This is (not) a review of THE WILD ROBOT
RE: the film; a poem; an in memoriam.
“I know you all have instincts that keep you alive. But sometimes to survive, we must become more than we were programmed to be.”
You don’t need me to tell you that The Wild Robot is a great movie. With all the accolades it received in the form of widespread critical acclaim, awards hype, solid box office, a sequel in development, plus the fact it’s got an absolutely stacked cast of excellent voice actors, a wonderful Kris Bowers score, a gorgeous art/animation style, and it’s from Chris Sanders, the director of the original Lilo & Stitch… how could this film not be a slam dunk?
Instead, I want to take the time to make mention of two things.
Firstly, there is the (presumably) coincidental similarity The Wild Robot’s premise, as adapted from the children’s books by Peter Brown, shares to a project that began life on Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRECord website a few years prior to The Wild Robot’s publication in 2016.
You see, it began with an illustration in 2013, depicting a robot in a desolate landscape, accompanied by a bird riding on its shoulder. These characters became known as Herbert (the robot), and Isle (the bird).
From there, this developed into a sprawling series of projects imagining stories about these characters, with thousands among the site’s community making all sorts of art inspired by Herbert and Isle. At one point, I think it was intended to be incorporated in some way into an episode of one of the two seasons of HitRECord on TV that were produced between 2013 and 2015, but ultimately, it became its own separate short animated film, released in 2017.
During the early stages of development, when ideas were being explored and pitched by the community about what the short film could be about, I wrote and contributed a poem about Herbert and Isle, back in 2014. Personally, I think it’s one of the better pieces of writing I’ve made. So when The Wild Robot started making the promotional rounds in 2024, and I saw it involved its own story of a benevolent robot caring for a bird in a post-apocalyptic future, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Herbert and Isle.
(For what it’s worth, I don’t have reason to think Peter Brown plagiarised anything from HitRECord, and having now seen The Wild Robot for myself, it’s definitely got many other different themes on its mind, not to mention being a tonally far more uplifting story, for it to be a carbon copy of what we all imagined for the more melancholy, bittersweet world of Herbert and Isle.)
So, here’s the poem I wrote over a decade ago, tentatively titled The Tale of the Automaton and the Bird:
“There once was a land
That trembled underfoot
Of a lonely robot named Herbert
And his long trail of soot.One grey morning dawn,
On his one thousandth mile,
On Herbert's shoulder suddenly perched
A small bird named Isle.Herbert's head swivelled
Towards the bird's beady eyes;
Isle looked at him without fear,
To the old automaton's surprise.With each earth-shaking step anew,
The bird still clung with ease,
So the robot let his new feathered friend be,
And continued to make his way through the trees.With the pendulous swing
Of the robot's great arms,
Time passed most swiftly,
The bird safe from harm.Through their days of adventure
Under the sun's dull gleam,
And their nights of falling asleep
To the robot's venting steam,Herbert and Isle
Were never apart;
So close they became,
In tandem beat their hearts.But the robot soon began to see
The bird become tired and frail,
So Herbert scooped Isle into his hands,
And across the water they did sail.When they reached the opposing shore,
Herbert did not stop to rest;
He walked for weeks, while Isle viewed the world
From Herbert's hands held close to his chest.Until finally, the day did come
When the robot came to a stop.
He showed the bird their destination,
Which in this world could only be seen from the top:Colour!
Vibrant!
Clear!
The last of all colour
Exists only here.The robot sat on the edge of everything,
His friend by his side, the best view gained,
And together they watched the sun's orange flames set,
Together, until only Herbert's heartbeat remained.The immortal machine remains there to this day,
Staring at the colours' greying hue,
His world will fade, while he shall not,
But he will never forget the friend he once knew...”
Secondly, I want to use this space to pay my condolences to the late Mikayla Raines, the founder of SaveAFox Rescue, which is where the bespoke fox sounds were recorded for the film for Pedro Pascal’s character of Fink.
As so many others had likewise, I too began following SaveAFox’s social media pages during the pandemic, where Mikayla shared videos of the adorable antics of the foxes under her care, including Finnegan, Dixie, Esme, and Mala. So it was a horrible shock this past June to see the sudden tragic news her husband shared about her having taken her own life, reportedly as the result of a longstanding online harassment campaign that had been mercilessly levied against her and her work, which I’d had no knowledge was even happening, before the terrible news of her passing was broken to the world.
It’s heartbreaking on so many fronts. That the beloved caretaker of so many animals, who all clearly adored her, is no longer there for them, and they will never know the why of her absence for the rest of their brief lives. That a young wife and mother, who was only 30 years old, is no longer there for her husband and daughter. That the world is so callous and cruel to those who least deserve it, and now that the arbiters of her demise got their wish to push their target over the edge, never to return, these people will likely never face real repercussions for their distant but undeniable role in her death.
I expected the heartache of the inevitable day when Finnegan, Dixie, and all the other animals at SaveAFox would leave this world, as all beloved animals we become attached to online will eventually do. But I never could have imagined that Finnegan and Dixie would come to outlive the woman who gave them a home, and so much love for so many years.
All this to say:
Rest in peace, Mikayla.
