(The editor’s note: This interview was originally published on November 30, 2024 before our IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony. “The wild robot“Has now been nominated for three Oscars, including the best animated feature Film.)
On December 5, Indieview honors winter 2024 The ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars Responsible for creating some of the best films of the year. The Indieview Awards are curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial staff and are a celebration of filmmakers, craftsmen and artists behind films that are well worthy to roasted. We show off their work with new Interviews leads up to the Los Angeles event.
When filmmakers Chris Sanders began to imagine what his fifth animated film, “The wild robot,” Can look on the big screen, he was stuck on a crucial idea: how to transform Peter Brown’s deep feeling and beautifully made YA novel about a caring robot and the baby goose that she assumes to a movie for everyone.
“One of the things we talked a lot about where How do you make a movie like this one For a wide audience? “Sanders said in a new interview with IndieWire. “We’ve talked a lot about who you work for not excludeBut you also do not try to focus on anyone specifically. Anytime I’ve been close to it, when you try to consciously focus on a certain group of people, I inevitably think you miss and it throws things into a very strange place. “
This meant creating a movie that could appeal to all ages, not just the built -in audience of kiddos which would of course be forced against a colorful world mostly populated by chatting forest animals and the charming robot (expressed by lupita nyong’o) that unites them.
“One of my most critical problems from the beginning was to make a movie for adults,” the filmmaker said. “I absolutely knew of the story that the children would be interested. A robot in the wilderness and these really adorable animals? Of course, it will be interesting for the children, very child friendly. I was really worried that the film’s style and the story was something that adults would really get involved in a big way, and that’s where the whole island’s style came from. “
For Sanders, the recipient of the year IndieWire Honor’s Spark AwardDedicated to honoring those who go ahead and rejoice in the animation craft, which meant a combination of both the appearance and the feeling of his promised film.
“Visually, I think it was the biggest challenge: finding an artistic and aesthetic height that was worthy of the story,” Sanders said. “It’s only natural for me to work in such zones because I came from ‘Mulan’, ‘Lilo & Stitch’ not be away from it.”
Sanders, who has directed animated hits such as “Lilo & Stitch” (he even expresses the cuddly blue stranger) and “How to train your dragon”, pointed to a host of other animated classics like his creative paths: everything from “WHO FRAMED “WHO framed” Roger Rabbit “to” My Neighbour Totoro “and the” always inspiring “classic” bambi.
Even during the production on a new movie, Sanders said he likes to watch other movies to keep his brain fresh and his imagination bold. “You get so busy on your movie, you get into the details, sometimes you just have to remind yourself what a movie is,” he said. “I’ll go to see a movie, it can’t have anything to do with what I work with, it can be a drama, it can be a comedy, it can be almost a close documentary. It can even be a horror movie. It just reminds you of what a movie is, the courage of it, the boldness of it. ”
Most often, Sanders and his team – as you see, say, the filmmaker almost always “we” when he talked about his creative choices, rarely just “I” – wanted to tell a story that they would all enjoy. Maybe it was the ticket.
“We were just so busy making a movie that entertained ourselves, because I think we are very representative of the core public,” he said. “All the things that people felt when they looked at it we felt when we did. … our wish was that when the movie was over, people would go out of the theater and just have a moment of, “Oh, I’m back”, to really try to deepen people and get them with the environment. “
Sanders, who also adapted the script to the film from the first book in Brown’s beloved trilogy about the wonderful robot Roz and The Lush Forest (and all its furry friends) that she eventually makes her home, was so beaten by Brown’s book that he could directly “See” some of the most important scenes he wanted to bring to the big screen when he read.
“It absolutely happens,” he said when asked about the “light bulb moments.” “When I read a book, if I see (even for a moment) very clearly in my head, I am very worried that other people will see what I just saw. In ‘The Wild Robot’ there were several places like that. One of the most remarkable would be in the middle, migration. It is not the climatic finish in the film, it is just the centerpiece, and yet it is one of the most convincing things I have ever worked with. ”
In the film, Roz is unexpectedly shipwreck on an uninhabited island while she is looking for delivery to the broader, definitely human world. While the animals living on the island – foxes (as one expressed by Pedro Pascal), squirrels, bears, beaver, Falcons – are initially afraid of her new mechanical citizens, finds Roz Sanctuary when adopting Young Canadian Goose Brightbill (expressed by Kit Connor ) after she (oops) accidentally kills the whole family. Roz has ever driven her programmed directives and makes it her job to get Brightbill ready for an upcoming migration.
