Category: Review

Supposedly leading the charge in the new (and improved) DC universe, (or, at least, that’s what Warner Bros. wanted you to believe), the new Superman movie is officially in theaters. Sadly, this Superman movie is anything but that. Instead, it’s got as much of a chance at making progress as a gay pride parade on a blood-splattered battlefield – and it desperately needs to deliver on the hope that makes a Superman movie great. For Hollywood currently suffering from artistic heart failure, that’s a tall order, maybe even unfair. Spoiler alert: There’s no hope here.

A great story is character-driven – genuine heart, no flashy plot – but James Gunn’s Superman, starring David Corenswet, (sidestepping body odor jokes), flips that script. This film is overloaded with plot clutter, packed tighter than the actor’s costumed underwear, and has as much honesty and depth as cast comments on the red carpet. It’s got the hallmarks of a former Marvel director’s cheap gimmicks: hit-or-miss humor, bright colors, weird aliens, and pets doing silly things. But does it have soul? As much as a rock does, yes. I mean, hey, that soulless strategy made Marvel billions. Why not ruin Superman, too?

Let’s get into it. Wrap your inner child in a warm, Superman-emblem blanket, put a good Superman movie on starring Christopher Reeves, close the door, and come outside to see the Kent farm in ruins. Face the destruction dispassionately. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Krypto the Annoying

The dog’s supposed to be Superman’s loyal companion, but he’s just a constant, distracting presence – playful whether the stakes are life or leisure, contributing nothing but irritation, clogging an already backed-up plot.

Superman, the Punching Bag

The Man of Steel spends more time taking hits than dishing them out and even throws a tantrum in front of Lex. While he’s supposed to draw strength from the sun, he seems to be as emotionally driven and unstable as characters written to deliver a killing blow regardless of the collateral damage. Superman stands for truth, just, and the American way, something Bruce Timm’s Superman embodied with timeless fashion. Yet this screen treatment of such a well-established character feels insecure, conscious of the shadow cast by all previous iterations, though, to give credit where credit is due, this Superman is not nearly as emotionally driven than Zack Snyder’s Superman played by Henry Cavill. But where Cavill’s Superman showed confidence in 2012, Gunn’s Superman has no identity.

The Lore, or What’s Left of It

Gunn’s creativity here feels less a superpower and more a liability. He depicts the Kryptonian parents as power-hungry rulers. Kal-El’s birth parents want him to subjugate Earth and have many wives. Where Gunn saw this as a good angle for the story, it’ll forever remain unclear. There’s never a question of whether Kal-El will do as his parents wished. That’s not who he is, inside or outside this movie. Superman exists outside the studio system in the hearts and minds of fans, so this plot twist is a non-starter in so far as Superman’s character is concerned. Now, sure, it does make his relationship with the inhabitants of Earth a bit wobbly, but even that has no meaningful impact on the film’s plot. Meanwhile, the Kents? They’re technologically clueless farm folk. They squabble and undercut each other when they should emulate the moral upbringing that made Clark Kent-Superman who he is today, but they’re hardly the moral anchors the “alien refugee” was raised by in better installments.

The Lex vs Superman Showdown

Lex Luthor fights through a keyboard-commanded surrogate clone in a high-rise command-center, which feels more like a high-end call center than the lair of an arch-villain. After a decade without Superman films, this is the “thrilling” third act we get? A fight between a weakened Superman and a clone of himself controlled by a button-mashing Lex Luthor? To add insult to injury, a wasted Supergirl shows up before credits roll just to pick up Krypto. Maybe the scene would have fit better in a stronger script, whether it’s comic book accurate or not.

If that weren’t enough, the supporting heroes – the “Justice Gang” of Green Lantern, Mr. Fantastic, and Hawk Girl – offer mixed bag performances. Hawk Girl, powerful but immature; Green Lanter, played by fan-favorite Nathan Fillion, under-utilized by a weak script; and Mr. Terrific, scene stealer, showcasing the competence and confidence Superman sorely lacks throughout this whole picture.

