I, Robot, the movie

[davepy]

Anyone catch the trailer for the new I, Robot movie yet? If you haven't, be warned, the following trailer is pretty offensive if you know anything about the book.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/i_robot/

I'm not even a hard core Asimov fan, but I was pretty outraged by this mockery. I, Robot is a collection of nice little cerebral tales of the future with some elements of mystery. You could stretch one or two of the stories and maybe even make a suspence thriller out of them. Instead, they've created what looks like Terminator 4, starring Will freakin' Smith. I guess Bruce Willis was busy.

The trailer I caught was worse than what's on Apple's site above, with more robot action and explosions. I kept waiting for Bruckheimer's or Michael Bay's name to be flashed on the screen, but they seem to be uninvolved. Their legacy lives on in Hollywood though.

[Nowhere Man]

To steal a line, I will not miss this movie -- I will avoid it at all costs!

I still think they should have used Harlan Ellison's screenplay, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743486595/qid=1081805527/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3334384-2446207?v=glance&s=books) but that would not have played well with today's movie makers. They think that everything now has to be done Matrix-style, with weird special effects and explosions every 6.35 minutes, and that that is the only thing that people want to see.

Granted, Harlan can be an abrasive little [oops] when he feels his artistic integrity is being compromised. Which is a good thing IMO but something that Hollywood just can't bear.

Fred

[kucharek]

Yup. (http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=238179&highlight=#238179)

Harald

[Maksutov]

To steal a line, I will not miss this movie -- I will avoid it at all costs!

I still think they should have used Harlan Ellison's screenplay, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743486595/qid=1081805527/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3334384-2446207?v=glance&s=books) but that would not have played well with today's movie makers. They think that everything now has to be done Matrix-style, with weird special effects and explosions every 6.35 minutes, and that that is the only thing that people want to see.

Granted, Harlan can be an abrasive little [oops] when he feels his artistic integrity is being compromised. Which is a good thing IMO but something that Hollywood just can't bear.

Fred

6.35 minutes? That is so yesterday. The current Hollywood Director's Guide (4/12/04) states clearly that "...there shall be an explosion the equivalent of or greater than 100 kilograms of TNT every 5.35 minutes in every film..." Then there is the section concerning car chases, murders, bloodletting, and leaps of ten or more feet in altitude. Well, you go read it... :roll:

[DataCable]

Oy. The name above the title said it all for me.

[tofu]

Who sold holywood the rights to Asimov's works? Was it his widow or was it a child? You'd think they'd have some bargoning power and wouldn't have to just turn it over to be raped at will.

[Uncle_Ted]

I won't get too worked up over it ... from the trailer it looks like the only relationship between the movie and the books are (1) the title and (2) the Three Laws of Robotics. Otherwise nothing whatsoever.

[johnwitts]

I don't think the books would translate well to movies anyway, fine though they are. But think of it this way; if they make a movie based on an Asimov book that gets bums on seats in cinemas, maybe a few will read the Robot series as well.

[Extravoice]

If I recall correctly, while a book (or movie) title can be copywritten, the title can't.

And to paraphrase one of my favorite movies, Office Space...

"I see you missed I, Robot."
"I wouldn't say I missed it, Bob."

[SeanF]

If I recall correctly, while a book (or movie) title can be copywritten, the title can't.

:o

[SciFi Chick]

If I recall correctly, while a book (or movie) title can be copywritten, the title can't.

:o

:lol:

I don't know what he meant, but here is what he should have meant: You cannot copyright titles of works.

I was in a copyright dispute once in which a church thought they owned a play I had written. After receiving a friendly little note from my lawyer, the head of the drama department huffed off in a snit announcing that he would write a different play and use the same title. :roll:

Back OT: Asimov hinted at all of the themes that I saw represented in the trailer. However, leave it to Hollywood to remove all subtlety and tell you what to think about the ethical issues rather than laying it out for us to analyze and come to our own conclusions.

It just looks like The Terminator with more robots. I'm surprised Will Smith is doing this role, because his character hates robots, and it's obviously similar to the idea of racism - but then they go on to announce his fear and hatred is not misplaced. What a terrible message to send.

