YMMV / Robots

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Tim always a Jerkass Nice Character, Mean Actor, or was he originally a decent and friendly guy who Took a Level in Jerkass after working under the corrupt and uncaring Ratchet for a long time? Him being kicked out of the party in Rivet Town by Wonderbot could most likely suggest the former.
  • Ratchet — is he a purely evil character who genuinely wants to wipe out Bigweld and all of the outmodes? Or is he just hiding a simple wish for the richer and shinier robots to get an equal amount of attention behind the ambition of his mother, thus making him Not Evil, Just Misunderstood?
    • According to the "Meet the Bots" special feature on the DVD, Greg Kinnear seems to view him as closer to the latter.
    Greg Kinnear: I think Ratchet's misunderstood. Evil? No. Some would say. He's sorta the head of a global corporation and the #2 guy next in line. He's a bit ambitious and, uh, yes, it's true he'd do anything to get what he wants or needs—including basically disembowel the robots. But he's still a decent guy if you really get to know him.
  • Madam Gasket's last words consist of first a panicked "What are you doing!? Get off me!" when her son clings to her then firmly yelling "Let me go! Do as I say! Get off!" While one could take this to mean she's still as overbearing as ever, the situation they're both in—namely swinging dangerously close to the incinerator—makes one wonder if she was trying to protect Ratchet, telling him to let go of her because she knows if he doesn't, he'll die with her. Maybe fails to make her sympathetic, since she basically planned to destroy all the outmodes, but definitely reminds us that Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
• Awesome Music:
  • Tom Waits' "Underground" for when we first see the Chop Shop, which sadly wasn't included on the soundtrack album. But fortunately, we do see it listed in the end credits.
  • Herb Copperbottom's robotic rendition of "Get Up Offa That Thing". Especially the part where Diesel is given - by Bigweld himself - a custom part that gives him James Brown's voice.
  • John Powell's percussion-and-brass-heavy score (accompanied by none other than Blue Man Group).
  • "Shine" by Ricky Fanté is an uplifting and catchy song that inspires you to be the very best that you can be, no matter what the rest of the world says. Extremely fitting for the main message that Robots is sending across.
  • The credits of the movie's short Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty features David Bowie's "Suffragette City."
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • To many people, Fender is either the best and funniest character in the movie, backed up by his performance by Robin Williams, a funny enough character who simply gets more screentime than necessary, or the most annoying character in the movie.
  • Cappy. Some people find her a likeable enough character whose reason for developing an admiration for Rodney is understandable, while others find her presence rather forced and feel that her romance with Rodney doesn't have a lot of depth to it.
  • Rodney himself could even be considered one. There's one crowd who praises him for being a great role model for children due to his refusal to give up no matter what happens, and there's another who finds him rather dull when compared to some of the other more comedic characters and say that there isn't much about him that's distinctive or eccentric.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Domino surfing! Though it did allow Bigweld to make an entrance worthy of Willy Wonka himself.
• Catharsis Factor: Wonderbot kicking Tim out of the party as revenge for his cruelty to Rodney is sweet payback.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A character in an animated kids' movie farting is one thing. A character in an animated kids' movie making a fart so bad it kills someone (complete with a Chalk Outline on the sidewalk the next morning) is on another level entirely.
• Cult Classic: In wake of their closure 16 years after this movie was released, this was Blue Sky's only film not to be part of a franchise or an adaptation, and tends to get swept under the rug, but it has a strong enough audience of nostalgic fans who keep its memory alive.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Loretta Geargrinder. Despite being a very minor character, she does have a bit of a following among the fanbase, even being included as a key supporting character in some fanfics.
  • Tim, the puppet-like robot at the gate of Bigweld Industries. He doesn't have much screentime, but he wastes no time showing how much of an unapologetic and hilarious asshole he is while he gets some well deserved Laser-Guided Karma at the hands of Wonderbot.
• Fanfic Fuel: Who built the robots? Unlike Cars, where the world-building is quite unfinished, Robots has clear rules about how a robot is "born" and the cities are clearly built by them. Is it an After the End scenario or merely an Alternate Universe? And in both cases, who was the first robot?
