I think a case could be made that Chris doesn't like squirrels or raccoons that much, and you know what, I don’t blame him. That catapulte treatment was sinister (and so was a lot of stuff happening in this movie).

The Wild Robot's strongest quality is the emotional impact it had on me. It was a constant hard-hitting machine of emotions I tell you! It succeeded in delivering something quite sincere and beautiful with respect to true friendships. Who would have thought that a robot and animal mashup could hit this hard! A part of me doubted that something like this could work, but here we are. We all are familiar with the robot who becomes human-like with human-like understandings and feelings, but this film offers a whole lot more. In this world, the robots are programmed to serve humans. But what if robots were to serve animal-kind... What would that look like? How could a machine that has been programmed to complete tasks complete a task that only a living organism can do? To be a parent, for instance, one must get creative. One must not think about what one knows, because what one knows may not be applied to every circumstance. It takes instinct, which is a different kind of programming that is inaccessible to machines. One must be able to feel and to have empathy. The howling wild robot is born from the need to recode itself in order to complete a human/animal task.

I may give this a higher rating at some point, but the story didn't completely win me over due to how plot-heavy this film is. It has a lot of heart, but at the same time, the plot points weren't threaded in a satisfying way. The harsh winter storyline didn't work for me at all, mostly because its messaging overturns the natural cycle in favor for something like pity, and this also felt like a contrivance for the purpose of building an army that could help out with a major threat at a later point. Some of the themes weren't as nuanced, such as the theme that "who I am" comes from the heart, which is only really a half-truth. Admittedly, I'm a bit cynical, so some things about this film, such as the very apparent ending, weren't very pleasing. Predominantly, though, it's a wonderful film with beautiful animation bolstered by a score full of feeling, and I would very much like to see it again.