- Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Chris Sanders’ movie, “The Wild Robot.”
- Sanders says working on “The Lion King” helped him pull off a shocking moment in “The Wild Robot.”
- “You handle it in a certain way so that you don’t pull punches,” the director told Business Insider.
Chris Sanders has a history of incorporating serious topics into animated films for children. Before directing modern classics like “Lilo & Stitch” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” he was the head storyboard artist at Disney Animation and helped develop iconic titles like “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” and “The Lion King” (he received “Story By” credits for all three).
So when it came to crafting another heartwarming yet tear-jerking animated classic, he took cues from his work on “The Lion King” and the film’s most devastating moment.
“The Wild Robot,” which is based on the acclaimed book series by Peter Brown, follows a robot named ROZZUM 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o) — “Roz” for short — who powers on for the first time on an island inhabited only by wildlife. Programmed to assist the needs of humans, Roz sets out to see if any of the animals on the island need assistance.
Struggling to get acclimated to the island, Roz accidentally crashes into a goose’s nest, killing the mother. When only one of her eggs survives, Roz makes it her purpose to raise that gosling until it’s old enough to join the winter migration.
Though the scene won’t traumatize a generation of kids the way the death of Bambi’s mother did in “Bambi,” it’s still a shocking moment for a children’s film. But Sanders knew it would have to be in the movie, since it’s a key point of action in Brown’s books.
“It’s the core of his story,” Sanders told Business Insider. Any good story needs stakes, even one meant for children. “Death is all over this island because it has to be a place with consequences.”
Some of that death is addressed with comedy. In one scene, a mother opossum voiced by Catherine O’Hara is relieved to hear one of her babies has been eaten because she has too many (the scene ends with the baby turning out to still be alive).
But with the mother goose’s death, Sanders knew he would have to play it straight. So he used the death of Mufasa in “The Lion King” as a guide.
“I learned on ‘Lion King,’ you can do that kind of thing, but you handle it in a certain way so that you don’t pull punches,” he said. Softening the blow will only hurt the story’s effectiveness later, but it’s a delicate dance: “You want that to be really powerful, but you do it carefully.”
“The Wild Robot” does this by making the actual mother goose’s death happen quickly — it’s less than a minute of screen time, and the focus is more on Roz discovering the egg and caring for it than focusing on death itself.
The scene sets the tone for a movie that’s an emotional ride, one that stands on the shoulders of the classic Disney titles Sanders was a part of decades ago.
“The Wild Robot” is in theaters now.
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