[ToSeek]

If I recall correctly, while a book (or movie) title can be copywritten, the title can't.



You're still liable if it can be shown that you're trying to capitalize on the original.

If I wrote a book called Jaws that was about a giant fish terrorizing a coastal town, I'd probably be in trouble.

If I wrote a book called Jaws that was about dental surgery, I'd probably be okay.

Seems to me that this movie is definitely the former case.

[gethen]

To steal a line, I will not miss this movie -- I will avoid it at all costs!

I still think they should have used Harlan Ellison's screenplay, (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743486595/qid=1081805527/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-3334384-2446207?v=glance&s=books) but that would not have played well with today's movie makers.
Fred

A Boy and His Dog. Now that was a screenplay.

[Nowhere Man]

Except that Harlan didn't write the screenplay for A Boy and His Dog, and if I recall correctly, did not really appreciate the ending gag. IMDB lists Psycho Boy and His Killer Dog as an alternate title. I wonder where that came came from?

Speaking of titles, I, Robot was originally the title of a collection of stories about Adam Link, robot, by Eando Binder. When Isaac expressed concern about his publisher's pilfering the title, the publisher basically said, "$#*& Eando Binder!" Titles are not protected by copyright, but story themes and wordings are.

Fred

[Ricimer]

It does strip asimov's work of its subtlety's, but I still think I'll see it. My guess is one of the underlying concepts of Asimov is still there, the three laws are absolute, and inviolatable. So how'd the big bag evil guy (The BBEG in RPG cirlces) get around it?

But I won't expect it to be a cerebral activity, just like I don't expect "Day after tommorrow" or whatnot (about that big storm) to be one either.

[davepy]

I dunno, I think this is going to make Starship Troopers look like a very faithful adaptation by comparison. The BBEG in question seems to be US Robotics, i.e. the evil corp (big business always being an easy target). IIRC, The only real BBEG in any of Asimov's stories in I, Robot was the military (the other easy target), and only in one story where they twisted USR's arm to tone down the 1st law so that the robots could do some work in hyperdrive technology, which was essentially harmful to humans.

That's probably the best story to adapt into a movie, with some nice suspence & mystery angles thrown in--searching for the one robot that can semi-violate rule 1, and before it can infect other robots. The way the trailer started, I thought they might be headed in that direction, but all hope was abandoned after the action started. Not that there was much hope to begin with after seeing Will Smith's face to begin the trailer.

[R.A.F.]

My problem with it is...

Giving the movie the name "I Robot" and incorporating Asimov's 3 "laws", gives the "appearance" of Asimov's approval...that, IMO, is dishonest.

[SciFi Chick]

My problem with it is...

Giving the movie the name "I Robot" and incorporating Asimov's 3 "laws", gives the "appearance" of Asimov's approval...that, IMO, is dishonest.

You have to really stretch to come to that conclusion. Asimov is not around to give his approval after all.

[SeanF]

The BBEG in question seems to be US Robotics, i.e. the evil corp (big business always being an easy target).

US Robotics (http://www.usr.com/home.asp) is actually referring to the movie on their website. Do they know they're the "bad guy"? :)

[R.A.F.]

My problem with it is...

Giving the movie the name "I Robot" and incorporating Asimov's 3 "laws", gives the "appearance" of Asimov's approval...that, IMO, is dishonest.

You have to really stretch to come to that conclusion. Asimov is not around to give his approval after all.

Perhaps "dishonest" is not the right word for what I'm thinking. I just can't imagine Asimov approving of having "I Robot" turned into a "Will Smith" movie.

[Wingnut Ninja]

The BBEG in question seems to be US Robotics, i.e. the evil corp (big business always being an easy target).

US Robotics (http://www.usr.com/home.asp) is actually referring to the movie on their website. Do they know they're the "bad guy"? :)

Isn't it "US Robots" in the book? That always threw me off because I was thinking of US Robotics.

Anyway, this seems to be taking the point of Asimov's stories and completely reversing it.

Asimov: "Robots aren't actually bad if we don't make them that way."

