Robots

The Rust and the Ritz

I went back to Chris Wedge's *Robots* recently, mostly to see what mid-2000s CGI looked like when it wasn't just rendering talking animals. It’s a strangely tactile piece of work. Coming out in 2005, when Blue Sky was swimming in *Ice Age* cash, this isn't really a film about the future. It's a parallel mechanical present built on vacuum tubes and 1950s Americana. Wedge and designer William Joyce basically wrote a love letter to the tinkerer; you can practically smell the machine oil.



The film has this stubborn, almost gritty refusal to look sleek, at least for the working-class bots. Our hero, Rodney Copperbottom, is covered in subtle scuffs. Ewan McGregor gives Rodney a breathless, wide-eyed energy that’s a world away from the stiff Jedi robes he was wearing for the *Star Wars* prequels at the time. (Legend says fans actually bought tickets for *Robots* just for the *Revenge of the Sith* trailer). McGregor ditches his usual Scottish gravel for a higher pitch, playing a kid literally made of scrap. You can hear the eagerness in his performance—he's always leaning forward, desperate to please his idol, Mel Brooks’ Bigweld.



The Crosstown Express sequence is the best example of the movie's pure kinetic energy. Rodney hits Robot City and is immediately thrown into a transit system that functions more like a city-wide pinball machine than actual public transport. We're right there as he's blasted through pneumatic tubes, flung across gear-filled chasms, and caught by giant mechanical mallets. It’s two minutes of the animators just flexing their physics engine. You can see the effort they put into how light hits a dented fender at terminal velocity.

Your mileage on the breakneck pacing probably depends on your tolerance for visual sugar rushes. Writing for *Empire Magazine*, Peter Debruge had a point when he said the speed was actually the film's biggest drawback. The script rarely stops for breath, constantly jamming in new visual gags or another Robin Williams riff. Williams is Fender, this rickety rust-bucket who literally falls apart when he's stressed. You can hear how much energy Williams is pouring into the mic—it’s a sweaty, physical performance—even if the animation occasionally struggles to keep up with his rapid-fire improv.



Beneath all that noise, though, is a surprisingly sharp jab at planned obsolescence. Greg Kinnear is perfectly slimy as Ratchet, the villain trying to kill off spare parts to force everyone into shiny, expensive upgrades. His slogan, "Why be you when you can be new?", sounds uncomfortably realistic today. There's something prophetic about a 20-year-old kids' movie taking a stand against disposable culture. It doesn't always nail the balance between its anti-corporate heart and the required pop-culture jokes, but the effort is charming. *Robots* asks us to value what's rusted or 'outdated' instead of just throwing it away. That's what gives it a pulse.