“I liked the complexity of that, the spectacle, the scale,” he said. “I always work with music and immediately when I read this, music went through my head, pictures went through my head. What an incredible moment. “
Of course, Roz and Brightbill (plus Pascal’s Fox Finck) will eventually love each other and see each other as their own chosen, a little strange but deeply adorable family. And while Brightbill is initially angry at Roz for forcing him to migrate (and thus take him away from his new clan), his goose mentor Lonneck (expressed by Bill Nighy) offers him some important context to her choice as his surrogate Mom, just like they – and hundreds of other geese – finally take heaven.
“At that moment of truth, when Longneck puts this great last information about him to think about, there is no longer time for him to apologize, there is no time left to do things right,” said the filmmaker. “This is something that I have experienced in my life, that I have waited too long to say something, and regret that I wear is huge. So I love the complexity of the moment and these two characters do their best to navigate at that moment while this really huge thing is going on and time has ended and the train leaves the station and Brightbill must be on that train. “
What was exciting for Sanders was “not only these great, magnificent events as visually mandatory, but the incredible complexity and power of the emotional wavelengths that flowed” through them. And yes, the first sparks of an idea, these incandescent lamps, are very close to what we see on the screen.
“When it comes to migration, quite close, because I actually (story) boarded it,” he said as he asked about how close his vision and the final product adjust. “I thought,” I know exactly what I want, let me just jump in there, I board it and I get it up there. “I had a very specific series of pictures that I really wanted to get up on the screen, some of the high angles with all the birds and Roz runs with my arms out and such. I usually have a pretty clear thought for what I want, and in the specific The case I took the extra step off, I just board it. The one did not change so much at all.
That look is important, because while “The Wild Robot” was computer animated, it also comes with a clear painting appearance. A combination of technical progress and old school attention to details, which included hand-painted elements (artists used stylus, not brushes, in a 3D environment, but the look and the feeling are wonderfully acquainted), made it possible.
“I hadn’t been to a movie that did it since ‘Lilo & Stitch,'” Sanders said about the hand -painted elements. “The idea that we had food painters painting the sky and painted the trees, Oh my gosh. It made such a gigantic contribution to the emotional resonance of that film. It cannot be underestimated. We are so on the verge of another renaissance, as far as seeing new styles of things now. I’m really proud of it. “
Given the film’s huge success – it has so far made almost $ 320 million on the Global Box Office, with glowing reviews from both critics and audiences to start – it is only natural to talk about a sequel. After all, “The Wild Robot” is Part of a trilogy of novels.
“We have not yet started doing anything on a sequel yet, ”Sanders said. “I think we’re very hopeful. I have definitely read the second book, and I plan to actually read it again because his books have many, many chapters. When I read it the first time I just read the. I just needed to melt it. And the second time through, I will actually make some notes for myself that may be useful. ”
No matter what the filmmaker handles the next, Sander’s animation believes to “more handmade things.”
“I’m not someone who regrets the disappearance of traditional animation,” he said. “I love traditional animation and I know it will always be there. I just looked at “Robot Dreams”, and it’s hand -drawn and it’s the perfect style for that story, but the fact that we have finally broken away from the gravitational direction that we were under technology is so exciting to me About where we are right now. I feel that we have come through a tunnel and we are looking at a large open field and mountain, and we can finally see the sky, and now we can finally go back to more wide, stylistic choices. “
He credits “Into Spider-verses” for having broken down these doors “With a Sherman -Tank.” “It was such a revelation that the film worked so well because of it, and It got Oscar, Sanders said. “It deserved it that way. It just lets everyone know, “Oh, we are open and free to maneuver, if we can get our software to the point where we can do it.”
Although the audience may not be too fussed about the mechanics that make this everything possible, they do feeling It in the final product. That’s what really makes Sanders go.
“People noticed the difference between ‘the wild robot’, Sanders said.” I wondered, we are so adapted to it in the studio, I Did it look like looking like a radically different thing, and I was actually not sure, when we show this to a public audience, will they see the same things we are? And they certainly did, people would comment on that and OhIt made me happy. “
“The Wild Robot” can be downloaded or rented on various streaming platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon Video, Fandango at home, Microsoft Store and more.
