Review of I,Robot

[Spinward Scout]

Hey Everyone!

I thought I'd post this here instead of Random Static since Robots are so prevalent in the Traveller universe.

Last week I got I, Robot on Books on CD from my library and listened to it in my truck. Really cool stories, I found myself drawn into the world. As a collection of short stories, it's really good. As a novel, each story connected by one main character, it was a really neat commentary on Man's Attempt At Creation. I've also found, after reading/listening to it, that many movie or TV robot/androids take lessons from this book.

I, Robot the Movie is "loosely based on the book by Issac Asimov" according to the credits at the beginning of the movie. I found it to be a very good extrapolation of Mr. Asimov's work. I'd say the movie could be considered a mix of I, Robot the book, and Blade Runner - which was based on a book called "Do Robots Dream Of Electric Sheep" (and Will Smith's character uses a prop gun that looks very similar to Dekker's gun in Blade Runner). A visually exciting movie, and if there was a good reference for Traveller gamers to use to show the prevalance of Robots in a world, this would be it. At one point in the movie, one of the characters says something about there being 1 robot for every 5 people in the world, and some of the opening scenes reflect this. Slightly cartoonish in the visual effects department, I'd say the movie is probably 75% CGI. Good acting all around. I would have liked to see a few more different types of robots, but the demolition robot was a very nice touch. Painted yellow with rust and dirt to look like an old Caterpillar tractor or something similar.

Roger Ebert rated this kinda poorly. I have to disagree with him. I really liked this movie.

Hope you like it too,

Scout

 

[trader jim]

Thanx for the review....its good enough for me!!!!
it sounds like its worth a couple of bucks....
Bside its a good excuse to get out of the house and stuff myself with good buttery movie type popcorn and all the other goodys!!! AND
Roger Ebert dont know any thing about Sci-Fi any way!!!!!...he also dont know anything about TRAVELLER!!!

 

[Jame]

I'm gonna see it, I think. It kinda looks like a reworked cross between "The Caves of Steel" and "The Naked Sun," with a new detective and a different partner.

 

[Evo Plurion]

I'm seeing it tonight, because I'm starved for science fiction movies, but I don't expect it to resemble Asimov's stories much at all. He wrote his stories to present robots as benevolent servants. No robots in his stories ever resorted to violence against humans. In fact, his portrayal of the immutable Three Laws of Robotics can be seen as a suggestion of the ideal behaviour to which mankind should aspire.

The trailer makes it obvious that someone throws a "switch" which removes robots' compulsion to follow the laws. This completely removes the most important concept of the stories - that robots cannot be built without the governing parameters of the Three Laws. The movie goes so far as to indicate which robots are "bad" by giving them red lights glowing through their chests.

Too bad I, Robot has been made into a blockbuster instead of a film.

I hope tonight proves my cynicism unfounded.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Actually, the seed of this movie is in the last story in I, Robot the book when the main character is talking to someone about robots running everything. The story has very sinister overtones that the robots are building up for some kind of revolution or something.

Also another seed for the movie is the story where the one robot is told to get "lost" and it's series, the "Nester's", only have a partial first law - to not harm humans. Not the full law that says not to harm humans or allow them to come to harm. The Nester's or NS-5 series are the "antagonists" of the movie. This movie, to me, is an extrapolation of the stories in the book I, Robot.

Funny, tho, I always pictured Dr. Calvin with glasses.

Later,

Scout

 

[Evo Plurion]

Nope. I was right. It was awful.

Nice CGI effects, but they can't redeem a careless exploitation of Dr. Asimov's vision. Who sold the movie studios the rights to I, Robot anyway? Obviously Janet Asimov wasn't consulted.

 

[EntilZha]

I found "I, Robot" worth the price of admission. They explained to the audience what the Three Laws were (something I worried they might not do), and, to their credit, did include Dr. Susan Calvin in the story (a fine performance by Bridget Moynihan. At first I thought she was played by Chloe Annett, who played Krissie Kochanski in the 7th and 8th seasons of "Red Dwarf". The resemblance was remarkable. But I digress). Action is Will Smith's forte and it shows, his prior experiences serving him well in the film. The NS-5 called Sunny is a character one can feel sympathy for. I especially liked the surprise climax where we find out who's REALLY responsible for the robot trouble (I'm not going to give it away, you'll just have to go see it yourself.

). Some people will like it, some will hate it, I just happen to find myself in the former rather than the latter camp.

 

[Evo Plurion]

I suppose that if Asimov hadn't written his novels, and if someone had made an original movie along these lines, I might have enjoyed it more. Like I said, I'm starved for science fiction movies. The design and visual effects of this movie were very good.

However, Asimov did write the novels, and they became classics of science fiction. He conceived the Three Laws in order to tell exactly the kind of story that this movie is not: an intelligent, thought-provoking view of technology and morality, not driven by violence.

I wonder why the movie's producers bothered to attach Asimov's name and ideas to it. Upon introducing the Three Laws and their fundamental importance to the construction and behaviour of the robots, the movie then shows the Laws being "shut off" with no difficulty. In the novels, the Laws were hard-wired into the robots' positronic brains - immutable and incorruptable. If circumstances presented a robot with an inevitable violation of any of the Laws, it would shut down.

Since the movie didn't portray the essence of original idea at all, it could have been named something else, omitted any mention of the Three Laws or of Susan Calvin, and would have ended up as good a movie with as wide an audience without exploiting a great author's vision.

