At the end of the film, there’s hope for Ross and for Ross to reunite with her friends, but there is no perfect little with a bow ending. I have not read the book, but was there pressure to have a happier ending?
First of all, that is the way the book ends. She does at the very, very end. It was actually me. I was the one who was worried that…and here’s the thing, I didn’t want to presume success and end a film teetering in a place where you had to see another film to complete the story. I wanted this to be a one-off, self-contained, satisfying film because maybe we wouldn’t ever make another one. Who knows what the future is? So, I wrote two separate endings, one where Roz stays on the island and another where she leaves. And I asked Margie [Cohn]* and Kristen [Lowe]** which way they were preferring it. And to their credit, they didn’t hesitate. They immediately said she should leave. And it was thrilling because the emotional weight of that and the emotional content of that was so much more powerful. But then I had the problem of trying to accomplish two things, being true to the ending of the book, but also finding an ending that people wouldn’t be sitting in the theater texting their friends, [saying] “Never see this movie. It’s the worst ending ever. I was devastated and tricked and ruined my life.” So, I had to find a way to do both things. I think we accomplished it. My solution was to fast forward to the next migration and have the moment that you saw. And I think it worked.
I was bawling at the end, so trust me, it worked. The film has a great voice cast and Pedro Pascal is so good as Fink I didn’t even recognize him. Can you talk about especially working with him and the rest of the cast and crafting those vocal performances?
Well, at one point, Pedro said that this film is more him than he usually is. He plays a lot of leading man roles, and to some degree, they’re very stoic, and there’s sort of a toughness to it all. But when we met Pedro, it was very different. That is more the Pedro that we met when we first started talking about doing the film. He, he’s really funny. And there was one particular moment. As we recorded things, we would continually identify the stuff that was more playful as the stuff that we were excited about. And constantly those are the takes that we were liking, and we let ’em know that. There used to be a moment [in the movie] where Roz is using that little iPad kind of thing, that tablet, to show the possible accessories that he could order. And he has an interest, of course, in making his robot as powerful as possible. So he saw like a jet pack or something. And the line that I wrote was, “Ooh, can we get that?” But when he read it, he said, “Ooh, ooh, can we get that?” And gave it this inflection. The image in my mind would be a kid in a shopping cart asking for something in a grocery store while their mom is shopping. And I thought, “Oh my God, that’s him. That’s Fink.” There’s an innocence to him and a sweetness that he has walled off that Roz begins to open up in him. And so the journey to find that voice was just pure joy. And then, of course, Lupita, that is the most complex, I think, voice-wise, I’ve ever been a part of because Ross has a very unusual way of looking at things. And we didn’t want her to come off robotic and cold because this is a product of the future, and it’s a robot that is legitimately something that you would buy. It would be expensive, but once you had it, it would interact with you, and it would be adaptable. So it made sense to me that it would have, first of all, a great voice, a voice that was comforting and beautiful, and that is Lupita. But the really amazing thing was Lupita’s ability to deconstruct that character so that she could understand the architecture of Roz’s mind. So that she could understand how the performance was supposed to go. So we talked at length every recording session, and even before we started recording the very first session we had in New York City, we talked for more than an hour before we recorded anything. Just like, what was the character about? What was her thinking pattern, how does she evolve, how does she change through the film? And then one of the things that Lupita created was that voice. So she stressed her voice. I think that’s basically a good way to say it. She stretched her very own voice to create this kind of optimistic Alexa slash Siri, “Hello.” And this can-do optimistic robot that you would hope for. And then, through the story, she goes into a phase two and a phase three of that voice becoming more and more Lupita until the midpoint of the film when Lupita is talking to her very own self in the scene.
It’s phase three, Roz talking to phase one, Roz. So there’s the two different versions going on at once, which is really interesting. I’ve never seen that happen before. I’ve never worked with something like that before. Yeah, so by then, by that point, it’s just, it’s Lupita, and she’s using contractions, and her speech pattern has changed. And then I can go on and on and on, like Catherine O’Hara, who brought us this amazingly unsentimental version of a mom so that we could play that contrast between her and Lupita’s character. And then Kit had a really tough job because the character of Brightbill is one of the toughest characters you can have in that there’s very little in some ways to hold onto. He’s earnest, he’s honest, he’s a good guy, he’s exuberant. So, that could be a pretty flat character. Indeed, I would do the scratch for that character, and it was pretty flat, it was bad. And I just had to keep the faith that an amazing actor will eventually come along and bring this to life. And sure enough, in our very first recording session with Kit in London, the first line that he laid down, I was like, “Oh my God, we’re going to be O.K.” It went from my tonally flat version to dimensional, amazing, sympathetic, and empathetic.
I know that you’ve given so much of your time to work in this the past three years, and the movie is a major success. Do you feel pressure to direct a “Wild Robot 2” or a sequel? Would you want to pass that on to someone else?
Honestly, it is really the first time I’ve been interested in working on a sequel. I am very much somebody who, when I’m done with something, I don’t want to say I lose interest in it, but I feel like I’ve figured stuff out, and I’ve gotten through the challenges. And so I’m looking for something, a new challenge. But it is entirely up to DreamWorks and that whole thing if they ever want to do that. But if they ever did, it’s the first time I think I’d really like to stay on it because the second book is a very different story, but with characters that I love, and I think it’s a worthwhile continuation of the story with fresh challenges. So, to me, it would be a brand-new movie. So, we’ll see.
“The Wild Robot” is available for digital download.
*President of DreamWorks
** Chief Creative Officer of DreamWorks