A Script Undeserving of “Superman”

The movie’s own theme collapses under a heaping of CGI led. Superman faces the choice between heroism or villainy, but the story barely gives him time to wear the shoes of Clark Kent – his essential, grounded alter ego – before burying him in scenes that feel more like Guardians of the Galaxy than anything from Superman’s universe. Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane, which should have served as the emotional anchor of the story, instead feels like a fragmented sentence, incomplete and barely explored. Though, brief moments of hope do spark. However, they are far too fleeting.

James Gunn, Studio Darling or Creative Liability?

Why Warner Bros. picked James Gunn to direct this iconic character is anyone’s guess. This movie treats Superman with the same careless management Disney showed the Star Wars sequel trilogy – a beloved legacy mishandled, leaving fans frustrated and disappointed. Instead of unlocking the secret of Superman, Gunn seems to have jammed the wrong key in the lock, smashed it beyond repair, and called studio executives to break in with an axe, completely counter to his previous claim that he had “unlocked the secret” to the character in this movie.

Since Hollywood has regressed into wokeism, directors and writers have made cringe a predominant narrative characteristic, a reason for movie-goers to stay home and watch movies from a time not poisoned by woke culture. The “message” has infected entertainment so deeply that fun, it seems, has flat-lined into a coma, except The Wild Robot is a sign of brain activity. Is this animated film enough of a wake-up call for us to smell the coffee, or, more accurately, the popcorn?

On its face, The Wild Robot tickles instant curiosity with an oxymoron for its title. Other, more expensive book adaptations have failed to hook so simply – calling out Disney’s John Carter, which was uninspired and gutted from the original book’s superior title, A Princess of Mars, attached to which was a truly grand story that got stripped of all its best parts to appease creatively bankrupt Disney. DreamWorks Animation wisely avoided repeating Disney’s bone-headed mistake.

Proud of its origin as a children’s book series by Peter Brown, directed and written by Chris Sanders, The Wild Robot rewards admission by supercharging its first ten minutes with a setup for the story that feels brisk without being disorienting and doesn’t try too hard for laughs by honoring the slapstick, cartoonish humor of beloved, timeless Looney Tunes.

The Setup

This story begins on the beach with the washed-up remains of a shipment after a lightning storm – cue Cast Away vibes here. Inside the torn shipment container is an intact, folded-up robot, which curious otters investigate and inadvertently activate. Powered on, the strange being introduces itself in multiple languages as ROZZUM of Universal Dynamics before mimicking the wildlife to escape a massive, oncoming ocean wave.

Having climbed a rock face in a crab-like fashion, the robot faces the tree line of a forest, at which point it taking its first steps into the wild. The robot tries making contact with the animals, offering assistance to every creature along its path, snapping photographs of the shocked creatures as proof of the completed task.

Quickly registering the language barrier as problematic, ROZZUM folds up like a standard-issue Trade Federation droid and enters “processing mode” for several days, absorbing data from the wildlife interactions, foliage gradually covering her up. The squeaks and squabbles of the animals become conversations, revealing the nickname the scared animals have given her, The Monster.

Emerging from the overgrowth, ROZZUM loudly broadcasts to all animals, using a dazzling, Las Vegas-style light show, that she’s there to help. One brave little ambassador bunny asks if ROZZUM wants to kill everyone. ROZZUM unwittingly replies, “Negative…” and, without skipping a beat, a moose knocks her to the ground with his antlers, only for her to recover unharmed. At this, the wildlife scatter in clouds of dust!

Servicing this island has gone beyond what ROZZUM was programmed for. At her wit’s end, or the lack thereof, she activates the homing beckon atop the island’s highest peak underneath storm clouds, expecting her creators to come pick her up. Of course, lightning strikes, and she’s back on the ground, up against the tree, and shortly thereafter, at the mercy of glowing, blue-eyed raccoons in the black of night. They overwhelm her for parts, including the homing beckon, which blinks green right when a raccoon snatches it.

