S02E06 — The Wild Robot

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The Wild Robot.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

We’re trying our hand at a middle-grade book, and we were all big fans of this heartwarming story!

We talk about the differences between Roz and her wild compatriots in Peter Brown’s bestselling children’s book and the 2024 film adaptation. (Spoiler: We really liked both works!)

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Wild Robot movie brings a brighter, action-packed twist to Roz’s journey, adding humor, futuristic tech, and a deeper emotional arc. The book, meanwhile, keeps things grounded with a quieter exploration of survival, community, and the natural world.

Tim: The book was better

Donna: The book was better

Rebekah: The book was better

Josiah: The film was better

Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Rebekah: Welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a family of four and we review book to film adaptations. Before we get into any of that, however, just quick spoiler warning for you. We are going to be discussing the wild robot today. I may be talking about others of the two books in this trilogy, but in general, we’ll mostly be spoiling the plot of the wild robot, which is a film that came out.

In September of 2024, as well as a book by author Peter Brown, and it is the first book in a trilogy of middle grade. Fantasy fiction or science fiction, science fiction, sci 

[00:00:43] Josiah: fi, 

[00:00:44] Rebekah: fantasy. Fair enough. Um, all right. So fun fact for today, we’re just going to make this one really interesting. We like to introduce ourselves and give you a little fun fact about ourselves.

Um, just so you get to know us a little bit more. And I think this one might be. Quite fascinating. Very fun. Yeah, very fun. So this week, uh, while we’re discussing a book where the woes of terrible weather events, uh, are brought up, let’s talk about a recent terrible weather event. The hurricane that recently, uh, Slaughtered the mountains where many of us live through Appalachia Hurricane Helene.

So why don’t you tell us after you tell us your name what you were doing during Hurricane Helene and why we did not record the day that Hurricane Hurricane Hurricane Hurricane 

[00:01:37] Tim: is in West Virginia. Hurricane is the spinny thing. 

[00:01:40] Rebekah: What’s happening? 

[00:01:41] Tim: We’re on video, Rebecca. 

[00:01:42] Josiah: We’re not live. I know, 

[00:01:44] Rebekah: I’m so sorry.

Uh, what were you doing the day that Hurricane Helene, uh, hit? Well, hello, I’m Josiah. And what have you been doing since then? 

[00:01:52] Josiah: And I’m the brother of this group. I. 

[00:01:56] Rebekah: Just the brother. That’s good. I feel important. 

[00:01:59] Josiah: I am the brother in Christ to my parents. Rebecca, read, read that thing. It’s on your shelf. The 

[00:02:07] Rebekah: Bible?

[00:02:08] Josiah: Yeah. Oh, 

[00:02:09] Rebekah: okay. It’s 

[00:02:09] Josiah: on your phone, too. 

[00:02:11] Rebekah: It is also on my phone. 

[00:02:13] Josiah: While Hurricane Helene bottomed, Carter was ravaging the mountains. I was, I was 

waiting for 

my parents to respond to our texts asking if they were okay. 

[00:02:31] Rebekah: Yes, I, that happened, yes. I was not there with you, but I was also waiting for my parents to respond to my texts about whether or not they were okay.

Uh, well, I feel like mine’s going to be the longest, so why don’t we let mom or dad go before me? 

[00:02:45] Tim: I’ll go ahead and go. My name is Tim. I am the husband and the dad of our crew. And, uh, we, we decided to go and see wild robot on Thursday evening. It had started raining. We’d already had about three days of rain at that point.

Hurricane Helene was very large and the rain bands were big. So we came home from that and decided we would watch one of our favorite YouTube weather channels. And so we were watching that till about midnight. We went to bed and woke up the next day. Um, the day I believe we were supposed to be recording.

Um, 

[00:03:24] Rebekah: yeah, we all went to see this movie on Thursday, the day it came out because we were so excited to record Friday morning. 

[00:03:30] Tim: So we woke up Friday morning to no power and the hurricane whipping around. We had lots of damage in our area. We were without power for about three days. Um, we have friends that were without power for two weeks, um, and one group just got power a couple of days ago, so, um, got a lot of power outages.

We had a lot of trees torn down and a lot of homes that were crushed because of that. It was rough and not only were you hoping that we would text you, we were texting, wondering why we couldn’t get in touch with you guys. Um, 

[00:04:09] Musical Intro: yeah, 

[00:04:09] Tim: the cell phone system was out as well. We didn’t know that. And then, uh, so we had no internet, no power, um, no cell phones, reliable cell phone service for a while.

Yeah, that was rough. We sat and played cards. Um, and we left thing you’re in love. We left one of the doors open on the deck. There’s a screen there so we could see and hear through it. And we listened to our neighbors. Two trees come down. That is a terrifying sound. We heard a similar sound in our yard and it turns out that it was the top of one of our trees that was twisted out.

It only fell in the yard, though, so we didn’t have any damage to the home, but it looked like every tree had lost. Every extra limb it had across the yard. Yeah, it was rough. All right, mom. 

[00:05:07] Josiah: What were you doing that was different from that? 

[00:05:11] Donna: So my experience was, um, similar to dad’s but a little different in this way.

I’m Donna. I’m the wife and mom of our brood. And I, I can look up synonyms online, I’m so proud of you. Um, so I found it very interesting after the fact. In the midst of it, I was, um, uh, steeled. Uh, very, my reaction to stress or stressful situations. Um, and one of shut down and not allow myself to overreact because I’m super emotional.

And so for me, I went into kind of damage control mode. Um, I wanted to stay calm. And of course, that’s really not great. I need to just go ahead and, you know, express we need to go ahead and express how we feel. And I wasn’t trying to hide how I feel. It was just an automatic break. response to the situation.

So I, uh, I am a manager at my job and I have 10 folks who, um, report to me. And so that morning, early in the morning, uh, just between maybe 6 before we lost cell service, I was, uh, we had already heard that our complex would be closed for the day. But the understanding was, if you can work from home, you can do that, and that’s fine, and if you can’t, if you lose power, you know, we understand all that.

So, um, my group started texting about a quarter till seven, and we were all texting each other, what’s going on, and do you still have power? No, none of us had power at that point, I don’t think. Um, But then even that stopped because cell service got so weird. Um, so I’d already been in kind of a protection thinking thing.

But then realizing that without cell service, I could not, or power, I couldn’t talk to either of you back in Josiah. That was the challenge. That was my challenge. That was the challenge to overcome. I trust God. He’s already, he’d already, you know, confirmed to me. He is with you. I didn’t have to be with you.

Um, and I’ll just like he always has for your whole lives. So I had that confidence that he was not out of control. Uh, he, he knew what was going on. Um, but I had to kind of deal with that myself. That was, that was weird. Yeah. And so I was fine until we’d heard from both of you. And then once I heard from both of you, then I was emotional and, and had a little more of a, uh, uh, a tearful episode because I could stop and, you know, um, but what I thought was interesting between me and dad that was so different was his.

Concerns included being provider and I genuinely wasn’t worried that we wouldn’t be provided for because like I know that I knew he had it in hand. He would take care of things if I, you know, and and so my safety, I wasn’t as thoughtful about from his perspective providing for us. was was a huge deal.

And, um, I’m so incredibly sorry for the damage has occurred in the folks that have suffered so much. Um, and at the same time, I’m absolutely overwhelmed by the response of people from everywhere who just have been willing to drop everything they’re doing and go help. and go assist and give. And if they can’t, if they can’t physically go, people are willing to give and, and, um, 

[00:09:14] Tim: and we’ve, we’ve been able to gather quite a bit to give even from the area we’re in and we’re, we’re a bit cut off still.

Uh, at this point from, from the area that was most affected in North Carolina. 

[00:09:27] Rebekah: So, yeah. So, well, I’m Rebecca. I’m the daughter slash sister of the podcast. And I’m apparently the executive volunteer coordinator of my church and for the Cajun Navy. Um, so I had a somewhat interesting experience. I live in a town about 30 minutes away from the nearest spot that got hit.

Like where you start to see the, if you don’t know anything about Hurricane Helene, essentially one hurricane had grabbed what was left of another hurricane and it flipped it around itself. So that’s why the hurricane itself was so wide was because it was actually two systems. that collided and kind of flung the other.

But it was so powerful. It technically entered land as a category four. It wasn’t even a five, but it went up further from the Gulf of Mexico up through where we’re at in eastern Tennessee and near western North Carolina. It went further up that way than we are inland from the nearest beach. So it takes like a six hour drive to get to the nearest beach going east.

But if you drive south, it’s like an eight hour drive. It came all the way up from the south side, which was such a crazy thing. It’s never happened before here. There’s been flooding before here, but not. like this. And so my experience was really weird. We had some friends, they’re actually still at our home because they’ve essentially been displaced by the flood.

But they were living up in an area where they were like, I don’t trust this. And I was like, what’s going on? And they’re like, it’s supposed to be historical storm. And I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on, but please come stay like, you know, I just didn’t really understand. And so friday morning Um, you know, we were supposed to record.

And so I got up and I was so nervous because I knew that it was a bad storm. And I have trouble with weather sometimes after being in the tornado in Nashville in 2020. And so I was just kind of shaky and I couldn’t finish the outline for this out for this episode. And, um, yeah, I just started seeing reports of all of these things happening around us.

I’m about 30 minutes from, like I said, where the damage started the worst. Um, our church is on the edge of Elizabethan. So like a quarter of Elizabethan was underwater. Um, it runs up against the Nolichucky River, which was one of the rivers that got hit really hard. Um, Asheville is the town directly in the middle of where mom and dad and I like drive to see each other.

Now the interstates are open again, but for two weeks and we didn’t know if it was gonna be longer. Um, like the roadways have been down like it was It turned from like a two hour something drive to like four hours and you’d have to drive all the way around and, um, to do all this crazy stuff. So I led worship that Sunday and I was going through this like very emotional time of not being sure what I had to offer people.

Um, standing up in front of them, like after all of these things, I knew that there were so many deaths. I mean, there’s still so many that aren’t accounted for and. I, you know, I know people are concerned about the spread of misinformation, but I, I literally have, in the kind of volunteer position I’ve taken on, have like helped people get body bags to the right place.

