Chris Sanders is no stranger to the Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination. Every animated feature he has directed — “Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Croods” —has been nominated. But none, so far, have won. Some of this is understandable (“Lilo & Stitch” lost to Hayao Miyazaki’s undisputed masterpiece “Spirited Away”) but it still seems odd that one of the kings of modern animation is still empty-handed.
That could change with his latest marvel, “The Wild Robot.” Based on the beloved book by Peter Brown, “The Wild Robot” follows ROZZUM unit 7134 (voiced with delicacy and humor by Lupita Nyong’o), a high-tech service robot who washes ashore on a deserted island populated only by animals. That’s where she accidentally destroys the nest of a gosling (voice by Kit Connor), whom she later raises as her son. The film is another wild stylistic swing from DreamWorks Animation, pushing the expressiveness developed in movies like “The Bad Guys” and Oscar nominee “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” Sanders and his collaborators implemented a painterly style that gets more tactile as the movie goes along; Roz herself gets scratched up and worn down.
One sequence that captures everything that “The Wild Robot” is going for is set in a snowstorm. Roz’s adopted gosling Brightbill has already left, and the punishing weather is threatening all life on the island. Not only is it a huge technological accomplishment but it’s also a staggering emotional sequence, with the plainspoken brutality of the island on full display, all underlined by Kris Bowers’ sweeping score.
Sanders said that the sequence is one of “the biggest moments in the film”: Roz heads out with her fox sidekick Fink (Pedro Pascal), whose ability to smell helps them find trapped animals. “We have the largest-scale shots at the very beginning, where you start ultra-wide and you’re pushing in, and the snowstorm is at full speed, and the snowstorm gets worse, more intense as the sequence progresses until you get to the very end. It’s at night, and Roz is pushing her way through,” Sanders said.
The sequence was as art-directed and designed as everything else in “The Wild Robot.” The way that the snow is piled up and the direction of the wind is “all being choreographed,” said Sanders. The sequence is punctuated, too, with deceptively difficult time-lapse moments. “It’s not a straight sped-up bit because if it was, people wouldn’t see the animals very clearly,” Sanders said. “It’s a mix of Roz coming in at speed, momentarily hitting real time, and then going back into fast forward. The fire pit is running at a different rate of fast-forward, too.”
The snow sequence is also a great example of the heart and humor of “The Wild Robot”—told, like some of the more powerful passages of the movie, almost wordlessly. “Those are the moments that hand it to Kris Bowers and hand it to the animators,” Sanders said. “The more you talk about it, the less effective it’s going to be.”
The scene ends with a long take—one of two supersized “oners” in the movie—of all the animals gathered in the little cabin that Roz had made for herself, Brightbill and Fink. “That is something I’ve never done before,” said Sanders. “The amount of work that we poured into it was so incredibly worth it. And it took months.” It is also, as Sanders pointed out, very fun to watch. “You soak in everything that you want the audience to get in that big oner, and when you’re finished with it, everything after that is just gravy.”
This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap magazine. Read more from the Awards Preview issue here.
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