Movie: "Robots are bad and must be destroyed by Will Smith."

:roll:

It's like making a World War 2 movie where the American troops wear swastikas and shout "Heil Roosevelt".

[SciFi Chick]

You guys are probably all correct, but I've been misled by too many previews to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

Besides, I like Will Smith.

[davepy]

Isn't it "US Robots" in the book? That always threw me off because I was thinking of US Robotics.

Oops, my mistake. It's techincally US Robots and Mechanical Men. But supposedly, the name US Robotics was inspired by I, Robot.

http://www.iit.edu/~cs485/reports/asimovsi.htm

And to be clear, I don't hate Will Smith or anything. I liked him quite a bit in Enemy of the State and MIB 1. It's just that most of his movies seem to cater to the Bruckheimer/James Cameron crowd, not Asimov.

[Bill Dunaway]

The lead female character is called Dr. Susan Calvin in the movie, but the actress playing her looks far too attractive to fit Asimov's description of her. I'm sure they'll have sex scenes to pander to modern audiences.

[tofu]

I haven't seen Ali or Legend of Bagger Vance, but in all of the Will Smith movies I have seen his character has basically been the same. In particular, the "funny" lines he's given are all the same. To be honest, it's getting kind of boring. A movie like Enemy of the State would be a lot better without the comic relief (and yeah it'd be better without the bad computer science and over-dramatic Gene Hackman too). Specifically, I'm talking about lines like "I be back for my blender." I just roll my eyes when I hear that.

In a way, it's racist. Some hollywood guy says "hey, let's get Will Smith for this movie, that way we can use a bunch of stupid one liners that we'd never give a white actor."

I get the feeling I,Robot is going to be the same sort of thing.

[Zamboni]

The lead female character is called Dr. Susan Calvin in the movie, but the actress playing her looks far too attractive to fit Asimov's description of her. I'm sure they'll have sex scenes to pander to modern audiences.

Mmm... Sex scenes... *drools*
You guys are judging this film way too early... Maybe the trailer shows all the explosions and stuff but the film is actually filled with suspense and other stuff inherited from Asimov's novel... Afterall the trailer probably was designed to attract attention of the average killer-robot-with-hot-chick-and-explosion-loving Joe... For all we know the trailer could've shown every action scene in the movie... You know, like uh, Tomb Raider...

[Eye-Zee]

From looking at the trailer, the one thing I have to say is that the appearance of the robots look _designed_ to be sinister. If you're going to make a consumer appliance (albeit an intelligent one) that you will distribute literally in the tens or hundreds of millions, there's no way you want to make it freaky or spooky in appearance. Just looking at the mask-like face of those robots wierded me out, and that was when I thought the flick was going to be Asimovian instead of Bruckheimerian. Talk about idiotic industrial design.

I also like the apparent "Blue light = OK, Red light = Evil" setup from the trailer. I needed that clue, or I would have lost track.

[SciFi Chick]

I also like the apparent "Blue light = OK, Red light = Evil" setup from the trailer. I needed that clue, or I would have lost track.

ROFLMAO. That's the kind of thing that let's us know this is more of a bigger, badder Terminator.

[Zamboni]

"blue light = OK, Red light = Evil"
But... But... That blue bot at the beginning looked evil! He was shifty-eyed... SHIFTY-EYED!!!

It's not uncommon for directors to use colour tones as an exaggeration of heroic / villainous qualities... Look at star wars; they gave Vader a red saber and Obi a blue saber even though we are told from the begging that Vader is bad while Obi is... Old...

As for the design, I suppose they could've gone with the (perky?) designs in Bicentennial Man (another Asimov classic?)...

[Eye-Zee]

"blue light = OK, Red light = Evil"
But... But... That blue bot at the beginning looked evil! He was shifty-eyed... SHIFTY-EYED!!!


They're _all_ shify eyed. That's the problem :-/

It's not uncommon for directors to use colour tones as an exaggeration of heroic / villainous qualities... Look at star wars; they gave Vader a red saber and Obi a blue saber even though we are told from the begging that Vader is bad while Obi is... Old...

