THE WILD ROBOT

The film opens on an island, where a family of otters come upon a robot washed up against the rocks. The robot, ROZZUM-7143, or “Roz” (Lupita Nyong’o) was designed to be a helper bot to complete tasks for her users. A wave hits Roz, and she climbs up the walls as she witnesses a crab climbing up, adapting and learning to survive.

Roz tries to help the other animals in the forest, but she just ends up frightening or angering them due to miscommunication. Roz then programs herself to learn the animals’ language, taking a couple of days until they fully understand each other. The animals refer to her as “the thing” or “the monster”. They try to wreck her but end up running away when they see she can fix herself up after getting knocked over.

With nothing else to do, Roz tries to activate a beacon within her to call for her makers, Universal Dynamics, to retrieve her. She gets struck by lightning and then has her body being rummaged by greedy raccoons. Roz’s hand is able to fight off the raccoons and help her get herself mostly back together. One of the raccoons steals her beacon, and Roz chases after it, only to end up disturbing a bear named Thorn (Mark Hamill). The bear chases Roz after slashing her, causing Roz to fall down a hill and crash into a tree, destroying a goose nest.

Roz finds that she has accidentally killed the mother and her eggs, save for one. Roz takes the egg with her and tries to study it, only for a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal) to swipe it from her. Roz chases after Fink and manages to get the egg back after he falls on top of a porcupine. Roz removes the quills from Fink and then sees the egg hatching. A small gosling emerges and imprints on Roz.

Roz tries to leave the gosling alone, thinking she has completed his task. The gosling continues to follow Roz, even as she tries to reactivate her beacon, but he ends up breaking it. Roz then encounters a possum named Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) and her seven children. After realizing Roz is harmless, Pinktail explains that the gosling sees Roz as his mother. While Roz does not think she is programmed to understand motherhood, she takes it on as her new task after Pinktail describes raising the gosling as such.

Fink joins Roz with his offer to help her raise the gosling, but he mostly gets free food out of it. Roz names the gosling “Brightbill” and teaches him to call her “Roz” since he cannot pronounce her full name. Roz spots a beaver named Paddler (Matt Berry) and learns to build a home big enough for herself, Brightbill, and Fink. When Brightbill has trouble sleeping, Fink tells him a story by making Roz seem like a hero who came to help Brightbill when he was feeling sad.

Over the next few months, Roz’s code reprograms, with her speech becoming more normal and not robotic. Brightbill (now voiced by Kit Connor) gets older and is still getting the hang of swimming, before Roz tries to get him to learn to fly. The other geese look down on Brightbill since he behaves like Roz and is a runt compared to the others. They also break the truth to him that Roz was responsible for the death of his mother and unhatched siblings, causing Brightbill to disown Roz as his mother.

Roz goes back to the cave where she got washed up on, finding the broken and rusted remains of other ROZZUM bots. She manages to turn one back on, as she thinks the task of motherhood has become too impossible. The other bot finds out that Roz has reprogrammed herself, then gives her its beacon to call for Universal Dynamics to retrieve her. Roz prepares to leave, but after a talk with Fink, she decides to finish helping Brightbill learn to fly. She enlists in an older goose named Thunderbolt (Ving Rhames) to help.

Roz and Brightbill start to make progress, but Roz is spotted by an observing goose named Longneck (Bill Nighy), who leads the flock for the migration. He says that it is impressive how Roz is teaching Brightbill, as well as noting that the young goose is more unique that the other geese, but also warns her that they leave in a week and that he needs to work on his endurance. Eventually, the day of the migration arrives. Brightbill successfully joins the other birds in the sky, but Roz becomes emotional at having to say goodbye, so she runs to higher ground to catch Brightbill again. Longneck sees this and has them fly close enough for Roz to see them one last time. Roz then goes to turn on her beacon, with the signal reaching the Universal Dynamics HQ, but she ends up turning it off and returning to her forest house.

The flock gets caught in a bad storm during their migration, so they end up seeking shelter at the HQ in their greenhouse. While trying to remain undetected, Brightbill is spotted by other ROZZUM bots, who all activate and see the birds as an infestation, before trying to eliminate them. Longneck notes that Brightbill being used to Roz makes him essential in knowing how to deal with the bots. Other armed bots start showing up to fire laser blasts at the flock. Brightbill guides them toward an exit, and Longneck fatally takes a shot to protect the flock.

Roz reawakens in the house and finds that Fink was sleeping next to her since the snowstorm and cold temperatures have made it difficult for the other animals to survive. Roz ventures out into the cold with Fink to retrieve all the animals in the forest, even Thorn. However, the animals grow antagonistic towards each other from being packed inside Roz’s house, forcing Fink to intervene and call for a truce. Thorn agrees, so everyone else backs down so they can hibernate.

In the spring, the animals leave the house and the birds return from their migration. Brightbill happily greets Fink again but he joins the geese in mourning Longneck. When Brightbill goes to find Roz, she has left the house.

Roz walks until a Universal Dynamics ship descends. A tentacled robot named Vontra (Stephanie Hsu) has been sent to bring Roz back since the heads at UD want to gain any information obtained by her during her stay on the island. Roz willingly joins Vontra, but Fink arrives in time to tell Roz that Brightbill has returned for her. Roz makes a run for it, so Vontra sends other armed UD bots to go after her. The other animals join together to protect Roz, knocking the robots down and breaking them apart. However, Vontra causes the robots to self-destruct, setting the forest ablaze and using the opportunity to take Roz.

Brightbill leads the other geese to rescue Roz. Vontra tells her she will have her memories wiped to reprogram her. He manages to break his way inside, only to find Roz seemingly shut down. Brightbill nuzzles up next to her, calling her his mom and saying he loves her. This causes Roz to reactivate, as most of her energy comes less from her head and more from where her core used to be (like she has grown a new heart). She tells Brightbill she loves him too. Vontra tries to take them both down, but the other geese use the ship’s guns against it to destroy it, while Roz’s hand detaches to turn on a magnet that drains Vontra of all power. Roz puts Brightbill inside her body as they fall back down to the forest while the ship goes down. Meanwhile, the other animals go to the tallest tree in the forest that Paddler had been trying to chew down for ages, redirecting the water from the river into the forest to put out the fire.

Once the smoke has cleared, the other animals cheer for Roz as a hero. However, she tells them that she is willingly returning to Universal Dynamics for the safety of the other animals, since Vontra had warned that they would just keep coming back for Roz. Fink is sad, thinking he is losing his only friend, until Pinktail, Thorn, and Paddler, among others, say they are his friends. Roz bids Brightbill and all the other animals farewell as she waits for another UD ship to arrive.

Months pass, and the animals build a new home to shelter themselves in the winter. Fink continues to tell the younger animals stories about Roz. We then see that she is working in the greenhouse, going by her old ROZZUM name again. Brightbill emerges from one of the crops to find her, as she tells him, “…but you can call me Roz.” Brightbill then embraces his mother once more.

After the credits, Fink and Paddler plant a new tree where the tallest tree once stood.