Like this, like a thing that I’ve done now that’s part of my life, which is such a weird experience. But I got up to lead worship that Sunday morning. Um, and I just was reminded. that I don’t have anything different to offer because the thing that I offer by reminding people who God is and the fact that he’s good and the fact that he’s faithful is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, um, anytime that I stand up and lead people in worship.

And so, um, the Lord like really gave me a lot of strength through that cause I just, I wasn’t affected. Our power never went out. It flickered like twice. My phone service was fine. Now, phone service at my church was not fine because they were in the area where Verizon was out and all this crazy stuff. I was worried about Josiah because honestly, I feel like Nashville gets hit with way more bad weather than us.

So it’s weird that the three of us got hit and then you didn’t because you were like, Barely raining. You know, 

[00:13:30] Tim: initially the storm was supposed to basically take a sharp turn to the west and end up going through Nashville. That’s the last we knew. 

[00:13:41] Rebekah: So all that to say since then, that sunday afternoon, I basically asked our outreach and missions pastor I was like, David, I tried to go out yesterday and help clear a tree off of someone’s lawn.

And I quickly found out that I’m a terrible person to ask to do that. There was a family in our church had a tree fall on a car, like all this stuff. But honestly, only a few families in our church were significantly affected, meaning their houses physically floated away on the river. Um, and then you go a little bit further away from us and it, it gets a lot worse.

Um, but I called or texted David and I said, please help me, let me help. I’m administrative. I can’t be out in the field, but like I want to help. And so it quickly just morphed into this new volunteer job that I’m doing now. It is an incredible gift to own a business that I can say, Hey, if I work five hours a week right now or 10 hours a week right now, like you guys can keep things afloat.

And so. Um, I’ve been doing just that for the last three weeks. Um, we have sent out teams every single day since the day of the flood. Um, I’m managing volunteers for an organization called the Cajun Navy as well. Um, and I’m helping them learn how to deal with this situation because for them, they’re not used to floods in the mountains.

Like for them, you know, the water recedes and it’s gone. She’s like there were normally gone by now. Like we don’t need to be here this long. And so everyone’s just like learning a really weird new normal. There’s a ton of um, families in towns that won’t have power back for the whole winter probably. And it’s been such a an insane process because I don’t know, just the whole thing, but we’ve sent out, I’m managing hundreds of volunteers and it’s really been cool to see people come in.

We’re about three weeks in, so people are kind of losing steam, locals are really struggling and so we’re kind of getting to that point where I’m like, all right, let’s do out of town team. What can we do with you guys? You know, what, what can be done? Um, we kind of opened a donation center just like a lot of other churches and we’re managing that and it, it’s been kind of crazy.

I also got to lead worship with, uh, Sean Foyt last Sunday morning at a benefit in Asheville. Um, for a church was putting that on for the area around them that was hit really, really hard. Um, and so, yeah, I think it has been one of the weirdest three weeks of my life. It has been incredibly strange and different and new, but, uh, it’s been wild.

Okay, let’s get into it. Dad, would you like to 

[00:16:10] Tim: give us the plot summary? I, I would love to do the plot summary, but I want to set the stage. Not unlike the whipping rain that was traveling through our areas. That’s how the story begins, except it’s the waves from the ocean. The Wild Robot is a middle grade book by author Peter Brown.

It’s the first in a trilogy and it was adapted to an animated film released in September 2024. A story from the shore of this island follows the tale of Roz, a robot who narrowly survives her accidental landing on the island, an island full of woodland creatures. As she wins the hearts of the animals and her adopted gosling son, Brightbill, the island’s residents initially fear Roz and her unfamiliarity and her unfamiliar ways.

And many of the other geese reject Bright Bill for his unusual parentage. However, through a remarkably cold and destructive winter, Roz helps preserve the lives of many of her animal neighbors, while Bright Bill leads the flock of geese south and eventually back home to safety. After the island’s community sees the long awaited coming of spring, other robots arrive on the island to retrieve Roz.

Although her animal friends ultimately defeat these newcomers, these enemies, Roz realizes she must return to the human world to prevent more of these robots from coming to the island. and possibly hurting Bright Bill and her other new friends. 

[00:17:52] Rebekah: I do want to clarify, we’re going to go back to our original, uh, way that we broke down these differences.

We’ve tried a couple of other things out in recent episodes, but if you are new to the pod, we generally break things down in terms of differences in characterization, setting, and then the plot and timeline as our third area. We actually don’t have any specific setting changes to this one. Because they kind of take place during some of our plot and timeline and characterization changes anyway.

So, Josiah, you want to get us started? 

[00:18:23] Josiah: Yeah, one of the characterization differences that I found very significant was Think, the red fox. Very important character in the film. The third lead becomes Roz’s best friend, family, a family of sorts. While the Fox does appear in the book, he was not a major character, not present, most, and, and sorry, he was, he was present most significantly during the winter scenes when Bright Bill wasn’t even there.

And he was, I was watching the film and thought, Oh, I don’t think I remember there being a main character Fox, but it was incredibly important. 

[00:19:03] Rebekah: I forgot that Fink was even in the book at all. I’m watching the movie going, who is this character? It threw me off because he is. Like, you know, he’s one of the major people.

I also, I was trying to figure out how, like, you would think about what his character, who his character was. He wasn’t, there was no sense of like hit romance or anything between him and Roz. It was almost as if Roz’s brother was there. Like Brightville had an uncle, 

[00:19:29] Donna: you know what I mean? Kind of wondered if they were going for like a Dunkey and Shrek character partner, or I also thought of the, the little dragon in Mulan.

I kind of wondered if they were going for that. Mix where 

[00:19:46] Rebekah: it’s on 

[00:19:47] Donna: on you, both 

[00:19:50] Josiah: of them are voiced by Eddie, but oh 

[00:19:52] Donna: yeah, but I was the same 

[00:19:54] Josiah: actor, 

[00:19:55] Donna: but I was thinking, I kind of wondered if they were going for that kind of relationship where it’s a comic relief. They also need to be accepted to though, and it was, there was, so there was a little bit of adding into the story, but it was really.

I did the same thing. We got out to the car after the movie, and I said, Tim, was there a fox? Was the fox in the main character? I didn’t want to sound stupid. He was like, uh, no, there was no fox as a main character. It was very secondary. 

[00:20:24] Rebekah: You’re like, did I read this book? I think I did. I’m pretty sure. I don’t know.

[00:20:28] Donna: Also in the book, Roz doesn’t call herself a wild robot or Howl. But in the film, these are like big moments where she seems to find herself, um, in the, in the book, 

[00:20:41] Tim: doesn’t she call herself a wild robot when the robots come to get her? Is that actually in the book? I feel like I remember that. Um, yeah, Rebecca can look things like that up pretty quickly.

Yeah. 

[00:20:54] Donna: Oh, yeah. She just finished the book again. Oh, yeah, 

[00:20:56] Tim: she’s a freak. No, I didn’t read the book while we 

[00:20:59] Donna: were doing the book. While you ask that question, 

[00:21:01] Josiah: she speed 

reads. She’s a freak. 

[00:21:04] Rebekah: It’s a short book. It didn’t take me that long to read. In the book, Roz does not call herself a wild robot. I think it’s literally just implied.

[00:21:14] Tim: Gotcha. Well, thank you. Love text. Well, there’s another characterization change. Feller is a beaver who tries to get the largest tree on the island to fall in the film. There were several significant beavers in the book. But none of them were concerned with cutting the largest tree and the two major beavers, Mr.

and Mrs. Beaver, not to be confused with other beavers, were parents who spent a significant amount of time teaching Roz about building a home. In the film, there was not a married beaver couple with children, just the one that was always trying to fell this huge tree. 

[00:21:54] Josiah: They are distinguished by their initial, they are Mr.

and Mrs. R. Beaver. Mr. and Mrs. R. Beaver? And their middle initial is the same, Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Beaver. R. A. Beaver. 

[00:22:07] Rebekah: Okay, gotcha. When I was looking back at my notes, I kept looking at the word feller and I was like, I don’t call people fellers. And then finally I remembered that that was 

[00:22:19] Josiah: name and you know that I at a dog, it took me a minute to figure out Yeah, I know.

To 

[00:22:23] Rebekah: fell tree. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:22:25] Josiah: So, Aw, that, that’s clever. That was 

[00:22:27] Rebekah: funny. 

[00:22:27] Josiah: He was voiced by Matt Barry, who, I like an IT crowd obviously, but mm-hmm . Feller was probably. I considered him the most annoying character in the film. If I had to choose one. Yeah, I didn’t 

[00:22:39] Rebekah: know if there was a lot of payoff for him. Yeah, he wasn’t really that funny.

I wasn’t the biggest fan. Another character, this one I actually think I preferred in the film. So there’s a little character in the film named Pinktail. You’ve seen this. Uh, she’s an opossum. In the book, Pinktail wasn’t a mother. She just was an opossum. She helped Roz. She was kind of nicer to Roz earlier on in the book.

In the film, Big Tail’s 

[00:23:04] Josiah: children are constantly pretending to die, 

[00:23:08] Rebekah: and they offer very funny comic relief. It is, like, actually one of the funniest parts of the timing 

[00:23:13] Donna: was so good of their going back and forth and the way they were dying. Yeah. It was really adorable. 

[00:23:21] Rebekah: Wait, she just like thinks one of them dies and then they come back and it’s like, who cares?

They’re possums. Nature is hard, you know. 

[00:23:30] Donna: Did something change in society and we started saying opossum? I’ve never said that before. 

[00:23:35] Rebekah: In the book it says pink tail was an opossum. 

[00:23:39] Donna: No, no, no. Us that we’re saying it. Yeah. When did that start? 

[00:23:44] Rebekah: I don’t know. How else would you say possum? I know possum is how we said it, but if it’s written in the book is an opossum, it 

[00:23:52] Josiah: can be, it can be silent though.

And it doesn’t have to be, 

[00:23:56] Rebekah: it could 

[00:23:56] Donna: go either way. It’s okay. And 

[00:23:58] Josiah: it’s more 

[00:23:59] Donna: like, I don’t judge you for being different. That’s not the way I am. 

[00:24:03] Rebekah: I’m fully inclusive here. I’m just like people. Exactly. Exactly. It’s like people who have an astigmatism, but everybody thinks you say I have a stigma. The other thing about pigtail that I thought was kind of cute though, in the movie was that she and Roz related a lot on motherhood.

