The Wild Robot: parents' guide
Best for ages 8 and up. Rated PG for action/peril and thematic elements.
A beautiful, moving animated adventure for families with kids ready for sad moments, about a robot stranded on a wild island who raises an orphaned gosling. Death is part of nature here: early on Roz accidentally crushes a goose and her nest, leaving one egg, and predators, a brutal winter and a forest fire claim other animals mostly off screen. Later, armed robots fire on fleeing geese, and Roz is captured and forcibly reprogrammed. The gosling is also teased by other geese for being different. Language and romance are basically absent. The orphan story, animal deaths and robot attack are why we suggest 8.
What's in it
Violence
ModerateRoz accidentally kills a mother goose and all but one of her eggs. A fox knocks a crab into boiling water and eats it, a nest is littered with bones, and armed robots shoot at geese and island animals amid explosions. A gang of raccoons tries to pull Roz apart for scrap.
Language
MildMild: the stand-in 'male bovine excrement,' one 'sucked,' one misuse of God's name, and insults such as dummy, freak show, weirdo, loser and runt.
Sex and nudity
NoneNo romance, kissing or nudity.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
NoneNo drinking, smoking or drugs.
Scary or intense scenes
ModerateThe opening goose deaths, a blizzard and a wildfire that endanger the animals, menacing robots that hunt Roz, and a sequence where she is seized and her memory overwritten. Baby possums cheerfully joke about dying, which may confuse little kids.
Sensitive topics
- Death of a parent
- Animal death
- Bullying
Worth talking about
Roz learns that kindness can be chosen even when it is not in her programming. What makes someone a parent, and can a family be built from very different members?
On our lists
Similar picks around 8+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, Rotten Tomatoes, movieguide.org, the MPA. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.