I, Robot (2004) (1 Viewer)

[Seth Paxton]

It's funny how much people are bitching about the changes from Asimov when the base SF story was one of the few good things about the script.

How about the terribly obvious and lame character setup and development.

I mean first of all was this Demolition Man part 2? It sure played like it. Anti-tech hero takes down big corp/govt conspiracy while Bullock-esque sidekick in the system helps him along.

The script awkwardly flops out all the setup info it thinks you need in such an obvious way that it either screams "here it comes" or looks identitical to 3 other films you've seen the same moments in.


The "kid" has no reason for existence in the film at all and 75% of Will's lines are cliched even for him. Is this his MIB alien ass-kicking version or his ID4 alien ass-kicking version, he had all the same lines and moments as he did in those films (sans a dry TL Jones to make it funny).


And the action moments are often setup up very poorly too. Sunny runs into a room of identical robots to hide. That's great...except they are lined up in perfect symmetry based on a final build count of 1000. Now there is 1001.

Let me ask you something, where the fuck could he fit in that configuration without being awkwardly out of place? Okay, maybe somehow there was an empty spot in the array BUT THEN HE RUNS AND HIDES AGAIN. No other robot is displaced, yet again he has found his way into another spot lined up perfectly with the other robots.

Why does it bug me? Because the filmmakers are in control here and this doesn't have to be a fucking problem. Try NOT HAVING THE OTHER ROBOTS LINED UP PERFECTLY. Have them not quite finished or just standing in some general clutter. Now Sunny can hide anywhere because there is no order he must fit into. Wow, problem solved and you still have the exact same scene. You could even have some of them lined up and some not.

And that is a perfect example of the issues this film has, most of which come right out of the script. It's not smart enough to get us anywhere it wants us to go without plodding into it like a lumbering Frankenstien.



But the idea that the master CPU (yes, Viki was straight out of Tron) would take control and come to a "control humans to protect them, including some killing" is not the major problem here. Obviously Asimov dealt with such an angle at one point so its not that far out there.

In fact its a very Asimov-themed idea. In one of his other short stories he tells of how engineers conclude that a shield of a certain power/technology could not be maintained long enough for aliens using it to reach them, only to end the story with a reveal to a technologist who didn't get the math and had just come up with an alternate solution by trial and error/common sense (quickly turn shield on and off).

The point being that "correct logic" can be right and yet overlook unexpected results.

Plus, at least the film showed that Viki DID RAISE concerns. She simply was covering her tracks too. Her alteration of technology did not go unnoticed, and in the end she was stopped.

Her redevelopment of fundamental circuitry is probably exactly what made the doctor notice problems in the first place.

It's just like saying that Invasion of the Body Snatchers couldn't happen because people would notice the changes, when the whole point of the story is that people ARE noticing the changes but just not in a shared knowledge way that would help identify the problem until it is too late.

 

[Stephen_L]

Watched the film and found it only fair. The visuals were good, but the characters and situations were poorly developed and cliched. Will Smith playing an a**-kicking, smart-mouthed cop. Gee, where have I seen this before? The awkward set pieces didn't help. The car in the tunnel sequence made no sense. Someone mentioned that the front truck bracketing Smith could stop and the collision would kill him. My first thought was that these two huge trucks could just close in together and smash Del in a car sandwich.

On the subject of the movies fidelity to Asimov. It seemed to me the Asimov monicker was tacked onto a barely related story to give it some credibility. But the idea of a positronic mind violating the three laws is entertained in "I, Robot". In the short story "Little Lost Robot", a Nestor robot with modified first law programming (Must not harm a human through direct action, but is not required to prevent a human from harm by inaction) goes rogue and hides itself in a mass of identical but classically programed Nestors. It arrogantly disobeys human commands, violating the second law. Some of these elements are mirrored in the film. That said the film really doesn't have the feel or philosophy of Asimov.

In the end, I didn't enjoy the film because it was predictable and uninvolving, not for the failure to remain faithful to Asimov

 

[Tim_Stack]

Based on how well the film is doing outside the U.S. - I'd expect some kind of follow-up. I'm hoping that Kapur gets off his booty and does Foundation as was rumored a few years ago. Don't make it a big summer movie - this could be done on a small budget, with the right cast, writer and score.

There was virtually no action in the older Asimov novels - some tricks could be done to spruce it up a bit, but no dumb chases just to do one.

Anyway - I'm just dreaming.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Must say I'm surprised that it took until post #77 before the Zeroth Law was mentioned.