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Although the film ended up being a somewhat modest box office success, grossing just $128,200,012 domestically, there were some countries that received it enthusiastically:
  • It was quite popular in Mexico, particularly because of the inclusion of singer Aleks Syntek voicing Rodney in the Latin Spanish dub. Furthermore, Syntek's song "Un Heroe Real" was featured in the end credits for that dub and ended up winning the film an MTV Movie Award for Best Song.
  • The film's Swedish dub had many big names from that country voicing some of the characters - the Wahlgren brothers Linus and Niclas as Rodney and Ratchet respectively, comedian Robert Gustafsson as Fender, singer Anna Sahlin as Cappy, A-Teens member Marie Serneholt as Piper and 60's singer Svante Thuresson as Bigweld to name a few. The movie ranked No. 1 at the Swedish box office when it was released there, overtaking Hitch and beating the simultaneous opening of The Ring Two, and stayed on top for two weeks until being taken down by Miss Congienality 2: Armed And Fabulous.
  • In New Zealand, the film topped the box office for three weeks, beating Miss Congeniality 2 on its opening weekend there, and barely missed the top 10 highest-grossing films of the year there by the time it had finished its run there.
  • While the film was only a mild success in Germany, singer Sarah Connor, who voiced Cappy in the German dub, released a music video called From Zero to Hero, which uses footage from the film, to coincide with its release there. The song also features during the closing credits in the German dub.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The core plot of the film: Old model bots struggling to stay alive because the villain stopped making spare parts and wants them to stop fixing themselves, so that they are forced to pay huge sums of money for shiny new upgrades. These days there's an ongoing legal battle with large technology companies like Apple versus ordinary users and repair shops, with the companies trying to make it effectively illegal for people to repair their own devices through anything less than a certified technician from the manufacturer, lest they instantly void the warranty. "Official" repairs can often cost FAR more than any local repair shop may offer, and it's not uncommon for a certified technician to suggest total replacement of a device even when the problem is incredibly mundane and fixable in a few minutes without any additional parts. Vehicle makers like Tesla and John Deere use digital systems built into the machines to force the stranglehold even harder by being able to remotely lock down the vehicle until official technicians take a look at them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact that Bigweld was modeled after Walt Disney got a whole lot funnier when it was announced that Disney was purchasing 20th Century Studios (and therefore Blue Sky) in 2017 and finalized in March of 2019. The fact that Bigweld is played by Mel Brooks, who famously made a parody of one of Disney's big name acquisitions in the deal, make it that much funnier.
  • Take a look at Bigweld and say that he doesn't look quite a lot like a prototyped BB-8.
  • Diesel wouldn't be the last sentient robot who would speak through the radio.
  • A huge green robot named Lugnut? Sounds familiar...
  • Likewise, it won't be the last time Harland Williams voiced a robot character. Oh, and it's another film that had William Joyce's involvement.
  • Only a year after part of this film revolved around "upgrades", Doctor Who brought back the Cybermen, for whom "upgrading is compulsory."
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Ratchet and Madame Gasket are the villains of the film, but both of them are compelling and entertaining to watch because they both have plenty of funny moments (especially Ratchet, who frequently Screams Like a Little Girl), and their mother-and-son relationship is actually slightly heartwarming sometimes. Mr. Gunk and Tim, on the other hand, are not evil, but both are obnoxious Hate Sinks. Mr. Gunk is a grumpy Mean Boss to Herb and Rodney, as demonstrated in the scene where Wonderbot inadvertently wrecks the kitchen. The incident only happened because Mr. Gunk shouted at them upon entering the room, and Wonderbot, being easily startled, got a bad fright from it (effectively making it Mr. Gunk's fault in more ways than one). And then, when Rodney tries to explain that all had been going well beforehand and prevent his father from taking all of the blame, Mr. Gunk fires him and scoffs at his dream of becoming an inventor. Tim is a particularly notorious showcase of this trope, too; the scene of him slamming the front gate to Bigweld Industries in Rodney's face says it all, and so does the scene afterwards of him taking delight in Rodney's misfortune after the latter becomes magnetized. Thankfully, both of them get hit by karma at the end — Mr. Gunk gets Herb's dishwasher dunked on his head, and Tim gets kicked out of the Rivet Town dance party by Wonderbot as payback for his mean treatment of Rodney.
