The Irwin family has been in the news a lot lately, after the wildfires in Australia have caused mass destruction.
Steve Irwin’s son, Robert, has taken to Instagram to spread some positivity.
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There’s two things to know here:
In this iteration, Dolittle must help save Queen Victoria from a mysterious illness with the help of his animal friends.
And for the second, far more important point:
To give some perspective, over 15.6 million acres of it have been burned since September. 25 people have died, 2000 homes have burned, and over a billion animals have been killed.
Robert and Robert are both dedicated to saving the planet.
For Downey, it involves using technology to help the environment — just like his on-screen counterpart, Tony Stark.
“Between robotics and nanotechnology we could probably clean up the planet significantly, if not entirely, within a decade,” he said at Amazon’s RE:Mars.
Irwin, of course, is part of the amazing Irwin family.
He is the son of Terri and the late Steve Irwin, world-renowned conservationists and environmentalists.
He works at the Australia Zoo alongside his mother and sister Bindi, where they’ve saved over 90,000 animals.
They both appeared on Australia’s “The Today Show.”
“The first time I met @robertdowneyjr was when I was just a few months old when he and his family visited @australiazoo – it was awesome getting to catch up again to chat all things #Dolittle !”
Look how small he was!
“One of the kindest people you’ll meet, and an incredible advocate for our environment! (Keep an eye out for Robert and I on Australia’s @thetodayshow this Wednesday),” he wrote on his Instagram.
They then sat down for an interview.
Robert Irwin, who was used to being on the other side of the dynamic, sat down to interview someone else for the first time on Australia’s The Today Show .
Downey said he’d take it easy on him, bless.
Robert kicked off his Robert interview with the story of that visit.
“I gotta say, the last time I caught up with you, I was teething,” Irwin said.
“It was a very long time ago. You visited our zoo in Australia, our animal sanctuary.”
Downey said he remembered it fondly.
“I know my dad absolutely loved touring you around the zoo. One of the highlights of his life,” Irwin revealed.
“Me and my firstborn, Indio, really will never forget it,” Downey said.
He said he wanted to make “Dolittle” for a very specific reason.
He wanted to make movies kids could see.
“I realized when I was a kid kid, the types of movies — whether it was Fantasia , or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , those were the types of films that were really shaping my idea of storytelling through entertainment.”
Conservation is important to Downey, too.
Irwin explained that the reason the Irwins were big fans of Downey’s movies was because of his dedication to conservation.
He founded the Footprint Coalition, an organization that launched with the goal to save the earth through technology and innovation.
He came up with it on the fly, basically.
“Most ideas I have that wind up becoming good ideas, it’s not like I really cultivate them over time. I just kinda like, I get a wild hair and I make a proclamation, and I have to follow through with it.”
He did it to make the world better for the future.
“What I can say, and the onus is really in handing it off to your generation […] it being the Information Age, it’s just such an amazing time to be the inheriting generation.”
And he wants to pass it off to them.
“All of us should be striving to do something that we can hand off to our capable younger folk. They’ll wind up doing it correctly at some point, I imagine.”
The Australia fires are a now problem, however.
Australia is completely on fire. There’s a number of ways for you to help:
The World Wildlife Fund is collecting donations to help restore animal habitats, the Australian Red Cross needs donations, and of course the Irwins’ own Wildlife Warriors is always accepting help.
