Chris Sanders has been at the forefront of some of the most beloved animated movies of the past 30 years. After working as an animator and storyboard artist on Disney films like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King, Sanders made his directorial debut co-directing and co-writing Lilo & Stitch with Dean DeBlois, later reuniting to helm How to Train Your Dragon at DreamWorks Animation. Sanders would stay at DreamWorks for his next writing and directorial effort, The Croods before making the jump into live-action with 2020’s The Call of the Wild starring Harrison Ford.
In the time between Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, much had changed in Hollywood. Traditional hand-drawn 2D animation that could have unique styles with each new film was replaced with CG animation and 3D models that had a uniform look across movies and even studios. Likewise, voice casts once made up of rank-and-file, dedicated voice actors were quickly replaced with those filled with celebrity actors, often ones that had never done voice work before. Studio animated films across the board started to spend much of their runtime on jokes and dialogue delivered by the A-list casts rather than on visuals and storytelling.
Now, writer-director Chris Sanders aims to bring back the good old days with The Wild Robot. DreamWorks’ latest film, being released on its 30th anniversary this fall, is both like nothing the studio has ever done and also a throwback to the early days of the studio. For one, it has about half of the amount of dialogue animated movies usually have nowadays and starts with a lengthy sequence devoid of dialogue. Then there’s the visuals, which look like painted concept art, with a distinct hand-made touch that stands out from other 3D animated features. And lastly, for a movie about a robot stranded on an island filled with animals, the animals don’t act like people. They are not anthropomorphized but act like regular animals.
An adaptation of Peter Brown’s book of the same name, The Wild Robot follows ROZZUM unit 7134, or “Roz” for short, a robot shipwrecked on a forest island, as she learns to survive the harshness of nature while also taking care of an orphaned gosling, which she names Brightbill. We sat down with Chris Sanders for an exclusive interview following the first public footage presentation for The Wild Robot at the Annecy Animation Film Festival and dived into what makes this film so unique. We also discussed how Hayao Miyazaki and My Neighbor Totoro influenced the film’s visual style, and making animals feel like animals.
Exclusive Interview with Writer-director Chris Sanders for The Wild Robot
I want to first ask why you’ve cited Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro as an influence for The Wild Robot.
Chris Sanders: We wanted the audience to feel as similarly to Roz’s situation as possible. We toyed with the idea of beginning the movie having a title sequence where you see her being built, for example. But then we decided to start the way she starts, waking up on shore. We thought that would be the best way to just completely immerse the audience in her situation. As for the forest she spends most of her time in, Miyazaki was a big inspiration, because he is incredibly effective at making you feel lost in the wilderness, in nature. Likewise with Tyrus Wong’s illustrations for Bambi. It wasn’t just about the look but also the vibe that those films created that we aspired to do.
One thing that stands out in The Wild Robot is that the animals don’t walk on two legs like humans but act like real animals. Why was that important to this story?
Chris Sanders: I never expected to be, uh, working on something where animals were animals. Of course, I love anthropomorphized creatures. I draw them. We all love them. But the chance to do forest animals like actual animals was a rare thing. One of the things we don’t talk about a lot, and I wanted to point out, is that part of the trick to making [The Wild Robot] feel the way we wanted it to is changing the way the eyes worked and changing the way the eyes looked.
One of the things I have noticed over the years is that there are a lot of CG films where we have fish, princesses, dragons, and pandas, and they all have the same eyes. And those are human eyes. They have sclera, they have irises, they can be quite beautiful and very effective. So, I’m not saying that those are not good. But for us, I thought, let’s give the animals the correct eyes. Foxes have fox eyes; birds have bird eyes and things like that. It keeps us from breaking the spell of the forest that we’re creating.
What was the process like of making the animals emotive while still keeping them feel like wild animals?
Chris Sanders: That comes down to the art that the animators brought to the process. The characters act like the species that they’re supposed to be. So we were really careful just to be mindful as we went forward, not to break the spell of the creatures they were supposed to be. There are moments where we have to get across something that is pretty human, and our animators did some very clever things to work around the limitations of, say, a fox that has to stay on all fours and can’t sit up and gesture.
Tell me about the painterly look of The Wild Robot and giving this movie a different visual aesthetic than audiences are used to from DreamWorks Animation.
Chris Sanders: We happened to be in the right place at the right time, standing on the shoulders of giants at DreamWorks, where movies like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys had made wonderful advancements in creating illustrated movies. CG has given us so much, especially in making geometry look real, but we lost something when we stopped doing analog, handmade backgrounds. That was beautiful! I wanted to do that again, to go as far as we could into a painted world.
We used paint brushes on everything, even the effects have an almost hand-drawn look. I was as surprised as everyone else when I started seeing the footage and realized it was not concept art but fully animated scenes. Everything from our skies to the trees is painted. Then, I even asked if we could extend that into the effects to harmonize them with the rest of the film.
How was collaborating with Lupita Nyong’o on her performance as Roz, particularly since she hasn’t done much voice acting before?
Chris Sanders: You always want to help them shape their own character. Lupita and I would spend the first part of every recording session just talking about the overall arc of the character through the story and the utility of that character within the story. We talked about Roz, where she came from, what her mission and personality are, and how she thinks. Then, we would also talk about the specific moments. There was never a session where I wouldn’t return to my computer and rewrite the scene based on the things that we talked about. We developed the story throughout the process, and her character was brought into focus throughout the length of the process. She was instrumental in the creation of the character.
The Wild Robot hits theaters on September 27!
Release Date: September 27, 2024.
Directed by Chris Sanders.
Written by Chris Sanders.
Based on The Wild Robot by Peter Brown.
Produced by Jeff Hermann.
Executive Producers: Dean DeBlois.
Main Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, & Mark Hamill.
Composer: Kris Bowers.
Production Company: DreamWorks Animation.
Distributor: Universal Pictures.
Rated PG.