And so she was the one in the, I think they showed it in the trailer where a pigtail says the thing like Roz is like, I don’t know how to be a mother. It’s not in my programming and pigtails like none of us do. You know what I mean? Like we all have to figure it out. And I thought that was really sweet.

[00:24:36] Donna: If I had to take another guess when I said the thing about Fink and kind of like this in other films, I also felt like Fink and Pinktail with the children and the joke, they made jokes and she would be just nonchalant about it. I was, Oh, I have seven. No, it’s no, I’m just kidding. Oh, seven. I kind of thought those were added, uh, added parts that would help bring adults into the humor as well, so it wasn’t purely children’s film.

I think that’s fair. Because the book was very much a child, children’s book. I mean, it wasn’t intended to be, you know, to, to grab adults in, but. There 

[00:25:16] Josiah: in there. There were some big 

[00:25:18] Donna: concepts, for sure. 

[00:25:19] Josiah: I thought it was very edgy for the film to deal with death that much, but, I think it was, uh, you know, people don’t talk enough to kids 

[00:25:28] Tim: about death, maybe?

I don’t know, it’s, uh, I thought the book actually talked about it a lot, too. They dealt with death. They were very up front about the fact that animals die, and And when the winter came, they said the animals would would be part of the fertilizer for the next trees. They were 

[00:25:46] Rebekah: also they were also very open about the fact that in nature, some animals Live because they kill and eat other animals like and I that’s like a hard thing I don’t think a lot of children’s books and movies necessarily address that much They try to make it like all the all the animals are together and I did kind of like that It was a little more obviously the animals talk.

It’s not a real like 

[00:26:09] Tim: story. There is a morphism 

[00:26:11] Rebekah: Yeah for sure, but it was interesting that the animals were not Um, they weren’t just like presented as like, oh, we’re just all nice to each other all the time. Like it was more like true to nature, which I thought was, well, 

[00:26:24] Donna: if you remember Rebecca, when you were a probably reaching maybe, maybe 13, but maybe not that old, uh, You had a fish, you had a fish tank, and there were like two fish, and then a Plecostomus, the sucker fish that kind of sucks around on the side, the walls and everything.

I’ve never heard its real name. A 

[00:26:45] Rebekah: Plecostomus? That’s the first time, 

[00:26:46] Donna: yes. Okay, cool, that’s what it was. And you called him CK, I don’t know why. And then the other two fish had names as well. Well, one fish disappeared, didn’t find the fish, we didn’t know what happened to it. So then there was one fish left, and little CK and the, then the other fish disappeared and it was kind of a puzzle because like, okay, there was a, a filter in the tank and sometimes the fish can get too close to the filter and they die.

And I mean, stuff happens to them. We were puzzled and dad and I kept thinking, where is this fish? This is really creepy. And I never thought like you took the fish and murdered it, but we were just like, where’s this fish? And so I’m in your bedroom one day and you were at school and I was putting away clothes and I looked, the sun was shining in and I saw a reflection behind one of the little decorative rocks we had and there’s a little fish carcass, little fish skeleton.

And so I told Tim, I was like, Oh, I think I know what happened. So CK has had a big meal. So you get home from school and we were like, Hey, we just need to tell you because we’ve, you know, we, cause you’d been asking too, where could he be? What could have happened to him? And we were like, you know, sometimes if, if the fish had started to get sick or something was wrong with him, sometimes the other fish will.

eat their neighbors because, you know, they have to protect themselves or, you know, and you, you stood up to the side of the attack and you looked at the begosses and you go, I thought I taught you not to eat your friends. I was really bothered. It really, it was very disconcerting to you that they had not followed your, you know, your high moral principles.

He didn’t his friend. 

[00:28:35] Rebekah: I then thought. that I wanted a cat. And so then I just got a cat from like my friend had her cat had a litter of kittens. So we get this cat in. Oh my gosh, what a nightmare. Mr. Bocletus was the worst. I hated that cat. He hated me. He was so rude. He was mad because of the name he gave him.

It 

[00:28:57] Musical Intro: was a funny name. Mr. 

[00:28:59] Rebekah: Bocletus is a top notch cat name. He was the worst. And you remember. And I stand by that. And then 

[00:29:08] Josiah: did he die of the worst part, 

[00:29:10] Rebekah: he licked antifreeze or something. And I was gone at my friend’s house. I was gone at my friend’s house for the weekend. My mom and dad had to sit there.

We weren’t. Yeah. They sat there and held the cat as he died. He was like a year old. And they had it was literal. It was awful. It was I came home and I wasn’t even there. I only feel this secondhand. Before that, I came home and all my cat stuff was sitting outside. Like next to the front door, clean, just like the litter box and the food tray and the water and all this stuff and I’m like, 

[00:29:44] Josiah: Oh, that is hilarious.

[00:29:46] Rebekah: What happened? He didn’t hide it. Dad just put it out in the front on the porch. Like, oh, well, 

[00:29:53] Josiah: she’ll figure it 

[00:29:53] Rebekah: out. We break up 

[00:29:55] Josiah: with the 

cat. 

[00:29:57] Rebekah: I got a dog next. Mom got us a dog next and then I learned I like dogs and that’s the end of the story. 

[00:30:03] Josiah: Evan and Charlotte’s cats named Betty dog. Why? No one knows.

Well, then they figured out they thought it was a girl 

[00:30:11] Donna: Yes, and then 

[00:30:13] Josiah: they brought it to the vet and they revealed it was a girl No, it was a boy 

[00:30:20] Rebekah: and 

[00:30:21] Josiah: now it’s still Betty Dog. Now it’s named Betty Boy Dog. 

[00:30:24] Rebekah: Okay. Great. It’s so descriptive. 

[00:30:26] Josiah: Very confusing. I can never Sweet cat. 

[00:30:29] Rebekah: It is not a Betty. Well, it’s not a girl.

So Betty doesn’t make sense, but also it is not a dog, which is probably the more confusing part of the dog’s name. 

[00:30:38] Josiah: Everyone would think it was a boy and all dogs are boys, all cats are girls. I’m going to end up being a boy. So then there’s boy in the middle. So honestly, boy and dog both serve the same function, although one is true and one is false.

What’s confusing to me. Okay. 

[00:30:55] Rebekah: I’m tracking, I guess. All right, dad, why don’t you just keep us back on track here? 

[00:31:02] Tim: So. Bright Bill, who is an orphaned goose, takes on robotic behaviors in the film, setting him up for getting bullied by the other geese. I loved that. This rejection was a significant theme throughout the movie, but was not at all present in the book, as Bright Bill was quickly received by his geese community.

I love that Brightville said, 

[00:31:29] Josiah: beep boop, beep 

[00:31:30] Tim: boop, beep boop, I did think that was cute. I thought it was cute. I thought it was a little, a little strange though. Um, there’s a, there’s another, another thing about why he was orphaned. 

[00:31:44] Rebekah: I feel like his, so I thought his robotic behaviors were adorable. I thought that was a really good movie addition.

The thing that I find weird is more like. That he was rejected, like the rejection and bullying thing. Sorry, I know we’re not really in plot stuff, but that was the part that threw me a little bit. It felt, maybe it’s just because I just had finished the book the night before, but it felt slightly like 

[00:32:10] Josiah: overkill.

But they had rejected Roz. They had done that. Now in the book, do they accept Roz before she, before Brightville grows up? 

[00:32:21] Tim: Um, 

[00:32:22] Rebekah: um, it’s like they start to accept her as she takes care of it. So I think as she learns their 

[00:32:29] Josiah: language, right? Bill is Roz’s kid. I don’t know if we even said that. But Roz, they still reject Roz.

And they think that she’s foreign and other and scary. And Bright Bill is associated with that. 

[00:32:44] Rebekah: Well, uh, another. character thing that was changed is Thunderbolt the Owl, who was Bright Bill’s flight instructor, is a movie only character. Thunderbolt was cute. Like, I really like he was fine 

[00:32:58] Josiah: for a scene.

[00:32:59] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. He was like being Rames interesting 

[00:33:02] Josiah: in a movie. He barely ever acts nowadays. 

[00:33:05] Rebekah: Yeah. But he was like, I don’t know if I remember correctly, like it was, it wasn’t exactly comic relief, but it was just kind of a funny, um, add a little character, but he’s not 

[00:33:15] Tim: in the book. It’s interesting to me when you take a short book.

And you cut out a number of characters so that you can put in other characters that weren’t there. I mean, I 

[00:33:29] Josiah: Definitely an interesting choice. 

[00:33:30] Tim: Most books were having to cut out things so that you can get this book that takes 10 hours to read into an hour and a half movie. This, you’re still having to cut, but it was, it was just a little strange to me.

[00:33:43] Donna: There was also a bear in this group of animals in the forest. In the film, the bear everybody was afraid of is a male and has no children. And he’s kind of, uh, he’s kind of like an old curmudgeon. 

[00:33:58] Josiah: Um, 

[00:34:03] Donna: but in the book, the bear is scary, but the bear’s a mom that has a son and a daughter bear and her children are the ones who cause Roz all the problems that are constantly, you know, given 

[00:34:16] Rebekah: her issues, kind of like getting.

Like trying to attack and like, yeah, like scaring people. So I thought that was such an odd change, but I wonder if they did it because Hinktail was a mom in the movie. So maybe it was like they they ended up having the motherly character in the movie. And so the bear was a little easier if it was like this guy, this loner off by himself.

It was a little easier for him to be like this scary animal for a while. 

[00:34:42] Josiah: Interesting. I would want to know more about bears. But now that you remind I forgot that the bear in the book was the mom. Uh, I think that’s better in the film, to have Pink Tail as the relatable mom and the bear mom as the mom who takes things too far or like doesn’t mother exactly correctly, so she doesn’t trust her kids or she doesn’t trust people, she doesn’t trust the world, like she’s the bad example of motherhood or something like that.

I 

[00:35:08] Tim: think once you get the mother, mother bear in the book, though, you’ve already experienced both of the child, the, the daughter and the son bear and the daughter is unhinged. But by the time you meet the mother bear, she’s a good character. But yeah, that’s a very big change. I think. 

[00:35:29] Josiah: I don’t care if something’s from a book.

It was from a book. One person wrote the book. They’re not perfect. 