Yeah, yeah, Black hat, White hat with lasers and positrons. I suppose I mildly resent being given _no_ credit whatsoever as an audience from something that purports to be Asimov derived.

As for the design, I suppose they could've gone with the (perky?) designs in Bicentennial Man (another Asimov classic?)...
Or something more clearly mechanized. The old, golden age concepts of humanoid robots. Heck, give C-3PO some better articulation and a moving mouth.

[Extravoice]

Since this thread has drifted a little off topic, I'll push it a little further.

Regarding "plot devices," I recently rented the DVD version of Das Boot. While playing the "director's comments" a scene was shown with the boat heading "left" across the screen. The director (I can't remember his name #-o ) said that going "right" means going away from home, while going "left" means returning. Apparently, this is a common theatrical device.

Unfortunately, my brain is somehow programmed to view the Atlantic Ocean facing north. When I first viewed the movie (with the original soundtrack) so I kept thinking the boat was always going the wrong way!

[Zamboni]

Or something more clearly mechanized. The old, golden age concepts of humanoid robots. Heck, give C-3PO some better articulation and a moving mouth.

Something more clearly mechanized? What do you want? Steam vents and hydrolic pumps (or perhaps spinning gears)? They are always given humanoid form because the very varying nature of man. The personification of robots translates into the possibility of possessing both good and evil. All the rest seem to have a definite built-in characteristics that comes with its shape and form. For example, the squids from the Matrix, a composite of insect-like mandibles and claw-arms; or the Teddy Bear from AI: a fuzzy cute doll... If the machines deviate too far from our daily perception of things they will not identified with and hence cannot be understood therefore incapable of acheiving drama. And in the end that's all cinema is: drawing emotion from things that don't have them.

[Eye-Zee]

Or something more clearly mechanized. The old, golden age concepts of humanoid robots. Heck, give C-3PO some better articulation and a moving mouth.

Something more clearly mechanized? What do you want? Steam vents and hydrolic pumps (or perhaps spinning gears)?


Heh. No, just a face (especially the face) that doesn't try too hard to mimic the human face. Did you see the preview? The robots have semi-translucent, humaniform faces. You can see the "mechanical musculature" beneath it, giving the faces vaguley skeletal spookiness through the hyper-real eyes and mouth expressions. Plus the lack of a fully formed head - the face is really just a mask - is more unnerving. You expect to see a whole head, and see only part. My point is the thing was designed to look sinister for the purpose of the movie, not to look friendly for the purpose of consumer comfort, which I find manipulative of the audience.


They are always given humanoid form because the very varying nature of man. The personification of robots translates into the possibility of possessing both good and evil. All the rest seem to have a definite built-in characteristics that comes with its shape and form. For example, the squids from the Matrix, a composite of insect-like mandibles and claw-arms; or the Teddy Bear from AI: a fuzzy cute doll... If the machines deviate too far from our daily perception of things they will not identified with and hence cannot be understood therefore incapable of acheiving drama. And in the end that's all cinema is: drawing emotion from things that don't have them.

I agree with all this. But a "service robot" a domestic servant that is supposed to permeate society, shouldn't be able to sneer or look inherently threatening. These do. The brief flash of the dog-walking robot in the preview looked much more reasonable to me. The AI doll also makes my point. It was designed to be disarming and friendly looking, and it succeeded. It looked, in the movie, like a product designed to make people (children in this case) at ease. The I,R robots go the opposite direction.

[SciFi Chick]

The AI doll also makes my point. It was designed to be disarming and friendly looking, and it succeeded. It looked, in the movie, like a product designed to make people (children in this case) at ease. The I,R robots go the opposite direction.

Not just the AI doll, but all of the AI robots. The little boy looks like a cute little boy. The sexbots look attractive to the opposite sex. Everything looks like what it's supposed to be.

That's one of the things that was great about HAL as well. He doesn't look sinister. He just is.

[Eye-Zee]

Not just the AI doll, but all of the AI robots. The little boy looks like a cute little boy. The sexbots look attractive to the opposite sex. Everything looks like what it's supposed to be.