Having recovered the homing beckon through a series of comical tussles, ROZZUM then gets chased through the trees by a ferocious bear until she loses her footing and falls to a ridge near the water where a nest meets her on impact. Sticking out from a pile of branches under pouring rain is a single adult goose wing, and sifting the wreckage reveals one unbroken egg with a living creature inside. ROZZUM doesn’t know what to do with it. A hungry fox comes along and snatches it, but she rescues the egg from the fox’s mouth.

The Emotional Hook

The egg cracks open. ROZZUM repairs it. A foot breaks through, and out from the shell comes a cute gosling who imprints on the robot, thinking its mother is the towering robot with complex subroutines and an inner core.

An Unlikely Pair

Overwhelmed by a closeup of his mother’s circular, robotic face, the gosling screams, but it’s attached at the hip. ROZZUM must raise the helpless little one, as Pink-Tail, a mother possum, followed by her 7-then-6 surviving baby possums, points out… The baby will die without a mother.

ROZZUM has found her task – a daunting one at that.

The Stakes

Making up the difference where the robot’s programming comes up short, Fink (the fox) and Pink Tail help direct on generally how to raise the gosling. The first step is food, followed by learning to swim, and finally, flight. Mother and child get nicknames: “Roz,” and “Brightbill.” Unfortunately for Roz as a first time mom, nurturing her child is not as simple as 1-2-3-done. Roz builds a home for Brightbill to eat and sleep safely as he grows.

Once Brightbill becomes an adult, his unlikely family “launches” him into a nearby lake for swimming lesson, which backfires in a way neither Roz nor Brightbill are ready for. Being a runt, Brightbill faces the pitfalls of integrating with others of his kind. He’s different, behaves as if he’s got modes and a processor, and, generally, has no clue how to be a goose in the wild. The others mock him mercilessly.

Despite the wedge between him and Roz, Brightbill faces a dire imperative. The senior goose leading the Great Migration warns Roz that if Brightbill doesn’t build endurance for the long journey, he will not survive the winter. The laws of nature apply to Brightbill regardless of his disadvantage to other geese, and the Great Migration demands more than wings. Where his wings faulter, his heart must pay the balance.

This is a matter of life and death, not a typical theme for an animated movie. But it’s a welcome one all-the-same in this harrowing struggle. Brightbill’s friends push him to stay in the air even when he gets tired. During the winter, while far away from the island, Brightbill, having trained to reach his full potential, finds that his past struggles prepared him to lead all geese out of a shooting gallery, a testosterone-inducing scene in which he has them form up behind him through a harrowing ground-to-air conflict reminiscent of daring World War 2 planes dodging ground fire.

Takeaways

As subtle as it may be to some, The Wild Robot is a highly sophisticated piece of entertainment, a blend of the story types institutionalized and underdog, promoting the qualities for greatness: Grit, hope, and courage against insurmountable odds. Roz discovers her wild side by breaking away from her programming to give the little one a chance at life in the wild. Brightbill takes on challenges none of his kind were trained to handle, and in doing so, becomes their leader.

Surprisingly, for a movie out of Hollywood, The Wild Robot contains powerful, counter-cultural themes of discipline and bravery, relegating agendas like global warming (glimpses of water-submerged landmarks) and inclusiveness (prey and predator living under one roof on the island during a killer winter storm) to mere aesthetic and humor-masked surface plot. These agendas tastefully take a backseat to the characters we care about, giving The Wild Robot an emotional edge over lesser films.

Such a heartfelt story elevates this Chris Sanders-directed film to on-par status with the likes of Pixar’s Wall-E, while firmly setting it outside the exclusive club consisting predominantly of Pixar’s earlier works, like Toy Story and Monsters Inc, and another film by DreamWorks Animation, The Prince of Egypt.

The Wild Robot earns its screen time at the theater where the smell of popcorn and stories adorn the walls of those sacred halls where imagination goes to fly. No time of death here. Storytelling is still fighting like Brightbill to survive the killer winter of wokism.