[00:35:37] Rebekah: That’s true. You don’t see the book as canon. necessarily. 

[00:35:42] Josiah: No, I know what goes into writing a book. It’s just random. It’s random. None of it matters. It’s random improvements to a okay idea until you publish, which is not until it’s 

[00:35:56] Tim: perfect until you publish.

Well, and then for the book, we’ve, we’ve noticed in several of the things we’ve done that even when the author is involved in the movie, there may be lots of big changes because they decided, eh, after we published it, yeah, this works better. I like this better. Well, and 

[00:36:13] Rebekah: you’re also have a lot of people making decisions.

It’s not just one person and maybe their publisher. You know, and a couple of other folks. It’s like massive numbers of people who are like trying to argue for their side of what’s going to make money and what’s going to sell and what’s going to make a better movie and all that. How many, 

[00:36:31] Donna: how many times have we heard, uh, actors or added scene or, uh, commentaries?

Uh, in movies where we find even the actors will say, Oh, I think maybe the character should maybe they should go this way. Could we do this little tweak or this little whatever, where when you’re writing the book, yes, you have an editor and you have people that you want to look at before it’s published.

It’s not that nobody else sees it, but then once you get to the film and you deal with it, however many multitudes of people are going to give you their feedback. And look at what we found in the, in the things we’ve discussed, we’ve had some books that we were like, we all thought were pretty ridiculous.

The movie turns out fantastic, but we’ve also found the reverse where we’re, the book was amazing and we were like, Oh my gosh, we can’t wait to hear, watch the movie and the movies of train wreck. 

[00:37:31] Josiah: We know you hated Dune mom. 

[00:37:33] Donna: Love Dune. Shut up. 

[00:37:36] Josiah: What if 

[00:37:36] Donna: we talk 

[00:37:36] Josiah: about plot and timeline? 

[00:37:38] Donna: Well, I was actually thinking about that.

Um, I did find it fascinating that raw couldn’t go underwater in the book. Yes. Which totally made sense to me because cheese, metal, electric and electric and is run by circuits and, but in the film. She just could happily go through her thing and I 

[00:38:02] Rebekah: thought, 

[00:38:03] Josiah: yeah, 

[00:38:03] Rebekah: Nathan and I had both read this book and at the theater He was sitting by me and he was like you leaned over.

He’s like what’s going on? She can’t go in the water Why are they letting her go in the water? 

[00:38:13] Josiah: We didn’t see the large cargo ship in the film the one where the the Ross units fell off of the ship onto the island at the beginning I I thought it was a good opening to the book, and I really appreciated the beginning of the movie being we’re on the island, and this is where the story takes place, so it doesn’t even make sense that we would start off the island, we’re starting on the island, in media res, you have no idea what this story is, and you’ve got to figure it out, I thought it was quite beautiful in multiple ways that you skip the ship crash at the beginning of the book, 

[00:38:50] Rebekah: Yeah, 

[00:38:50] Tim: you know, skipping, skipping that beginning with the, with the ship was probably a choice for the movie makers to not have to deal with.

Quite so much death, um, it’s just kind of an understood in the book because it, you know, they go through that, but they don’t, they don’t speak a lot about it. It just seemed like it was an easy way to get away from human death. I think the beginning’s 

[00:39:15] Josiah: great. Yeah. Don’t, don’t show humans. The movie’s not about humans.

Right. I don’t want to see humans at the beginning of this film. 

[00:39:21] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah, but I think dad’s right. It is kind of never stated but implied in the book. Like this was not a cargo ship with no people on it, you know, like it probably had people on it, but you don’t go through that. But I agree with Josiah. I like the way that the movie starts and it’s like, let’s get to the point.

So I thought it was good. Uh, another thing that was included in the film that was significantly fleshed out and it was not in the book at all, um, was a lot of detail about the robots that were purchased, the Rosam robots. Um, there were like pamphlets with a bunch of stuff about what they do and they could project video showing the robots like going around your home and workplace and, and all of the stuff they could do.

It definitely leaned more futuristic. I know they’re, you know, helpful robots, but like. The book wasn’t quite as futuristic as the film. The film leaned way more futuristic. It was also interesting to see the visual of like, how the different robots, like the different Rosam models and things like that, were expected to behave in the real world.

Um, yeah, so I thought, I thought it was a fascinating, 

[00:40:32] Donna: it was neat. Roz like violently threw people off her body when they attacked at first in the film. This is, it is so flies in the face of her anti violence protocols. But I did, I did find a few. Just little spots like that through the movie, but this one, it was just like a, almost like she had this base response.

Yeah. But it doesn’t really fit into it because the robot, her whole, uh, all the Rosams were just, they were just designed to be helpers. So what would have caused her to do it? 

[00:41:10] Josiah: I think the right choice would have been to have it be a neutral, neutral good even, where she just makes them go off of her body.

Yeah. As she is like, I have to walk forward now. 

[00:41:22] Donna: Yeah, she could deflect them without it coming across as a, as a violent or an angry response. Dad, were you going to say 

[00:41:31] Tim: I was just, I was just going to add that there were some, there were some things about her character. That were, that were different, uh, in the book, she was concerned about self preservation.

That was one of her top priorities, and that included keeping clean and all of those kinds of things. In the film, they kind of lost some of that, just, here’s a robot, yeah, we’re just gonna jump into some of this. And missed some other parts like she, she stayed clean and everything and that made her all the more different to the animals and they had trouble accepting her until after she became a little bit more like them.

And, you know, the, the film also added, uh, added something to the Rosam robot, a transmitter beacon. Um, to the top of their head. That wasn’t, uh, a detail in the book. Oh, okay. I didn’t think it was in the book. Yeah, and be It wasn’t. Because of that, the company was able to track the robots. Um, the transmitter beacon being damaged was different and 

[00:42:38] Rebekah: yeah, I think it was interesting.

I think in the, in general, the book Roz was like mostly content to be who she was. She was able to learn, she was able to become an effective mother and you know, all of those things. She learned, but she was like, okay with herself being a robot, if that makes sense. And in the film, it, it felt like she was trying to become more human or I guess more animal.

Animal. There were no humans. So it wasn’t that. It was more that she was trying to become more alive. And so, uh, the transmitter specifically comes up with this because the way the film showed it was she could essentially activate and deactivate it. And so there were times when Roz would deactivate it and it was like she would justify it to herself the reasons that she was doing this.

It was just weird when in the book she was like. It never occurred to her to like worry about being tracked until the people showed up. I thought her character changing that much like her characters, um, I don’t even know how to say it. Like, uh, the way that her character saw herself and her self awareness in the world was so different.

in the book and film. So, um, something else that they changed was that Roz, uh, just for those of you who may not have read the book or seen the movie yet, Roz basically adopts this little gosling. This is book and film. His name is Bright Bill, and she adopts him after he, uh, hatches from his egg while Rozum is falling down a hill and trying, I think, You escape water in the book.

I don’t remember exactly what it was in the film. Anyway, she’s falling down a hill. She’s she falls. Oh, falling or running from the bear from the bear. Yeah. And she falls on the family of geese basically. And she accidentally kills the family of this little gosling egg. And I think there were more eggs that she fell on as well.

And so then one of them made it and he is bright bill. Well, the thing that’s different is that in the book, Ros, like she tells him it again, it doesn’t occur to her not to tell him she is honest. She is programmed to be honest period. And in the film, instead of telling bright bill, you know, that he very tragically killed his family.

Uh, she waits a really long time until Bright Bill is a lot older and nearly ready to leave for his first migration. And it becomes this big conflict because Bright Bill is super upset about it. And then he almost leaves for the migration he’s going on. Um, he almost leaves before they make up, which would have been really sad.

And so they make up, you know. Does he leave mad? 

[00:45:21] Josiah: No. 

[00:45:22] Rebekah: I’m trying to remember. Yeah, I think they made up very, very briefly. 

[00:45:25] Josiah: Yeah, they make up very briefly and then he circles around to like confirm, yes, we’re okay. 

[00:45:32] Tim: In the film, I think they try to make Roz have more human feelings. I think in the book, she’s more logical.

She works with logic, you know. He doesn’t have, he doesn’t have anyone to take care of him because I was the reason that He doesn’t have anybody take care of him. So I’m responsible for him. How do I do this? Um, whereas in the film, she waited longer because I don’t know, I don’t want to tell him, I don’t want him to dislike me.

And that’s much more human than the logical. Well, it’s self serving. Yeah, the logical point. If you 

[00:46:08] Rebekah: think about it, the whole point is that she was self serving by deciding, I’m going to hide this from him. Because I don’t want to upset him because he will be mad at me, you 

[00:46:17] Donna: know? And I thought that, I felt like this was a little conflicting because the whole point of her being a robot is that she doesn’t work on the premise of emotions.

And in the book they, they were, I felt like it stayed, you know, there were some things that she developed over time and that happened in the film as well. But the fox and, and, uh, and pink tail, I felt like they kind of, she was like, this isn’t my possession. I don’t, you know, well, it is now because you like killed his whole family.

So he’s yours now, you know, and so I felt like, um, it was kind of an interesting way that they moved into that, that she became caregiver. Because it’s not that she didn’t want to or she didn’t like Bright Bill. She just, why would she own him? She doesn’t own him. She’s supposed to be helping people. And, and so then they came around to, well, this is your mission is to take care of him and to task task.

[00:47:21] Tim: Yes. Well, in the book, Bright Bill learns to swim with the other goslings and Roz is unable to help him when he falls into the water because. Uh, in a separate part, she isn’t able to help him when he falls in the water because she couldn’t get immersed in the water. But in the film, she isn’t damaged by the water in the same way and, um, there’s also not a group swimming lesson.

Uh, that allowed them to push the bullying thing a little bit because the other, the other goslings weren’t accepting of him to begin with for a while. 

[00:47:57] Rebekah: It also felt like it was trying to reinforce. The, the humanity we’re trying to talk about in the film because in the book she tried, I think what happens if I’m not mistaken, is she tries to help him learn to swim.

She tries to help him learn to swim or something. And he like starts to fall in because he doesn’t know how to swim. And then she wants to go after him because she wants to save him because he’s living and she’s supposed to be caring for him and then realizes, Oh, I can’t do that. And so then she takes him to a group swimming lesson.

