Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Now and Ben: Chris Sanders on The Wild Robot, hand drawn animation vs. CG, and Lilo & Stitch

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

In today’s Now & Ben drop, Ben sits down with Chris Sanders—director of the Oscar-nominated animation ‘The Wild Robot’. With a stellar career behind the drawing board that’s taken him from Disney to DreamWorks, he’s the man behind ‘How To Train Your Dragon’, ‘The Croods’ and ‘Lilo and Stich’—so Ben had plenty to quiz him on. ‘The Wild Robot’ takes us on an unexpected adventure through nature with Roz, a human assistance robot who finds herself shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Uninhabited, that is, by humans—but she soon discovers a host of animal companions, including an orphaned gosling who needs her help. Becoming the adopted mother of this strange creature is a challenge that her programming hasn’t prepared her for. Ben & Chris chat about the film’s beautiful blend of hand-drawn and CG animation, why movie robots can teach us so much about being human, and what it’s like to be beloved to a generation of Disney kids as the voice of Stitch. Listen out for more of Ben’s conversations with cinema’s most exciting creative talents dropping into the feed every ‘Now and Ben’… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, this show is sponsored by NordVPN. Hey Mark, you know what people say about this time of year? That it's perfect for huddling together with a warm blanket, a mug of cocoa, and the best movies and of course movie podcasts around? Well, ideal for taking an early ski trip to L'Alp de Huy. What's wrong with the Alps? Yeah, well, I was going to say that it's dank, dark and miserable, but you convinced me really. And if you're here or there, whatever you're watching, Pleasures, Nord can help. It connects you to servers in 111 countries.

You can use it on up to 11 devices and unlock content from around the world. Whether you're under a woollen blanket or gliding across a blanket of snow, Nord keeps you safe from trackers and hackers by hiding your details when you're connected to public Wi-Fi, built-in threat protection and even dark web alerts. This January with our link you get an additional four months free on the two-year plan and with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee there's zero risk. Check out the link in the episode description. Hello and welcome to another episode of Now and Ben. In these occasional nuggets of film buff goodness, our superstar Ben Bailey-Smith catches up with the creative figures of the film

world who we think you'd like to hear more from. This episode, it's the director of The Wild Robot, Chris Sanders. He chats to Ben about picking up an Oscar nomination for the wholesome animation, his career at the drawing board and in the director's chair from Lilo and Stitch to How to Train Your Dragon, and what it's like to be the voice of an iconic Disney character. Look out for more of Ben's conversations with film and TV's creative talents dropping into the take feed every Now and Ben. A bunch of these so far today. Where are we? We're in the middle? Not too many, not too many. I mean, it's been really good. It's been really good. Yeah?

Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing better than, you know, talking about a movie you're super excited about or a project that you're excited about working on. I've never been, honestly, it sounds like I'm making it up, but I really and truly have not ever been this excited to show a movie that we've finished. Really? And the weird thing is we didn't want to finish it. Even a movie like How to Turn Your Dragon,

or Lilo and Stitch, or Beauty and the Beast that you are very, very proud of. As Catherine Keeter said to me once, sometimes it's good when a job ends. You're ready for it to be done because there are an immense amount of work, but this one was different. There was just something about this

that I'm gonna start crying. Nobody wanted it to end. an immense amount of work, but this one was different. There was just something about this that, God, I'm gonna start crying. Nobody wanted it to end. As each animator rolled off, they would ask, do you have one more shot that I can do? Because there's something about making this that was so completely different. It's like the message of the movie

just penetrated every bit of the production. And usually, again, you're working with people that you are fond of and everybody's friends, but you can have hard days where you're trying to figure things out and you can get into arguments about things that never happened. And that's really, especially astonishing given the innovations that had to be created, the problems that had to be surmounted to get the style on screen. And given the monumental things that were going on, above and beyond things that I've ever had a film

have to conquer, there was just such a goodwill and joy that permeated the whole thing. Let's talk about some of those problems. That's amazing to hear. Because in my mind, I mean, I don't know a lot about the process of animated movies like making them. But the one thing I think even laymen know is it's never quick. It's not quick. It's the illusion of spontaneity. Yeah.