 

[EntilZha]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
the movie then shows the Laws being "shut off" with no difficulty.

The way I saw it, the Three Laws were not "shut off", but re-interpreted in a way that was both clever and chilling. Like some of Asimov's "Robot" stories, it's a cautionary tale of putting too much faith in machines.

 

[EntilZha]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
The movie goes so far as to indicate which robots are "bad" by giving them red lights glowing through their chests.

The red light on their chests indicated they were receiving downloads/updates from USR central, which also indicates that the "bad" robots were being controlled, in part or in whole, by the USR mainframe.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Yeah I know. But seeing as no such indicator would actually be necessary, the lights were there for the audience's benefit, nothing more.

 

[EntilZha]

Originally posted by Evo Plurion:
Yeah I know. But seeing as no such indicator would actually be necessary, the lights were there for the audience's benefit, nothing more.

I agree that it makes it easier for the audience to keep up, maybe a red light was a little contrived, but it works for the most part. All our computers have messages, indicators, icons, etc. that let us know when new programs or files are being downloaded. Why shouldn't a robot have something similar? For these robots, it just happened to be a red light to let its owner know it was in contact with the manufacturer's computer. Also, the robots were inactive when receiving updates from USR, so it has to let the owner know somehow it's going to be offline for a few minutes. There weren't any screens built into their chests or forehead or anything.

 

[Evo Plurion]

Originally posted by EntilZha:
I agree that it makes it easier for the audience to keep up, maybe a red light was a little contrived, but it works for the most part. All our computers have messages, indicators, icons, etc. that let us know when new programs or files are being downloaded. Why shouldn't a robot have something similar? For these robots, it just happened to be a red light to let its owner know it was in contact with the manufacturer's computer. Also, the robots were inactive when receiving updates from USR, so it has to let the owner know somehow it's going to be offline for a few minutes. There weren't any screens built into their chests or forehead or anything.

Forgive me, but isn't this a little silly? The red lights were used to signal the audience that bad things were happening. If the film had been a sincere interpretation of the original novels, there would be no red lights and no uplink to some nasty Skynet/Matrix mainframe.

 

[flykiller]

If the film had been a sincere interpretation of the original novels

it would have been a financial failure, if anyone had made it at all. movies aren't books.

 

[Spyder_GS]

Not everyone is a fan of science fiction, some, like my wife go to see Will Smith. I enjoyed the film. I thought it was very much in the spirit of Asimov's ideas, but no, not a true interpretation of his stories.

As you say, Flykiller, it would have been a financial failure if it had been a true interpretation. The story would have been too complex for many to bother trying to understand. Word of mouth would prevent all but science fiction fans from seeing it.

 

[DaveChase]

I saw the I,Robot movie. Though the story was not one of Asimov's , I would say that it was done in the same flavor has his story's.

The nude scenes were not needed, unless they had a robot watching the human showering. Like the red light in the chest that was an audience attention grabber.

I did like Doc Calvin and the DVD/CD player.

And though it was 2035, it was like Blade Runner in the aspect that it was a beleivable possible future. Even the robots muscles are based of current technology. Those robot muscles actually exist right now.

Through out the movie, I was wondering if Apple had backed the film. I felt like the old robots were IBM and the new ones were Apples. (by looks not processing)

Dave

 

[TKalbfus]

I've seen some reviews. One thing that bothered me is it seemed to imply that some robots go on a killing rampage, this is unAsimovian. Isaac Asimov once said that he grew tired of those "Robots as monsters" stories he was used to reading and he wanted to write a different kind of Robot story, that's why he invented the Three Laws. His "I Robot" book and his robot novels had the Robots as the good guys. The conflict from his stories came from humans misusing Robots, not from the robots themselves. To give an example: a robot could be used to murder some one, but this would require giving each robot limited information. For example, one robot could be ordered to fill a pitcher full of some poisonous substance that looks like water. And another robot could be told that the pitcher contains water and be told to pour a glass for some human. Two seperate robots can be used to kill some one in this manner. The three laws doesn't prevent this as the first robot doesn't know that the poisonous substance was going to be used as a drink and the second robot doesn't know that the drink is poisonous. The "I Robot" movie doesn't appear to be so subtle from what I heard, the robots simply kill people.

 

[brudin]

tom i think the movies come from one asimov's novel:
a robot made for the army with the first law in the third place to make a good soldier, and it's lost with other normal (or something like that).

 

[Spinward Scout]

Yeah, that's the story. I think it was called "Lost" in I, Robot, the book. It was the "Nester" series built for the Military. But they weren't made to be soldiers. They helped researchers working on an interstellar drive.

Later,

Scout

 

[TKalbfus]

I should really read the I Robot Anthology. I've read the Novels, and it was from those that I got my idea of what an Asimov Robot is supposed to be like. I was afraid that Hollywood was trying to dumb it down or rewrite the story to provide an excuse for special effects and large action sequences. I'm not at all happy with what Hollywood has done with "Mission Impossible" or the "Mancherian Candidate" either. Mission Impossible was supposed to be a Team of Covert operatives, and Hollywood turned it into a cheap American "James Bond" Knock off. In the "Manchurian Candidate" a prominent soldier was supposed to be brainwashed by the Chinese, but the Hollywood writers butchered the story, and not wanting to offend either Chinese of Communists, they had to use the old standby, the Evil Multinational Corporation and call it Manchuria.
The film itself is a corporate product, so its a little hypocritical of them to turn the old story around to villify Capitalism instead of Communism.