Because the other guy, this is how they learn, oh, that’s awesome, like he’ll have people to help him. And so it wasn’t, you know, it’s not that there was no emotion in it, but in the film it was like, again, the whole thing was more about how Ra’s developing emotions and. And how she’s becoming a person, you know, the 

[00:48:49] Donna: beavers 

[00:48:50] Rebekah: of the book, 

[00:48:51] Donna: rebuild Ross a leg because she wasn’t able to walk without it and it represented this big shift in their attitude towards her kind of the pivot point there in the film, the beavers did create a leg, but it just happened.

There’s kind of a single word. It wasn’t as significant a moment. I do remember thinking, Oh, that’s really cool. They did it for her. You know that because they had been, there had been some contention. They were the first. 

[00:49:19] Josiah: I remember reading the book thinking, Oh, finally someone’s nice to her. And of course it’s the beavers from Narnia.

[00:49:25] Rebekah: Mr. It kind of is. Yes. Also, well, in the movie, they, she was a lot more able to adapt, like her robotics were a lot more advanced than the book describes. And so in the book, when her leg fell off, which I don’t even remember the exact circumstances, why? But when she loses the bottom part of her leg, she becomes unable to move around in the book.

In the film, she had these like long extended legs that she could make longer or shorter as she wanted. And so it was becoming inconvenient for her, but it wasn’t stopping her from like essentially functioning or being able to move. Um, and I think that was why it was like less because in the book it was like the creatures came together.

for her. The beavers doing this like, and they also got some stuff from other creatures to improve the leg because it didn’t work at first very well and all that stuff. Um, and so in the, in the film, it was just like, well, she’s like really, really strong and fancy and advanced. So it’s not a huge deal, but I guess we needed at this one point, you know, 

[00:50:28] Tim: I really like the fact that, that the Mr, that Mr Beaver helped her build her first shelter.

For herself. Yes. For herself that she, she and Brightville could live in. And I thought that was a really nice part of the book. Sorry that that was missing from the film. 

[00:50:46] Josiah: I think I might disagree. You guys seem to agree that Roz in the book is, is not as inflicted with the human emotions of, of love, et cetera.

And in the film, she debates the meaning of love. I think in the book it’s all there. I interpret the book as that she’s telling us she’s not experiencing these things, but she actually is. 

[00:51:10] Tim: And I think, I think that, I think that’s true. I think that’s what happens and we see that when, when, uh, Brightville is getting ready to leave, she’s thinking, Okay, well, you know, I’ve just been taking care of him because that was an obligation.

There’s no, oh no, he’s going to be gone, I’m going to miss him. He’s, you know, what am I going to do? There is that in the book. Uh, it just, I guess it takes a lot longer to get there in the book, and so it feels like there’s a real transition from early, early on, it seems like she has those emotions in the film.

I don’t know, maybe I interpreted it 

[00:51:44] Josiah: differently. 

[00:51:45] Tim: Certainly. 

[00:51:46] Rebekah: I think, so I understand what you’re saying, and I would agree to some degree that that’s, It’s probably the case. Like she’s saying it’s not true, but they’re showing, not telling, you know, what’s really going on. The thing I noted the most was her conflict about it.

Like in the book, she’s like, she just justifies everything is like logic in the film. She like has a nervous breakdown and goes to find the other robots and like. All this other stuff happens like she’s freaking out when bright bills mad at her and she it she goes out of her way to be conflicted about her emotions and how she feels and what she’s doing and all of that stuff and it goes back again.

You know the whole thing about like I’m a lot like and her crying that out in the film. I think that the conflict internally was what I noticed Was on screen that I didn’t remember in the book. A Humanizer or more in the, 

[00:52:41] Josiah: well, on one hand a book is all internal monologue and you can’t do that in a movie.

True. True. Yeah. Um, second of all, George RR Martin, he famously said that every good story is a story of the human heart in conflict with itself. 

[00:53:01] Musical Intro: Hmm. 

[00:53:01] Josiah: Yeah. The, the heart in conflict with itself. drives us to do extreme things. You know, I don’t want my characters to be complacent. I want them to express their emotions and be proactive in the story.

And I think that the movie did a good job of taking something that was mainly inner monologue in the book and translating it to something that was Um, 

[00:53:27] Rebekah: another thing I’m, I was looking it up just to, to see how this worked again, because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy here, but in the film, the farm that the geese visit while on their migration was huge and super futuristic in the book, right?

Bill comes back. You don’t, so you don’t experience it in real time. You experienced bright bill sharing all of this with Ross when he comes back, right? And he shares that his and the other geese experience happened at a farm, calls it a farm. He did see, say that he learned what a greenhouse was. Sounds very similar to a farm we might see today.

And there was like one robot. He said the robot would do this and this and this. Um. And it was a very like, it puts you in the feeling of like, Oh, I’m on a local farm. And in the, in the film, having it just this massive expansion of fields and all of this stuff. And, uh, there were so like dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of robots, Rosam robots specifically for the most part.

Um, it just, it was a very, very different thing. And um, There was also this thing in the book that isn’t really in the film about how the the farmer found that there were a bunch of geese in his greenhouse. Wielded a gun. And I think that’s, that’s how, um, that’s how long neck died. So long neck is the, yeah, he’s the head geese that helps them on the migration.

He dies in both the film and the book. But, um, in, so in the book, it was just like, uh, he, I think he died protecting right bill, but it wasn’t this massively significant thing. Like it wasn’t as long drawn out thing in the, in the movie. And I’m just like now thinking about how much more complex this was in the movie.

Don’t they have this like pretty significant thing where they come up with a way to fight the robots and get out of the place that they’re like the greenhouse farm thing, the big futuristic place they’re in and like Bright Bill leads them all out of the ceiling and they it’s like this whole complex thing.

Um, and in the book it was just like, Oh my gosh, this is one of the little things that happened on our journey. And it was sad because we lost our friend. So that was a lot different. Did you, like, did anybody prefer it in the film? 

[00:55:42] Josiah: I 

[00:55:42] Rebekah: liked 

[00:55:44] Josiah: that there was world building off of the island, kind of. I guess in, in one way, I like that we’re visiting Bright Bill on his journeys, but in another way, it’s not Bright Bill’s story.

It’s Roz’s story. And now that we go off the island, I feel like. Dang on the island kind of thematically important. So there are things that I like about the farm I like that it’s futuristic that it kind of confirms the the Suspicions that oh, this is in far enough future that Ross is a possible technology, right?

And it added action to the film. I bet that’s a big reason why it was a 

[00:56:28] Rebekah: really good action sequence for sure. 

[00:56:31] Tim: And it reminded us of what we saw earlier with the video of what the Rosam robots were supposed to be doing and how they were supposed to be helping society. We saw that as, as he journeyed a little bit, we saw a little bit more of that.

So there’s something interesting in the book that, that is missing from the film. Um, each morning on the island in the book, uh, just after sunrise, the animals gather to meet for an hour during which they call a truce because there are predators and there are prey. Um, no animal could attack during this scene.

Um, these truce meetings aren’t present in the film, but actually they’re the model for what takes place later when Roz begins to discover that there are animals. They’re not going to make it because this winter is, is harsher than Winter’s before and so she invites some of the animals into her cabin, but she has to remind them while you’re in here, there has to be that truce.

Now there is a moment in the film where they, where they do that type of thing. Um, but that’s the only, that’s the only part. And in the book, she built several different structures for them to, to live in each evening, each night. 

[00:57:52] Rebekah: I love this part of the story where she builds huts and has all the animals come in and she just becomes this person who’s like, no, we can all, not all, but a lot of us can be okay.

Like, let’s, let’s figure this out. This is where Fink actually in the book becomes a little bit more important. Um, but. Am I incorrect in thinking, did the fire happen? 

[00:58:14] Tim: Yes. 

[00:58:15] Rebekah: In the film, 

[00:58:16] Tim: in one of the other cabins, she built another cabin 

[00:58:19] Rebekah: in the, I know it was in the book. No, but was it in the film? There’s 

[00:58:22] Tim: something that caused in the 

[00:58:23] Josiah: film, a fire, A forest fire.

They waited. They waited so that there wasn’t a second fire until the octopus robot was attacking. Oh, okay. That’s 

[00:58:30] Tim: when 

[00:58:31] Josiah: the fire happens with the 

[00:58:32] Tim: robots. I 

[00:58:33] Josiah: think they, they wanted to add more of a fire to the octopus ro Octa robot. Mm-hmm. And so they didn’t want to be confusing with two fires. That’s my guess.

[00:58:41] Rebekah: So for movie watchers only, um, they Roz, like dad said, built a bunch of different huts. And like during the winter and they were to help the creatures basically have a safe place to stay warm because it was like the coldest winter they’d ever had. And there were many animals that were going missing. And you learn at the beginning of the spring that they, a lot of them did pass away.

And so she helped them start fires in their huts and one of them built fire too big and the hut caught fire. And so then they like fixed the way they built the new huts and all this stuff. But it was like a very emotional moment. It was like a more emotional. For a kid’s book than I had expected. Mm hmm.

So 

[00:59:20] Josiah: that was that was probably the moment in the book when I was completely sold the book. It’s like, Oh, interesting. Yeah. 

[00:59:30] Musical Outro: Yeah. They’re taking you 

[00:59:32] Josiah: while while Bright Bill is away. She then I didn’t. It was it was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t realize what the book was about because I was like, Oh, that’s so sweet.

It’s about her and Bright Bill. And then it was like the book said, no, actually we’re about even more than that. While Bright Bill is away, Roz develops. She still has to have a purpose. 

[00:59:54] Donna: She still has to have a plan. 

[00:59:56] Josiah: And I, and I thought it was so beautiful. And also maybe it’s a little bit of my cynicism of saying like, well, you can have purpose in the world if you don’t have kids.

And that whole winter sequence, I guess, kind of confirmed that worldview. 

[01:00:13] Donna: Sure. Um, also a pretty big change. I thought, um, she is never captured by the other robots in the book and then forced to escape that that doesn’t happen. But in the film, they have this whole thing where she’s captured. She’s taken to the airship and then bright bill, you know, he comes in to save the day because now he’s been on a big journey with the geese and he’s come back and and so he’s going to show his leadership.

