Mark Hamill made a surprise visit to the “The Wild Robot” panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, joining director Chris Sanders and the film's voice actors Lupita Nyong'o and Kate Connor to discuss DreamWorks Animation's new feature film.
Hamill, who voices a grizzly bear named Thorne in the film, says that when he was first approached to be involved in the film, he immediately read Peter Brown's novel on which the film is based. “I was really blown away. I thought if they could capture just a small part of the impact of that book… I have to tell you, they did a fantastic job.”
The Wild Robot follows a super-intelligent robot named Rose (voiced by Nyong'o) who finds a new purpose on an uninhabited island living among the wildlife and raising an orphaned duckling named Brightbell (voiced by Kate Connor).
The panel revealed three new clips from the film depicting Rose's landing on a remote island, how she eventually begins to interact and communicate with its animal inhabitants, and the dark reason behind her accepting the “mission” to be Brightbell's mother.
In one segment, Rose encounters the RECOS robots, the main antagonists of the story, who are sent to capture Rose. One of the RECOS robots says, “You are flawed.”
“I feel fine,” Rose replies, to which she is told, “You shouldn’t feel anything at all.”
In another clip, Rose is seen being chased by bears, then veers off course and falls off a cliff. As she surveys the damage, she notices that her fall has brought down a tree, and with it a mother goose. Just like in the books, Rose realizes that she has killed a mother goose, and that one remaining egg has not hatched—and that this baby will be Brightbill.
“What I loved about Rose is that she’s an adult but she has a beginner’s mind, like a child,” Nyong’o said. “She has to learn morals and ethics.” The actress added that Rose learns from the animals to be “secret” about how Brightbell’s mother died, and instead takes on the role of his mother herself.
Speaking about mothers and their absence in animated films, Sanders revealed that while working on the 1992 film “Aladdin,” on which he served as storyboard artist, art director, production designer, and character designer, the character of Aladdin initially had a mother.
“When I was doing Aladdin, one of the early versions of Aladdin, Aladdin had a mother. She was in town,” Sanders said. “She was in the story for a while and I started to understand why mothers don’t appear in these movies… One of the reasons is that if your mom is a good mom, she knows she’s not going to let you do stupid things. He’d say, ‘Hey, Mom, I’m going to go steal some food from the market.’ And she’d say, ‘No, you’re not!’”
“Moms keep adventures from happening in a good way,” he added jokingly.
A recent video shown during Comic-Con revealed a humorous “swimming test” for Connors' Brightbill, who ends up getting thrown down a hill by Pedro Pascal's annoying fox named Fink.
The film also stars Nyong'o, Connor, Hamill, Catherine O'Hara as Pinktail, and Matt Berry as Badler.
“The Wild Robot” will be in theaters on September 27.
