The Wild Robot Was Going To Be Something Else In My Mind
The first trailer I ever saw for The Wild Robot really thrilled me, I didn’t consume anything else after that until I saw the movie last night.
What I found most compelling is that it seemed like it would be a silent movie, or at the very least one where an AI powered robot would be placed in a setting it doesn’t belong and find it’s utterly inept and useless in it. The robot would attempt to adapt, to learn, to optimize. I dreamed of some sort of allegory about how AI when confronted with the real world falls short and fails. That no amount of money and technological advancement can match the resiliency and survival instincts of a fox or a goose that have been honed through generations. In the process it would show the beauty of nature, of our world as it is and how our shaping of it has led to a flawed creation that try as it might, cannot fit in it. No matter what the neural network/genetic algorithms the robot applied to nature around it it wouldn’t be able to understand it. It had to experience it. It could be a reflection on our collective folly in trying to create life when it takes millennia for it to arrive, and it always does so in a harmony with the world around it not in the service of one species.
I of course didn’t know this was based on a kids book.
The movie itself is perfectly charming, I’m sure if the viewer is a parent it’s even moreso. It’s about the life changing power of caring, specifically for one’s child. The animation style is gorgeous. I’m glad it exists, there’s never enough animated movies out there as far as I’m concerned. I’m also glad it wasn’t a sequel.
Still, I dream of THAT AI movie that the original trailer put in my head.