, with Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys , it actually looked like a moving illustration. “With The Wild Robot , we knew that we had to go way beyond that even. When we start these projects we have some very talented painters and they do these exploratory

relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.

paintings which are loose and they're very gorgeous. They're soft and they're watery, and I posed the question, 'Could our finished film look identical to those exploratory paintings?' And Raymond Ziback [production designer] and his team actually got there. They pushed the technology

• The Wild Robot is out Dec 18

to the next step.”

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