• Love to Hate: Gasket and Ratchet have no redeeming qualities and are nothing more than genocidal, power-hungry maniacs who only care about their own goals. However, they are entertainingly hammy and have some comedic moments to balance out their near-complete lack of redeeming qualities (the only quality they have being their mutual love) meaning they avoid being complete Hate Sinks like, for example, Tim the Gate Guard.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Upgrades, people! Upgrades!" People love to quote that line whenever there is some kind of Serial Escalation involved. Especially the darkly hilarious type.
  • Bigweld himself has become popular with being portrayed as an invincible god-like entity or anime character who can rival or is even seen as more powerful than Shaggy.
  • "Gimme those big anime eyes."
  • This clip and variations of it have become popular in early 2021.
  • Robots (2005)/Also Robots (2005) ^Explanation A lot of memes center around pointing out how the movie features some genuinely profound social commentary, while also having scenes like an armpit fart contest and a woman with a comically large butt killing a man by farting.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The tie in video game is a surprisingly solid 3D Collect-a-Thon Platformer that manages to tie in the plot of the movie to the levels rather well.
• One-Scene Wonder: Diesel with his Darth Vader voice box.
• Signature Scene:
  • The marble train scene is extremely well-remembered, for perfectly illustrating the movie's crazy, yet very inventive nature.
  • The domino scene for the same reason, showing impossible complex set-ups all culminating in Bigweld's Crazy Is Cool entrance.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • This is arguably the closest there is to a movie adaptation of Scrapland, which came out a year prior to this movie.
  • It's also a darker and more mature version of Little Robots; a blue robot that likes to fix up other robots that are in need of repair with a cast of colorful characters. Even the designs of Little Robots don't look out of place of William Joyce's work.
• Strangled by the Red String: The movie ends with Rodney and Cappy as a couple despite there hardly being anything beforehand that shows these two developing feelings for one another. The most egregious part being the moment where Bigweld assumes that Rodney is Cappy's boyfriend despite there being no romantic interest in one another beforehand, yet they just go along with it afterwards.
• Strawman Has a Point: A minor example with Mr. Gunk in his second scene. We're supposed to see him as unreasonable for not letting Herb go out to see Rodney after so long, and him having Herb's dishwasher dunked on his head is meant to be taken as justified because of how much of a prick he has been beforehand, but there is in fact some merit to his argument, since Herb was about to walk away from his job without asking if he could leave first, something that employees don't exactly make themselves look good through doing. Yes, it's hard to completely take his side because he was being his usual Mean Boss self, and Herb by this point had had more than enough of that kind of attitude from him, but once you see the point Mr. Gunk had underneath it all, you can't un-see it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Lug and Diesel, the respective green and blue robots of the Rusties, don't get much in the way of development compared to the other characters. While Diesel's character mainly consists of the occasional Pantomime joke, Lug's character is reduced to a few lines throughout the whole movie, though a deleted scene implies that they originally planned for him to have somewhat of a short temper. As such, some people wish these two were fleshed out a bit more, especially with their status of being best friends being hinted at.
• Trans Audience Interpretation:
  • Many fans often interpret Rodney as a trans man due to the fact that he had to wear "hand-me-downs," as in body parts, from his female cousin around the time a human would start puberty. He's clearly embarrassed by this, and he gets rid of them upon becoming a young adult.
  • Some people believe that Fender is trans or has an Ambiguous Gender Identity, since he doesn't seem to mind dressing up as a woman.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Considering the amount of detail and texture put into the robots and the metal environment they live in, this is easily one of Blue Sky's best-looking films, and the animation has aged surprisingly very well since 2005.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Not as bad as most animated films of the time, but the movie has some surprisingly raunchy humor in the form of innuendos.

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