And yet you're saying, you know, there were new challenges, new problems with this movie. It didn't affect the mood because everybody was, you know, so behind it. But like, I guess for the benefit of our listeners who love the minutiae of these things, like what were some of those new challenges or especially ones that you maybe hadn't faced before? I mean, the one that is the most evident to anyone who sees it is the look. It became very important to me immediately that we have a very sophisticated look

for this film. Given the story and that it's a robot with animals, if we had, if it was a CG style that was more business as usual, it would have played way too young. And I was very concerned that everyone see this as a film that they could see. You don't have to have a kid to go see this film. It's a film that kids can see, but it's not for kids. Very much I would say like Bambi.

And Bambi was our touchstone as far as the vibe. Tyrus Wong's beautiful painterly style in that film was something that we wanted to chase for this one. And we were just really lucky because technology finally got to this tipping point that Into the Spider-Verse finally broke loose, broke free of that CG style that we were all locked to, we were obligated to technologically. A photorealistic style. And with Bad Guys and Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, DreamWorks had made some huge advances in breaking away from that photorealistic style and getting

a hand-painted look on screen. So I was asking Ramon, how much further can we push that? How much softer can it be? And he said, let's find out. So there was a particular painter named Daniel Cacquo. So there was a particular painter named Daniel Cacquale. So there was a particular painter named Daniel Cacquale. His exploratory paintings became the target for that.

We wanted his exact style on screen, which is a very impressionistic style. And these actual paintings. He's doing actual paintings. What kind of size are we talking about? Yeah, if we had the art of book, you could see his actual paintings. If you freeze frame the film at any point, it will look like one of his paintings. Get a sense of those original pieces.

Those are the jump off points. Yeah, that was the target. And I didn't know how close to that we could get. It was a very lofty ask. It was like we were shooting for the moon. And I thought, well, if we get halfway there, it'll still be amazing. But they landed on the moon figuratively. They landed it. They got all the way to that style. And to do that, not just the backgrounds were painted dimensionally and they are painted like a human being sitting at a tablet. It's electronic, but it is nonetheless being painted by a human being. And the characters also had to have painted surfaces so that they would wed and fuse and harmonize with those backgrounds. And that was no small task either. The birds, wings, every feather. So, and here's the interesting thing, and I'll try not to dwell

on this too long. No, no, do your thing. The curious thing that happened was that in pursuit of this impressionistic look, we achieved greater reality, if that makes sense. Because if you think about the photo real look that we had been, again, technologically locked to, think the fox, you would have seen every single hair on his body, every single hair in his tail. But with the painterly style, we don't see any individual hairs. It's all these paint strokes, which looks like matted fur, which looks more like a real animal. So that's the curious thing that happened was that as it's moving on screen, even though it is a far more abstract image in some ways, it is more believable to your eye in others. Yeah, that's a really interesting point because I watched it last night, so it's really fresh in my mind.

And it's strange how sometimes I feel almost a distance to a movie that's trying to make everything look exactly like real life. Yeah. So it's really interesting you to say that because, you know, you look at a movie like The Lion King, the new Lion King, where you've got a very, very real... It looks exactly like a real lion. It's mind-blowing. And then it sings. Now I really don't know what's going on. Whereas, you know, Fink is a great example that you use because he walks that line. He's got the heft, that tail,

I want to cuddle that tail. I'm jealous when I see him curl up into it. And yet you're right, you can't see every strand of fur. Isn't that curious? Yeah. And there's that thing we always call the uncanny valley where when you're hyper photorealistic, you come to this weird place where when you're hyper photorealistic, you come to this weird place where when the movement isn't as real or it's, you get into a weird place where reality isn't being entirely created. There's a glitch in the system in a way. And so we just backed away from that entirely and went in this whole other direction. One of the things I love to look at is there's a scene in the film where Fink has a chair, a bed that Roz made for him.

It's covered in moss. And when he plops himself into it, notice that there are little dots of color that are just floating in the air. They're not connected to the bed. So that's how impressionistic the style really is. Flowers and leaves are floating in the air in places. They're not attached to anything. And that's where that thing that we're talking about comes in.