Yep. And so he kind of takes up the reins as a leader in it. It is a great moment because you see the other animals recognizing good in him and recognizing You know, that they want to follow, they want to help. But again, it’s, it really does still keep the focus on Roz. Right. And how she’s affected their lives.

I could see the addition, I could see what it added to the story. 

[01:01:08] Josiah: How did you feel about the action scene in the movie? How it changed the, what I would describe as segmented fight scenes in the book. 

[01:01:20] Rebekah: Um, I thought it was well done in the book. In the movie, I felt like I was watching another cartoon movie.

Cartoon movies always want to have these like big intense fight scenes. And like they’re really colorful or like lots of things are going on. And then you get to the end of it and everything’s actually fine. So it just, to me the book felt more You need like the movie felt a little more just like rehashing of the way that we do fight scenes in kids movies 

[01:01:46] Josiah: I don’t know.

I don’t think I liked it in the book. 

[01:01:49] Rebekah: Really? Okay, 

[01:01:50] Josiah: so I felt like it was hard It hard for me to tell where the climax was They defeated one hunter, they were called, like, hunters, right? 

[01:01:59] Rebekah: Hunters, yeah, I think is the 

[01:02:00] Josiah: correct They defeated one hunter, and it was like, okay, cool. Rico. You had to like They were Rico robots.

You had to, you had to remember how many Ricos there were, and it was the short, the book is such short chapters. Yeah. And so the fight scene was like over 15 chapters or something, you know, that’s probably a little too many, but it was over like 10 chapters. And it was hard for me to keep up with what was happening.

[01:02:29] Donna: As we would listen to it, I did notice. You 

[01:02:31] Rebekah: guys listen, I, okay, I forget, sorry, I forget, you guys haven’t even seen this. Do you know that this whole thing is like animated? Like they have these incredible illustrations, sorry not animated. And I think the author 

[01:02:45] Josiah: of the book started out as an illustrator.

[01:02:47] Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s this huge part of what he does. They have, a lot of them are like close to full page. Like they do so much. And so the way, I think one of the reasons that I didn’t get as lost is because the way that the animations, like take you through the story, like the chapters were definitely short, but it made sense, like the whole process made sense to me and like, and they have these like really graphic animations of it all happening.

So I, you know, I wonder if that’s part of it. It’s just. Because I wasn’t listening to the audio book, 

[01:03:22] Donna: but we listened to the, to it together, which we don’t normally do. We usually listen to these separately at one point, we would catch the chapter number and we would go, did I just say chapter 24 

[01:03:34] Tim: again?

[01:03:34] Donna: The last one I remember was chapter 12. What were, and so, you know, I did, they were incredibly short. I don’t think that’s bad. Especially depending on how you want to present it, your children, you know, is younger reading, right? Do you know, remember how many 

[01:03:53] Rebekah: chapters are in the book? 

[01:03:54] Tim: Oh, I have a guess. 78.

[01:03:57] Donna: Mom, dad. Didn’t end up at 

[01:03:58] Tim: a, at a 10. I was expecting it to end up at a 10 number. I was somewhere 

[01:04:03] Donna: in the 60s. Was it 80? Yep, exactly. Oh, 

[01:04:06] Tim: maybe she’s gaslighting us. She could be, but we all never know because she’s the only one with the book. 

[01:04:11] Rebekah: One of the things that I am going to add that was a little bit of a change that it reminds me because of the robot chasing, they did not, as mom said, capture Roz, take her to the ship, then she had to be, you know, rescued by Bright Bill.

But what does happen is that Bright Bill, um, so, well, hold on, let me go back. There is a little scene in the movie, I think earlier on where Bright Bill has to turn off Roz. Um, for some reason she has to, or he has to turn off the robot by hitting the button on the back of her. 

[01:04:45] Josiah: Maybe they’re just interested in the button in the book.

Like they don’t know what it’ll do. And they’re 

[01:04:48] Rebekah: interested. Yeah, they don’t know what it’ll do. And I just went back and read that. So in the book, it’s like he’s nervous for just a second. He hits it. He hits it again to turn her back on. She says, this is Rosam, blah, blah, blah. And then she comes back to herself.

She has all her memories, whatever. Um, but in the film, there’s a ton of conflict around it. Bright Bill is terrified. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her. Oh my gosh, how can I do this? So finally in the film, the same thing happens. Like he hits the button, turns the robot off, turns her back on, and she’s fine.

Like she remembers who she is and all of that. I bring that up just to say. That was a kind of a random little ad thing in the film that I thought was interesting. But in the book, Riko robots, the ones that were coming to retrieve her, what they do in the book is they hit that button, they shut the robot Roz down, and then Bright Bill immediately is able to turn her back on and like rescue her from being taken back to the ship.

So the, the film just kind of took part of that longer, like because of some of the other things that they like changed and added, but I thought that was interesting. 

[01:05:59] Tim: There was a small airship in the book that brought three robots, the Rico Reebok robots that we’ve been talking about, uh, to find and retrieve Ross.

The animals were able to defeat and destroy all of these robots, but Ross took the airship home. As she realized they would never stop coming and it would continually put their her forest family in danger in the film as we’ve discussed. It’s quite more intense. Um, and there’s an additional leader robot Ventra on the.

Much larger ship, a character that’s not in the book, and, um, she seems a lot more evil. 

[01:06:39] Rebekah: Ventra in the movie was like a bad guy. That 

[01:06:43] Tim: robot is making decisions. The others are following. What’s lampshading? 

[01:06:47] Josiah: They lampshaded it as in they openly admitted that something was wrong. Oh. And because when the writers mention that something doesn’t make any sense, Well, they know it doesn’t make any sense, so it’s okay now, which is a fallacy.

And so I do think Ventra said something like, Oh, I’m just doing my programming. It just so happens that my programming is something that you don’t like, or something like that. I think they lampshaded it in, in some sort of way. 

[01:07:15] Rebekah: I will also say in the, in the film, first of all, in the film they burn down half the forest, like, or more than half.

And remember, this is an island. Yeah, it’s on an island. It’s not like, you know, just like endless space. Yeah, go 

[01:07:30] Josiah: to the other, yeah, go a few miles down. 

[01:07:33] Rebekah: Yeah, it was much more crazy. And then also, in order to be, Retrieved, like because in both book and film, Roz realizes like, I can’t stay here, I’m going to put everyone in danger.

And in both, she also is kind of like, I want to come home, like, I don’t want to be gone forever, but right now I have to go home and figure out how to get away. And I think in the movie, she then turns her transmitter beacon back on and that’s how like another ship comes to find her. Does that sound right?

Maybe. Because in the movie she doesn’t just take the same ship home. They destroy the airship. They destroy that ship. That brought, 

[01:08:07] Josiah: yeah. I don’t know that she would have to turn her transmitter beacon back on. I think Venture made it clear that someone new was just coming. Right. I also wanted to mention about the button.

I think that you do lose something from the book. I think you and dad, Rebecca and dad, had a good point about. That you touched on, losing something from the book of there having to be a conflict about pressing the button. Whereas in the movie, Ventra pushes the button and there’s no conflict. Uh, Bright Bill pushes the button to bring her back to life, there’s no con The conflict is, we don’t know what the button will do.

[01:08:45] Rebekah: Like, is it a reset? 

[01:08:46] Josiah: Yes, but the fact that you take away the choice from Bright Bill and Ross to push the button in the first place, I think that that was one of the most interesting choices in the book. And although I really enjoyed the movie, I was, I thought it was unfortunate that you took away that choice, that existential choice.

Let’s talk about the ending. We do see an interaction between Bright Bill and Ross at the end of the film. It goes beyond the book’s ending sequence. In the book, the story ends, Roz is able to take the ship that the Ricos came on. It’s not destroyed in the book. And she goes into space. And 

[01:09:27] Rebekah: that’s where the, well, in the air, but yes.

[01:09:29] Josiah: In my head, in my reading, it was like she was going into space. That doesn’t feel right. But she was like going into space. That was what I was getting the vibe of. Like she was, she was going off. Our story 

[01:09:40] Rebekah: ends in the sky. Yeah. Not, not space. 

[01:09:45] Tim: I don’t think you’re certain in the book that she’s going back to the, to the robot place.

[01:09:50] Josiah: No, I don’t think it’s clear. So she, she basically says I can’t stay here and I’ll will. I feel like she says In her internal monologue, I will figure out a way to get back home and it and it not be the last line of the book is 

[01:10:05] Rebekah: she would find her way back home. 

[01:10:07] Josiah: So in the movie, she lets herself get taken by the next Ventra who comes together.

She doesn’t go off on her own. She she but she lets herself get captured. It is her choice. And so the movie actually adds this scene where Bright Bill during the next winter’s migration stops by the same large farm and Bright Bill is able to find his mother Roz. Roz subtly indicates that she is in fact the droid he’s looking for.

These are the droids you speak. No reference to another movie series. I don’t know if it mentions in the book, but the movie We had this visual cue where Bright Bill would curl up on this specific part of Roz’s neck and that would, that activates maybe feelings of love or motherly protection, stuff like that.

Okay, so Rebecca, I assume you loved this ending. 

[01:11:07] Rebekah: No, I didn’t. 

[01:11:08] Josiah: Because it was such a nice little bow. 

[01:11:11] Tim: Yay, they get reunited. Except she’s not the robot she was. She’s trapped. It 

[01:11:17] Rebekah: wasn’t a nice bow. She’s trapped somewhere. He doesn’t have her. I prefer the book ending. Okay, good. I definitely prefer the book ending.

Well, I’m 

[01:11:24] Josiah: so glad to hear that. I think that the movie ending was horrible in multiple ways. And it’s literally 20 seconds. People asked me that night, because I went to see a theater show after I watched the movie that Thursday, and people asked, Oh, was it good? I say, well, if you take the last 20 seconds out, I thought it was an amazing movie.

The last 20 seconds. Okay, Rebecca, I think That they focus tested the original ending. This is what I’m getting. This is what I get. This is what it’s giving, is what the young folks say. It’s giving focus groups didn’t like the ambiguous ending. They wanted something where it tells them, if Roz and Brightbow get back together, people who want the happy bow ending, they were like, we want it to be happy.

This is too sad and confusing. This was their, this was their answer. Some empty, vapid, nonsensical ruining. Yeah, I really feel 

[01:12:21] Tim: were you positive about that or 

[01:12:23] Donna: two things 

[01:12:23] Tim: about it. 

