Kris Bowers on Scoring ‘The Wild Robot’ and Why It Made Him Reflect on Parenthood

Dreamworks Animation’s latest film “The Wild Robot” impacted composer Kris Bowers in ways he did not expect.

Director Chris Sanders called on Bowers to write the music for the animated feature about a robot named Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) marooned on an uninhabited island. “From the beginning, Chris told me he was going to rely heavily on music for this film. He said he specifically had moments where he wanted the music to lead us emotionally, Bowers explains.

Not only did the music lead audiences emotionally, but its themes of family, community and relationships struck a chord with Bowers.

“The Wild Robot” marks Bowers’s first foray into scoring animation. He began work on the score shortly after the birth of his daughter and spent the next two years fine-tuning the music.

Roz learns to adapt to her harsh surroundings, slowly building relationships with the other animals on the island. Catherine O’Hara, Mark Hamill and Pedro Pascal are among the voice cast. One relationship dynamic is between Roz and an orphaned gosling named Brightbill (Kit Conner). Roz raises him and teaches him valuable survival lessons such as flying and swimming before migration season sets in.

In putting the main theme together, Bowers knew it needed to encompass the idea of family, how the island represented it, and the relationship between Brightbill and Roz. “That was the first theme I wrote,” Bowers says. “I went on to write Roz’s theme which you hear at the beginning of the movie and it plays throughout.”

Bowers knew the migration scene needed to be as big as possible, so he approached it early on. On his first passing, Bowers admitted, “I wrote something that I felt proud of, and I brought it to Chris, and he said ‘This doesn’t feel right. You should imagine dropping [your daughter] Coda off at college’”

That suggestion was what the composer had in mind, but the more he and Sanders collaborated, the more Bowers came to a realization. Says Bowers, “It dawned on me that I didn’t want to imagine saying goodbye to her under the circumstances and that Roz and Brightbill are at that point. There are these things that are possibly irreparable that have happened in their relationship, and they aren’t saying, ‘I love you,’ they aren’t saying goodbye, and they might not see each other ever again.”

The emotional resonance of Roz and Brightbill’s friendship struck Bowers and made him reflect on his relationship with his daughter. Riding the wave of emotion that overcame him, Bowers says he wrote the theme and brought it to Sanders. “He was so moved by it and he had some notes. But he encouraged me to score away from picture.”

Bowers wrote over 80 minutes of music for “The Wild Robot.” He steered clear of instruments that could be linked to specific cultures. In finding a wild and futuristic sound, Bowers discovered an ensemble group, “Sandbox Percussion,” four men who play percussive sets. “They use glass bottles that are all tuned chromatically, teacups, planks of wood and cowbells,” Bowers says. “I felt that sound would be an interesting texture for the sound of the wilderness.” Elsewhere, synth sounds became the foundation for Roz.

Fink (voiced by Pascal) also featured the Sandbox Percussion instruments in his theme. “My approach was this sly, jazzy, bluesy vibe with a fun groove. A lot of it is to play up how mischievous he is and how he’s playing Roz,” explains Bowers. “But just before they do the rescue mission, there’s a sweet tender version of his theme played with clarinet, and it’s really soft and understated.” Bowers revisits the theme later, this time around the music is “tender and slightly reharmonized.” By the end, when Roz decides what to do on the island, Fink becomes attached to her, and his theme can be heard. Again, Bowers tweaked the harmony and orchestration to reflect how the character has evolved. “It doesn’t have the same bluesy sly feeling to it, it’s become more wholesome,” says Bowers.

Ultimately, Roz and the community of animals become close friends, but she needs to make a decision and sacrifice herself in order to keep her newfound friends safe, so she returns to the factory. That moment resonated with Bowers. “There was so much in this movie that at this time in my life was so emotional. I was thinking about my wife sacrificing things for our daughter and family. I thought about my mom, as the breadwinner in my family. She’d go to work at six in the morning, come home and make us food.” Bowers continues, “I thought about so many of those things and that’s why the emotion was so easy to tap into. This reminds me of ‘Bambi’ or ‘The Lion King’ and how they deal with death and difficult topics, it was important to handle this, not with kid gloves, but to be grounded and seriously emotional with it.”