The Wild Robot

The Wild Robot is a beautiful film that strikes a great balance between kid-friendliness while also having mature themes that appeal to parents. Between the heart-wrenching (in a good way) scenes of love and loss, there's even good comic relief that the whole theater enjoyed. My one complaint is the incoherent moral message with regard to animals.

Popular media with talking animals usually treats the main characters like humans, then overlays the familiar speciesism on top. If a main character suffers or dies, it's treated seriously, but there may be "lesser" animals whose suffering is unaddressed or even treated as a joke (Shark Tale comes to mind). The Wild Robot falls into the same trap despite trying to avoid it. The first two kinds of animals we see are cute otters that are protected from harm and crabs ("lesser" animals) that are killed and eaten as a joke several times in the movie. The crabs are not given the ability to talk to further reinforce this hierarchy.

Additionally, I saw one review praising the movie for not shying away from showing dead animals to kids. I hate that kind of intentional desensitization of kids. Sometimes, the inconsistencies of our carnist society are so clear that even kids pick up on them, like being taught to help an injured bird while also being taught to "get used to" slaughtering chickens for food. The Wild Robot does at times try to tell us that an overwhelming amount of animal suffering is "just the way things go", which is exactly that kind of desensitization I dislike (while also being untrue).

But overall, given that no major motion picture I've seen has ever intelligently addressed the concept of animal suffering, my rating is only minorly affected by this oversight. It really is the only flaw I could find in an otherwise amazing movie. Imagine if I subtracted several points every time a movie did something else that was wildly common like including establishing shots...