In a normal CG film, you would have to have a stem leading to each of those things. And it would have to be built and it would have to have geometry. And there's so many places in this film, there is no geometry. It is just paint. Because we could paint dimensionally. So our artists could paint rocks and trees with paint strokes and they could move that painting on their tablets and in space without geometry underneath. So it is a pure painting that we can nonetheless light and push a camera through. It would be a sad irony in a way if you didn't sense that human touch from an audience point of view,

considering what the story is about, you know, conceptually. It makes such a difference. I, you know, I was sort of, I was engaged from minute one. I just found it incredibly charming. But as I got to know Roz better, she went in my mind from being like a manifestation of these things that human beings want to happen, right? So they make robots do it for them, to being a manifestation of humanity itself. And all of our shortcomings, you know, worrying about how to raise kids, worrying about the future, the immediate future,

worrying that you're not going to be worthy, you're not going to be able to solve life's biggest problems, being scared of responsibility, all these incredibly human things. Right. Built for me anyway, within Rose. Yeah, yeah. And there's so many fun things to talk about because you're taking us on the journey that we went through as filmmakers because there's all these really interesting things that are happening all at once. One thing I would note that visually, the only character that is traditional CG is Roz, but only in the first scene because we deliberately

wanted her to not feel like she belonged. She's in the wrong place. There are 30 versions of her that we trade out, starting almost immediately. As she becomes more a part of the island, she's wearing down, she's getting more scratched and dirty, and she's got mildew. We deliberately wanted her to begin to look as though she belonged there. By the midpoint of the film, she's 100% painted surface, just like the animals are.

But the curious thing that you're bringing up as well, that was a wonderful thing that was built into the narrative is the idea that she has these gaps in her programming that she doesn't know how to raise this gosling. And of course, that is a parallel with any of us who has had a child. You don't have a manual for it. Your kid is going to be different than another kid. Each one is a unique problem. And so the idea that she has to immediately go off programming to solve this problem, which is forbidden for a Rosam robot to do. And it isn't revealed until later that she somehow just ditched her programming and started improvising, which again is a big no-no for that robot, which is what concerns the company that made her later on. But it was this beautiful thing that worked so well for a robot but also was an analog for all of us

that have had to go through that journey. Brilliant. Brilliantly reflected in the animation. That attention to detail just makes it even better for me, knowing that. Which makes me think very little was accidental now that I think about it. Because you said it wasn't a film just for kids and when I was thinking about the possum mom who really just constantly made me laugh and her

kids, her kids are continuously sort of literally laughing in the face of death. Like they joke about death throughout the movie. Which is, you know, is a difficult thing, not just to explain to kids, but for adults to take on board. You know, the older you get, you know, you know you're gonna have to start thinking about it, but you just don't want to. And you don't know how to talk to your kids about it. It's a really complicated, and you just went straight in,

let's just joke about death from pretty much the opening scene. Yeah, yeah. And I thought that's, you know, it can't be accidental that you've got this immense sweetness. Like I said, I found it very charming. But you've also got that acerbic humor there. And I wonder if that was like a conscious decision from the start. We want to have, obviously there's a sweetness, but like you say, like Bambi, the darkness is not far behind.

Yeah, the movie wouldn't work unless death was palpable. It was real. It was a possibility. And you have to let the audience know. Because early on in a film, you're giving the audience rules. You're defining the boundaries. It's like a playground.

You need a fence around the playground so you can go right up to the edge. So like Lion King and The Croods, we had to let the audience know that death was a possibility in this world. There are two times in the film that we treat it very, very realistically. And when the nest is destroyed and later on when one of the characters, Long Neck, he also dies in the middle of the film. The rest of the time, we treat it with humor. Again, it's always present. We try to treat it very lightly, except in a couple of places so that the audience understands.

We need that emotional ballast and we need the boundary story-wise. I love that we had Pink Tail because we have Roz, who is a first-time parent, and it's frightening, and she's very precious with Bright Bill and she doesn't know what to do. But then we have this wonderful counterpoint and this counterbalance with Katherine O'Hara doing Pink Tail. She doesn't even know how many kids she's got. Yeah, she doesn't even know. She has three families a year and she can't even keep track of which one it is. And so she's very unsentimental about it. So we had this wonderful balance

so that we would never run the risk of being too precious with it in a way. So it was just a great gift that was written into the book that we had these two different roles. We had two different moms that we could like present. Yeah, it suddenly felt like, you know, the sharing of a cup of tea before book club or something when they first meet and have that conversation about parenting. It's brilliant. I was thinking about, you know, so much work you've done has become iconic, but perhaps none more so than House Train Your Dragon. So huge. My kids grew up on that. Lilo and Stitch is, you know, one of the first, I think, Disney films they really got obsessed with. And I was thinking about those two movies and this one and the

central relationship in all three is like, what's the best way to describe it? Like odd, very odd couples. Yes. Like man and beast. Mismatched. describe like odd, very odd couples. Yes. Like man and beast. Yeah. Human and something man-made or human and alien, you know, animal and robot. These strange couples, what is it that attracts you to it? And I'm sure when you came on board with this, you thought, oh, this is another odd couple. You know, the funny thing is it wasn't until somebody pointed this out later that I

realized that that was happening. I'm obviously drawn to those kinds of things. I have worked on fairy tales that have villains and heroes and I love those. But the films that I gravitate towards as far as someone who would write and direct on them, they're the ones that have characters that are a lot more like us. They're more subtle. They're not pure evil and they're not pure good. They have elements of both going on. And I think it's that subtle interaction where I find the big emotion.