I finally saw this over the weekend. Once Viki was revealed as the "villain" and she explained her motives, my first thought was the Zeroth Law -- I haven't read Robots & Empire myself, but the Zeroth Law came up in one of the later Foundation books (maybe Foundation and Earth?). Since I haven't read those in ages, I can't remember if Daneel Olivaw "developed" or extrapolated it himself. Assuming he did, Viki's own "development" of the law wouldn't be so far fetched from an Asimovian universe point of view, would it? Just that Viki wasn't quite as discreet nor benevolent as Olivaw was.

Consequently, with Viki as the guiding force behind the "regular" NS5s, she possibly "updated" their programming by adding the Zeroth Law, and guided the NS5s into doing her bidding, justifying her actions (and the individual human-harming actions of any particular NS5) with the Zeroth Law.

Count me as one who thought the movie "wasn't bad". And as earlier noted, shades of Animatrix.

Thoughts as to Sonny being the actual "man" in his own dream? Is he to be the "saviour" of robotkind? Did his "alternate processor" (was that what it was referred to, the thing that allowed him to bypass the 3 Laws?) in effect give him a sense of morality, as per a human's, rather than "simplistic" codified Laws that other robots have?

 

[DaveGTP]

Plus, even Daneel was never really quite capable of taking a life unless their was another life in danger.

Daneel only really implemented it in the long run, as eventually he changed brains numerous times (getting more and more sophisticated with each generation). Plus he inherited Giskard's, ahem, special trait.


The funny result of the Zeroeth law from Asimov was that Robots themselves had to go in the long run, for the good of humanity.

 

[Marc_Sulinski]

Actually Giskard did not develop them - Daneel did. Giskard shut down as a result of using the Zeroeth Law, since he could not fully accept it.

I seem to remember that both Daneel and Giskard found the 3 laws insufficient, but Daneel was the first to act on the Zeroeth Law and to state it.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Thanks for the info!

Sheesh, I am now going to have to go and acquire a complete set, and re-read, Asimov's Robot and Foundation books. And that's on top of a fairly extensive backlog of DVDs, comics and books already sitting unviewed/unread at home...

 

[DaveGTP]

OK, well, I stand corrected. Still, even Daneel never really absorbed the Zeroeth law well enough for cold-blooded killing. Not even over several thousand years and brain changes.

 

[Stephen-R]

Still "I Robot" was exciting movie to watch. I have to re-read all of my Asimov Robot Series again.

No movie will be good as any book. But I am glad they at least made this movie.

 

[John Doran]

i saw this over the weekend and was quite surprised to find that i liked it a lot; i had been led to believe, both by will smith's track-record, and the tenor of the trailers, that it was going to be a ridiculous, over-the-top action blockbuster. and, to me, (and with the notable exception of a couple of cringe-inducing moments) it wasn't.

i had guessed what was going to happen with the three laws, since it's just the fictionalization of a scenario that's as old as the utilitarian ethical theory the three laws represent. but still, i thought it was handled well and with a remarkable amount of restraint.

it's objections like this that mystify me. how do you know that no other robots have been displaced? what makes you think that the displacement of one or even 10 or twenty robots would have been obvious to spooner? i mean, he's in the middle of row upon row of robots that are as tall as him (he has no bird's eye view of the configuration), quickly walking, focused on the robot or two immediately to his left and right, and perhaps on any peripheral motion. so, if sonny had just moved one robot totally out of position and into another row one or two rows over, or if he had quickly managed to re-space 4 or 5 of the other robots before spooner got to him (there was more than enough time for hom to do so), then it makes perfect sense that spooner would have failed to notice any discrepancy.

but whatever, if you just don't like the film, then so be it - it just (always) seems a little odd to pin one's dislike of a movie on details like this, most of which are easily explainable given the resources offered by the film and a little reflection.

 

[Steve Christou]

Some members look for any excuse to hate a film John, even before they see it.
I'm sure the knives are already being sharpened for Revenge of the Sith.
I really enjoyed I,Robot, I didn't expect to because I'm not the biggest Will Smith fan, but I'm an Alex Proyas fan and he didn't let me down. And you can tell from the trailer that the Three Laws were going to be fiddled about with. Would Asimov have liked the film? Not sure.

 

[Alex...]

 

[benbess]

Well, take anything Musk says with several grains of salt. The guy has broken so many promises.

But yes, it does seem like things imagined by Asimov back in the 40s and 50s might be getting a little bit closer to reality.

True AI, however, is still a long way off.