Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
In 2007, several years before beginning its new renaissance of renowned films like Frozen & Zootopia, Walt Disney Animated Studios released Meet The Robinsons, an animated film based on the classic children’s book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce. It follows orphan and aspiring inventor Lewis who is struggling to be adopted as he is recruited by orphan Wilbur to go into the future to save it from an evil “Bowler Hat Guy” and his evil hat Dor-15.
During the movie, Lewis learns the value of mistakes, something I didn’t pick up on since I was very little when I saw the movie. At first, he feels his mistakes are what is causing him to remain an orphan, as shown when his peanut butter jelly making machine results in a potential adoptee’s allergic reaction and his memory scanner’s malfunction ruining his school’s science fair. It is also Lewis’s mistakes of staying late to work on said memory scanner that resulted in Bowler Hat Guy’s, (who unbeknownst to him is his roommate Goob) reason for losing a baseball game and trying to ruin the future.
Lewis also learns the value of family. When sent to the future, he gets to meet the Robinsons and bond with them, especially Franny and her frogs, Uncle Bud, and robot butler Carl. They are the ones that teach him the importance of “Keep Moving Forward”, something said by inventor and Robinson family patriarch Cornelius (and Walt Disney). Later Lewis learns that he is in fact Cornelius and thus Wilbur’s son and after defeating Dor-15, his own invention that turned against Goob, he refuses to meet his birth mother and fix his own mistakes at the science fair, during which he is adopted by science fair judge Lucille and Bud, and meets a young Franny.
This movie is important as I saw how when people such as inventors make mistakes, they should not dwell on them and have their futures ruined, but keep moving forward and look to the future. Without failure, there can be no true success. Also, when adopted children are taken into new families, they can realize that said families may not be biological, but love and treat them with respect and dignity.