And of course, in this case, we have a mother at the heart of the story, which is very, very unique and different. But I definitely have obviously been drawn to these odd couples, fish out of water kind of things. Characters that have to work things out, they wouldn't normally be together, but then they're forced together for some reason. And then in the working out of that is where I think the magic is. Almost like a coming of age for both characters.

Yeah, yeah. I always want characters that are more in those grey zones, you know, that have moments of weakness and moments of strength. I think that's the thing about all of us that I guess that I relate to. I mean, certainly I relate to it. I've made huge mistakes and I've had moments where I feel like I've gotten things right and it'll be like that until the very end. Yeah, you start to realize, I suppose, that the concept of good and bad is just never going to be complex enough, nuanced enough to describe any sentient creature.

Yeah, and I think there's an aspirational quality, because I look for things in movies that make me a better person or that I can aspire to. And I think that that's some of the stuff in this that Roz is a character. And I would say that Roz is very unusual. She's maybe the the the the goodest character that I've ever been able to work with, because she's got this programming. She never has a moment of deception or guile. She tries so hard. And I think that's the thing that's so heartbreaking about robots in general. One of the reasons I'm attracted to them as characters in Santa Monica, California, if you're driving, you will inevitably see these little

robots trying to deliver things. They're all on their own. They have little flags so they don't get run over. They'll be waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change like a little kid. They just break my heart. Immediately, I want to stop my car and help them. So there's something about robots, I think, that gets to the heart of things very quickly. So I would say Roz is really the closest thing to like a real, purely good character that I've ever been, you know, privileged to work with in a movie. Whereas we're sort of crossroads with our relationship with, you know, advanced tech at the moment as well, aren't we? So I found it incredibly heartwarming to have a robot

in that sense of like, you know, this is something that can genuinely help and be fascinated about what it is to be human, to have these complex emotions and feelings. Yes. My wife Jess pointed something out that I was not aware of, but I really thought she nailed it. Why are robots so good at telling these human stories? And I think you remove things from a character. Robots are missing a lot. They're not a certain age.

They usually don't have a gender that you can identify. There's no regionality. There are all these things that won't distract you from the purity of what they're all about. If, yeah, if you for some reason have a problem with people with long hair, they have no hair, right? So there's nothing to distract. They're just like the core being.

And I thought that was a wonderful observation. And listen, before I let you go, I've got to ask you this because, you know, I worked on a children's show that was very popular in this country, but it was about, you know, 10, 12 years ago. So there is a very specific age of young person. They need to be aged around 21, 22.

He'll go insane if they see me. No one else will care that I exist, okay? And I was thinking about this in terms of you, because some people know, some people won't know that you were the voice of Stitch. And so for my kids, for example, their ages are perfect because it was like, that film was profound for them when they were little. Do you ever feel tempted? You see a person of a certain age, you know that the mass works out.

You know that if you said hello to them as Stitch, they would lose their minds. So yes, yes, because I have, I have the other thing that goes on is that you see him a lot. I'll see people wearing him on a t-shirt. And sometimes I've seen people carrying, they'll be wearing him on a t-shirt, but they're also carrying him as a backpack or a bag or something like that. And I'm like, they have no idea. Somebody said this to me once, you never know who you're standing next to. And I rarely decloak and identify myself because there's always a moment of like, why is this person talking to me? But if it vibes out and I feel like I'm not going to freak them out or something, I will sometimes say, hey, you know what? And then we'll shoot,

maybe we'll shoot a cute little video real quick because people are always carrying a phone. So we can do like a really fast little video and just like, yeah. So we can do like a really fast little video and just like, yeah. Cause yeah. You know, like the world robot that makes me incredibly happy to hear. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. This is great. Incredible career. Oh, thank you.

Lovely to meet you. Thank you.