THE WILD ROBOT Taught Its Composer This Relatable Parenting Realization
By Movieguide® Contributor
THE WILD ROBOT composer Kris Bowers said working on the movie helped him confront some important aspects of parenthood.
The movie follows “a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, ‘Roz’ for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.”
Deadline explained that a major plot point of the movie comes when Roz has to watch Brightbill, the gosling she’s raised, fly away to migrate with a flock.
“Roz has been, as [writer-director] Chris [Sanders] often says, going towards this emotional cliff she doesn’t even recognize as she’s raising Brightbill,” Bowers told Deadline. “Roz and Brightbill are dealing with something that’s possibly irreparable. They may never see each other again. They may never speak again. In this moment, they’re not saying goodbye, they’re not saying I love you.”
READ MORE: HOW THE WILD ROBOT WILL CAPTURE VIEWERS
At the time that Bowers composed the music for the film, he had a new, six-month-old daughter. He revealed that “he first wrote a piece of music imagining sending his newborn daughter off to college eventually. However, the music rang false because he was avoiding what the scene was really about.”
“It made me think about the fact that I’m inevitably going to fail her,” he admitted. “I’m going to make mistakes. No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard my wife and I try, in 2 1/2 years there are so many days we talk to each other, ‘I really failed as a parent today.’ That’s really painful to think about, but also this film deals with it in a way that makes it okay to think about or important to think about it.”
For the composer, music allows him to express his emotions, something he did while writing the score for THE WILD ROBOT.
“It’s really a coping mechanism honestly,” he said of music. “That’s why I feel like I can express myself in films like this.”
Movieguide® praised THE WILD ROBOT’s beautiful depiction of motherhood.
WILD ROBOT is a very special movie. It delightfully affirms motherly love. Also, Roz the robot clearly has Christological, allegorical elements. She teaches the animals to love one another and clearly dies and appears to clearly resurrect. That said, her major characteristic is learning to overcome her cold, pre-programmed nature to develop a loving heart. When the company tries to re-program her, the heart takes over, but that’s not the end of the story. There are many animated action violence situations in WILD ROBOT, including animals consuming one another to survive. However, none of these situations are cruel or violent in a scary, troubling way. So, MOVIEGUIDE® recommends WILD ROBOT for children aged six and up. Adults also will love this story, if they have a heart.
READ MORE: THE WILD ROBOT REVIEW
Sanders emphasized the theme of parenthood in the movie during a conversation with Movieguide®.
“At the core of the story is that Roz has to go off programming in order to accomplish all these things, and I think that anybody who’s a parent…there are surprises and unknowns, and you’re just going to have to improvise and you’re going to have to make mistakes, but you’ve got to keep going,” he said.
