William Joyce and the Robots

Posted on March 12, 2005

Bestselling children's author William Joyce collaborated with director Chris Wedge of Ice Age fame to create a new world populated entirely by robots for the new animated feature film, Robots, which is garnering good reviews. Robin Williams supplies the voice of Fender, the sidekick to the star robot named Rodney who tries to stop a dastardly plot to replace all the aging robots with shiny new ones. Williams improvised many of his lines and steals any scene he is in. In a recent interview with Time for Kids, Joyce shared his thoughts about which character in the film are most like him:

Joyce says, "I think that I'm a little bit like Mr. Bigweld the guy who made up the whole city because I had to make up and invent so much of what was in the movie and in this world. And then, I'm a lot like the little character called the Wonderbot, who is always trying to get in the middle of things and help things out and make things work, and he keeps getting beat up, and smacked around, and bashed in, and smushed, and he keeps coming back."

He also says, "I'm a little like Rodney Copperbottom, the hero of the movie, because Rodney comes from a small town and goes to a big city because it's his dream to be a great inventor. And I came from a small town, and I went to the big city, Los Angeles and New York, so that I could write books and make up stories, and do movies.

Robots is in theaters now.