[01:12:24] Donna: I felt like they tried too hard to let you know, like, in case you’re too stupid to understand this, there’s a next movie to the other part was I felt like, um, and we’ve alluded to it a little bit in what we’ve talked about already, how there’s a balance to strike here.

We’re already making all the animals talk and reason, whatever, but the book doesn’t try to make Roz human. The book tries to keep her a robot. And I kind of, I felt like the movie hedged on that a little bit. 

[01:13:04] Rebekah: My guess, my guess, if Josiah’s right, which I can totally see. Being correct. The book was marketed to middle grades.

So we’re talking like, what is that fourth through sixth, fourth through sixth grade probably is kind of target audience here. I wonder if like the target audience was a little younger for the movie and maybe the kids were like, Okay. Sad or like upset by it. You know what I mean? And it would do with your point.

It would go to your point, but I just think it maybe it works in the book because the target audience is like a little older. I don’t know. Like I wouldn’t. I can imagine being a parent of like a small child and taking them to see a fun movie that they’re going to like. I probably don’t want to take them to something that’s going to make them sad for the rest of the day.

Like I understand that there’s good in it. Your kids are never 

[01:13:50] Josiah: going to be sad. Talk to them about that. 

[01:13:53] Rebekah: But that’s the point. If I’m taking my kids, it’s the same reason that, but see, it’s the same reason I don’t like movies that are super true to life. I go to movies to escape. And I think that little kids like go to let their imaginations run wild.

And I can understand the thought process of. You want parents to be really glad that they spent money on this movie. And if you’re thinking of like a studio executive, you also want parents to bring their kids back to see this movie 12, 000 times and to put it on repeat when it goes on Netflix 12, 000 times, because you get all of the money for all of those things.

And if you leave the kids leaving the theater and upsetting their parents, the parents are going to be like, Oh, that’s stupid movie. It ticked off my kid. It upset my daughter, like whatever. And it’s like, that’s, you’re not satisfying your target audience. Like inside out is an excellent movie to make you both of them to make you experience.

emotions and feelings. I mean, adults too, but like making kids see what it’s like to lose things and for things to go wrong and to be sad and all that stuff. But inside out ends making you feel good inside. So one 

[01:15:01] Donna: thing too might help both of you. I don’t know if does it help the way you think. I don’t know.

But when you were young, we didn’t shadow, we didn’t shield you from life stuff. So like when the kitty, when the kitty got in the, the, uh, antifreeze, 

[01:15:22] Rebekah: antifreeze, 

[01:15:23] Donna: we could have just disposed of the kitty, but we wanted, we, we put him in a little box and we covered him up with a little blanket and we wanted you all to understand And so I don’t even know if you remember that, but when you came home from school that day, we showed you, you know, this is what happened to him and, and we’re very sorry, but we wanted you to understand closure.

And Dad, as pastor, preached a lot of funerals, and you would go sometimes with him to a visitation to a, we didn’t try to keep those things from you when you were young. And I know a lot of parents make that decision and they totally can. That’s not wrong to say, you know, we don’t want to expose them to that or whatever.

But I think that may temper some of the way you think about these things, too. Um, and, and I, I definitely see both sides of what you said, but not trying to. You 

[01:16:17] Tim: regret what you did? 

[01:16:19] Donna: No, not for a minute. 

[01:16:20] Tim: Donna and I went to see a movie that, that I think was, was poorly made. Um, it was a wonderful movie about penguins and in the middle it had this really strange plot twist that just seemed to come out of nowhere.

I wasn’t trying to say it came out of nowhere and then they tried to finish the movie and it had the movie carried on in what it had been and what it tried to end up as. Um, it would have been a good movie. People would have said, wow, that was fun. I, I, I enjoyed that movie. But they tried to make it something different there in the middle to try to get something in there.

Um, and I understand, I understand both sides of this. I understand that you want to make a movie, do the right, do the right things to actually make the movie. I also understand that a lot of parents don’t want to expose their kids to one thing or the other. And it is a parent’s choice when to expose them.

So I think, you know, as long as parents are educated, Uh, are aware of some of the things I think that’s, I think it’s fine to, to help children learn these tough lessons. I think the book was about tough lessons. That’s why I said the thing about the death, there was a lot of death in the book and I thought it was purposeful to try to help kids to know this is what life actually is.

[01:17:46] Josiah: Ross kills, right? Bill’s mom in the movie and in 

[01:17:51] Rebekah: both. Yeah, in both. 

[01:17:52] Josiah: I didn’t take that out. No. 

[01:17:54] Rebekah: Yes, but if you do the last thing differently, the kids, you remember what’s at the beginning and the end, that’s literally just human nature. I’m just saying if you had a lot of friends with like small Children, And you went through this with them.

I think you would feel differently. Like I’m I’ve watched the effect of when kids get blindsided by something they don’t expect. And like when they’re small and parents don’t like know it’s coming and it just there’s already enough moments like that in life. There don’t have to be moments like that.

Like I understand why people do that in movies. 

[01:18:25] Josiah: Mom, dad, was it bad that I Cried at Bridge to Terre Bethia. It was difficult for us. 

[01:18:31] Rebekah: It was gut wrenching. It was a horrifying experience. They talked about it for years. About how traumatic it was for them to deal with how traumatic it was for you. 

[01:18:39] Tim: Literally year.

Then they shouldn’t have made that movie. Well, it would’ve been different if we had known if, if we had understood what the movie was about, we may have made a different decision or seen it. at a different time or talk to you about it beforehand. But it was, I 

[01:18:55] Rebekah: think 

[01:18:55] Tim: that’s what 

[01:18:55] Rebekah: I’m saying. 

[01:18:56] Tim: It was tough on you and as a parent not realizing what was going to happen.

Was, was a little tough. It’s like, Oh, we could have talked about this beforehand or we could have chosen to go see it next year, 

[01:19:09] Donna: but we didn’t get up and leave the movie won’t happen. We watched it to the end and finished it. And I don’t think it 

[01:19:14] Rebekah: would have made, I, like I said, I did not love the ending of wild robot.

Like I thought it felt contrived. So I’m not saying that, Oh my gosh, it was amazing. And I’m so glad they did that way. I’m just saying, like, if you’re thinking about how a movie is going to make money, Okay. And the fact that your target audience, your target audience is the kids, but your target audience is the parents who buy their tickets.

Like, I just can understand. Well, it’s not the 

[01:19:38] Josiah: only time we’ve done that. I’m saying that it’s unfortunate that in the pursuit of money, and I don’t think it’s accurate. I don’t think it will make more money because it had that ending. But in the pursuit of money, they made a worse movie. 

[01:19:53] Tim: I had a, I had a similar I think that’s bad.

I had a similar reaction to, uh, to the Lord of the Rings, um, the middle one. Good grief. Uh, Two Towers. Why did I know that? I’ve read them years and years and years. Um, but when they were making the movies, I made the comment to your mom that I don’t know how they’re going to make the second movie. And then wait two years to come out with the next one because the ending is so difficult.

Um, yeah, what they chose to do was they took bits and pieces out of the third book to give you hope at the end of the second movie because for the book, it’s like, okay, everything’s hopeless and all is lost. There’s a third book, but for a movie, for a movie watcher, it’s like, Oh, good. That one was horrible.

Why don’t I just wait till the third one’s out and we can watch them together? Um, otherwise it’s just depressing. So 

[01:20:57] Josiah: I’m sad that people don’t make good movies cause they don’t make money. 

[01:21:01] Donna: Because the making them to their best potential could lose some money at the box office and so they don’t do that.

I 

[01:21:08] Josiah: don’t think it’s true. I think that’s what studio directors, producers incorrectly think. 

[01:21:14] Tim: I think, I think the trying to make money being such a motivating factor is something that we see. That’s why we’ve got. You know, part two, part three here, this is a series and it’s like, wow, we, you know, we were not doing anything new.

We’re not exploring anything generally new. We’re just. We’re continuing the same kind of thing that we know makes money. 

[01:21:40] Donna: I’m going to move us into a little bit of information about the, the, some of the logistics and the payout of the book and film. Uh, the book was released on April 5th in 2016, just, it’s recent.

The movie. Eight years old. Yeah, it’s great, honestly. It’s not very long. It picked up quickly. Uh, the movie release was first at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8th and then September 27th it released in the U. S. The book rating is 4. 16 on Goodreads. The Rotten Tomatoes rating. Was a 98%. There’s one other.

That’s their highest. That 

[01:22:23] Rebekah: feels a little high. It’s 

[01:22:25] Donna: their. Am I crazy? It’s the highest. Feels like a little too high. 98 is the highest an animated film has gotten on Rotten Tomatoes. from DreamWorks. It tied with one other DreamWorks. Want to take a guess what it would be? 

[01:22:38] Tim: Despicable Me. How to Train Your Dragon.

Oh, How to Train Your Dragon, 2010. Both 

[01:22:43] Donna: of those got, uh, held onto 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. On IMDb, it was rated 8. 4 out of 10. I’m a little better with that. Like, I thought it would have a high rating, but 8. 4 out of 10. The Flickster audience score was also a 98%. So that was unusual that the, that the, uh, critic and, and audience stay the same like that.

Um, production cost, it was 78 million to make opening weekend. It made 36 million. Um, but keep in mind, these aren’t final numbers because the movie is, is still currently showing still at 

[01:23:22] Tim: the theater, 

[01:23:22] Josiah: although I do think it is already streaming. 

[01:23:26] Donna: I noticed, I noticed it is, it’s on streaming. I saw that today.

Anyway, um, But it’s a 36 million opening and then up to the last weekend, which is the numbers I would have had gotten this weekend up to last weekend in his first two weeks. It’s made 92 million in the USA and Canada, 64 worldwide. So it’s at 156. And I think it’ll, it’ll move on a little bit 

[01:23:49] Tim: more so far.

That’s only double the budget. 

[01:23:53] Rebekah: Which is means as far as pre COVID numbers that it was a moderate success. Is that like fine? And so maybe that’s 

[01:24:03] Josiah: They’re already working on a sequel. How 

[01:24:04] Rebekah: so are they? Yeah, that doesn’t shock me. How are multiple books, right? Three. Yeah, there’s three. There’s 

[01:24:11] Donna: a, um, and it was rated PG.

I felt like that was fair. Um, it’s clean. It has a lot of edgy 

[01:24:17] Josiah: death themes, but PG. You know. 

[01:24:19] Donna: Yeah. And then, of course. We say where it was filmed and I was like, oh, what do I do? Oh, it was filmed at DreamWorks Studio. Uh, la da da. Um, and so, um. 

[01:24:32] Josiah: I think I read it was the last film that was gonna be exclusively animated at DreamWorks.

[01:24:37] Donna: Oh. 

[01:24:38] Josiah: They announced. That’s interesting. Back in October that they’d start. outsourcing at least part of all of their future projects. Very odd. 

[01:24:48] Donna: Well, fascinatingly enough, not being a live action film, the kind of trivia we usually get was, you know, non existent. I found a whole bunch of stuff about how all the actors had been in all these other animated things.

But, you know, I just, but we did find a few kind of interesting things about it. So 

[01:25:10] Rebekah: my trivia Uh, is interesting. I think it comes from the physical. Uh, I do not think that it’s in the, uh, audio book, but author Peter Brown, after he sketched a robot in a tree. Asked the question, what would an intelligent robot do in the wilderness?

And the book was born, uh, and he describes in a couple of pages after the book finishes, like how that all started. And then he does this really cool thing where he shows a bunch of the original illustrations that he made, um, that ended up in the rest of the book. And there’s a couple, there’s several pages, um, where they go through stuff like this.

And so. Oh. Um, it’s quite fascinating. Yeah. So, and you can kind of see how the, the thing grew over time. And he said, I wanted readers to immediately understand that Roz was a robot. I didn’t want there to be any confusion, so I decided to keep her design very simple. 

[01:26:09] Josiah: Did you know that the robot’s name, Rozum?

derives from a Slavic word, razum, with one z. It means brains, cleverness, or reason. Wow. Razum 

[01:26:19] Tim: reason! Well, Brown has said that the book is a nod to a 1920 science fiction stage play. called Rossum’s Universal Robots, spelled with R O S S U M. The play introduced the word robot into the English language. It was written by Czech writer Karol Kapek.

It’s drawn from the Slavic word for robot, which also can mean labor. Play was the first use of the word to denote a mechanical humanoid. 

[01:26:55] Donna: The Alpha 113 is the main processor that the robots use in the book and film. This is a reference to Room A 113 at the California Institute of the Arts that was used by the graphic design and character animation students.

It’s also the room where the writer director Chris Sanders And the head of the story, uh, Heidi Jo Gilbert, studied at the Institute, so they both used that room. And the reason I kept this, or the reason I put this in was, I thought, uh, it’s fascinating. It’s the first Easter egg that DreamWorks has put into an animated film.

And that’s hard to think that that’s right, 

[01:27:40] Josiah: but. Hey, do you want to hear a little bit more about the robot invention word? 

[01:27:45] Donna: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

[01:27:46] Josiah: The play. You, it was Czech, and in the Czech language, it was saying Roboty. Body is the, is robots and robata ending with an A in Czech means forced labor. Kind that serfs had to perform.

Wow. Yeah. Um, although they, the robots depicted in the play were made of flesh and blood partially, so they would more often, they would more accurately in today’s parlance be called androids. I think my complaint about earlier is the rest of the movie is advanced for kids. 

[01:28:22] Rebekah: Agree, definitely agree. 

[01:28:25] Josiah: So what about this ending?

What if somehow the movie is able to portray that is very high concept Buckbeak Buckbeak. Oh, my God. Right, Bill? 

Right, Bill? I think the movie is definitely a brought in Buckbeak for sure. Rubius Hagrid barrels down the orange tree 

line. Razum Hagrid. Uh, and he says, is, are you my mother? Oh, it was so stupid that he knew exactly the robot to go up to.

But imagine he goes up to a robot, cause he’s a kid. You know, he’s a teenager or something like that. Okay, he’s just like seeing if the robot recognizes him. And she says, Yes, I do remember you and then it’s a beautiful reunion and then another five seconds you zoom out go down the line of robots and another Rosam robot looks on them hugging and Something about this Rosam robot that’s down the line Indicates that she’s the real Roz from the island.

Something about her neck. You do want to make a horror film, don’t you? 

[01:29:31] Rebekah: It’s not a horror film. I actually don’t hate this. Anyway, continue. Something about her neck. 

[01:29:36] Josiah: You just, you know somehow visually they weren’t able to completely Make her like every other Rosam that that’s the Ross and the the idea of I don’t know I don’t know how you feel about that, but it’s basically stealing the ending of the giver where 

[01:29:52] Rebekah: but basically the other Ross the fake the not Island Ross says yes, I remember you because she’s It’s designed to do the logical thing to help 

[01:30:02] Josiah: humans.

It would be a question. 

[01:30:04] Tim: That’s my idea. You’d probably have more than one of the robots that says, yes, I remember you. And then you would see the, the one that somehow you would know this is actually the one. 

[01:30:17] Josiah: Yeah. And there’s something like, it’s almost like it’s sad that Bright Bill’s having a moment with the wrong person.

But it’s also hopeful in another way, like it’s not all about bright bill. There is something sad about, um, the love for bright bill, not being just from Ross now, but now all the robots have love. So it’s, you know, it’s not all perfect. It’s, it’s messy. 

[01:30:42] Tim: I still, I still like the ending that the book had. It was messy to me.

Yeah. You weren’t sure exactly what she was going to do because she ends up in the sky. She’s in the leaving the island, but that’s all you really know is she’s leaving the island. 

[01:30:58] Rebekah: So, I think it is time to give our final verdicts. Does anyone want to go first? I’ll go. 

[01:31:03] Donna: I’ve said before, and I’ve said again this evening, I’m not a huge fan of animated films.

I have a list, a small list of things that I like and, and I have enjoyed. But as a rule, I don’t care for them. So I was kind of, oh, okay, we’re going to cover an animated film and it’s a kid’s book. But I have to say, I thought that, uh, the book kept moving, didn’t have a lot of weird down comes in it where I was just like, okay, what are we doing next?

What’s going to come next? It was interesting. He kept it fascinating. There were a great, a lot of great. Just practical life things in it that I thought were pretty cool. I think, 

[01:31:48] Musical Intro: hmm, 

[01:31:49] Donna: I don’t know if I really liked the book over the movie in to such a great degree that I would rank them that way. I thought the Fox was funny.

I thought that, you know, some, a few of those things we’ve talked about, so I would probably give a little edge to the book. That was a good experience. I had fun with it, and I’ve liked talking about it with you. 

[01:32:10] Tim: I can go next. Um, I would say that I, I liked both of them. I feel like they were two different things.

They were different enough that I would categorize them differently. Um, but I think I liked the book better because I, I was disappointed by some of the things in the film. I liked the book better. I 

[01:32:32] Rebekah: was probably in that same camp. Um, I, I liked the book because of the illustrations. I thought they were really, really nice and it helped keep me in it visually and connect with characters.

Um, I think I preferred the book because it felt a little more, I don’t know, it didn’t feel as much like I was watching something that a bunch of people decided that would make the most money, like as a standard kids movie. So it did feel a little more like there were things in it that were difficult or challenging or different.

And so I liked the book. I did enjoy the movie, so I definitely would like see it again. Um, but I think that just in general, there were a few choices that the movie made that I was like, this felt like we were trying a little bit too hard to satisfy someone rather than just like telling this story that works because it’s different.

So, that’s my thought. 

[01:33:26] Josiah: I liked the movie. I liked the book. I thought they were both great. You ignore the last 20 seconds of the film, but, um, I mean, they literally started on the island. They cut the crash scene, which was great. And to keep it all on the island, uh, would have been so much nicer. 

[01:33:47] Rebekah: Yeah, would you have rather bright bill told his story and we not have seen it?

[01:33:52] Josiah: I’m like, oh cuz it’s a movie Not a book where you tell people things true So I just don’t think there was I don’t think you could have kept it exactly the same as the book Where the, in the middle of the book where they go to the farm. But I don’t think that the, what the movie did was the right choice either.

Generally, I really enjoyed the movie. I thought, I’m, I guess I’m sad I missed out on the illustrations of the physical book. Because, uh, I think they did a really good job. It was a beautifully animated film, I thought. 

[01:34:26] Rebekah: Yes. 

[01:34:27] Josiah: Oh yeah. It wasn’t quite standard CGI. It was a little bit of that Puss in Boots Last Wish.

Almost a Spider Verse that almost comic book y style, except this one leaned a little more towards a painting. Almost like a painted novel. I think someone described it as a Studio Ghibli Monet. Altogether, they were both great. And I would probably I’d probably read the book next, if I had the choice.

Cause I, I missed, you know, if I missed anything, which, I mean, we go over these and we go, we have a lot of reminders in these podcast episodes. Uh, you know, you, you say this happened and I was like, oh yeah, that did happen. I remember that now. But I’d love to be reminded of stuff, but I think I would say that I guess the movie I like a little better, I guess.

It was good, 

[01:35:19] Rebekah: for sure. Well, I am so glad that all of you are still with us. If you enjoyed this episode, there are a couple of things you can do. First of all, go find us on Patreon. You can follow for free, but we do have a couple of paid tiers, um, with some additional. bonuses that we’d love to add. Please also leave us a five star rating or review.

Um, it makes a huge difference. We love to see those and read them to each other. It’s always really, really exciting. It just takes a few minutes and it blesses us greatly. You can find us on X Instagram and Facebook at book is better pod to send feedback, ask us questions to answer on future episodes and just have fun with the hosts.

You can join our free discord server at the link in the episode description. If you’re not in a dis. You can also email us bookiesbetterpod at gmail. com and until next time, I’m a 

[01:36:14] Donna: wild robot. I’m the fox who wasn’t in the 

[01:36:17] Musical Outro: book. Becca for finding this story for us. Where did the beavers go? Beaver, beaver, beaver, mushroom, mushroom.

Beaver, beaver, beaver, beaver, beaver. 

[01:36:29] Rebekah: Badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom.

[01:36:46] Josiah: So what about this ending? What if Buckbeak, Buckbeak. Oh, my God. Bright Bill, Bright 

Bill. I think the movies definitely have brought in Buckbeak, for sure. Rubius Hagrid, barrels down the orange tree line.