That's one of the things that was great about HAL as well. He doesn't look sinister. He just is.

Excellent ponts. I hated AI as a movie for many reasons, but one of them was because the robot boy character was so sympathetic that his predicaments read to me as child abuse (there is no satsfying me, is there?).

Hal is another excellent example, though.

Look at sony's QRIO: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/top_nf.html

Advance him 35 years and you'll have a consumer robot that won't give me the heebie jeebies.

[davepy]

Okay, I watched the 2nd trailer--the one playing in theaters, not the one at apple.com--again before watching Kill Bill 2 (which was all kinds of cool, btw). I thought maybe I was being too harsh and too quick to judge on its merits vis-a-vis the book.

Alas, I was right the first time. Definitely more explosions, more robot attacks, more car chases than the apple.com trailer. Even if that's all the action that will be in the final cut, it's still a thousand times too much. They even try to make Dr. Susan Calvin out as some Action Movie Babe, if a slightly more mature and intellectual looking AMB than usual, and that's just wrong.

[captain swoop]

From looking at the trailer, the one thing I have to say is that the appearance of the robots look _designed_ to be sinister. If you're going to make a consumer appliance (albeit an intelligent one) that you will distribute literally in the tens or hundreds of millions, there's no way you want to make it freaky or spooky in appearance. Just looking at the mask-like face of those robots wierded me out, and that was when I thought the flick was going to be Asimovian instead of Bruckheimerian. Talk about idiotic industrial design.



Watch 'Robots of Death' one of the best Dr Who stories. Aboard the mining ship the service robots are humanoid and the faces are stialised masks, the look sinister and threatening because they look like faces that can't move or express.

[Eye-Zee]

...Just looking at the mask-like face of [the I, Robot] robots wierded me out, and that was when I thought the flick was going to be Asimovian instead of Bruckheimerian. Talk about idiotic industrial design.
Watch 'Robots of Death' one of the best Dr Who stories. Aboard the mining ship the service robots are humanoid and the faces are stialised masks, the look sinister and threatening because they look like faces that can't move or express.
Heh. I don't go to Dr. Who for examples of good industrial design (though I was a big fan for about ten years, about fifteen years ago). From Daleks to cybermen, to K9, I always believed that the effects budget for each episode was about two pounds sterling, 3/4ths earmarked for costuming.

But unmoving masks can still be consumer friendly - C-3P0 and [you may cringe now] even Twiki from the '80s Buck Rogers were certainly inoffensive mask designs. Going the opposite direction - Number Five from Short Circuit was successfully designed to look empathetic - and it was about as mechaniform as you get (and with the movie-purpose of being a soldier robot). Come to think of it Short Circuit shows movie manipulation (of audience emotion) in the opposite direction as I, Robot.

I would have been happier if I, Robot appeared to be closer to the original short story collection, but failing that, I still would have appreciated a robot design that does not telegraph bad news from the first time you lay eyes on it.

[daver]

I haven't seen the trailers, but in one of Asimov's stories (perhaps Caves of Steel) they mentioned that Terran robots were intentionally designed to look "robotic"--humanoid robots made Terrans uncomfortable. Other planets had humanoid robots (and humanoid sex robots), but not Earth.

[Eye-Zee]

I haven't seen the trailers, but in one of Asimov's stories (perhaps Caves of Steel) they mentioned that Terran robots were intentionally designed to look "robotic"--humanoid robots made Terrans uncomfortable. Other planets had humanoid robots (and humanoid sex robots), but not Earth.

That would be pretty ironic for I, Robot.
I guess, if the plot is antithetical to an Asimov plot, why shouldn't the robot design be?

[daver]

I haven't seen the trailers, but in one of Asimov's stories (perhaps Caves of Steel) they mentioned that Terran robots were intentionally designed to look "robotic"--humanoid robots made Terrans uncomfortable. Other planets had humanoid robots (and humanoid sex robots), but not Earth.

That would be pretty ironic for I, Robot.
I guess, if the plot is antithetical to an Asimov plot, why shouldn't the robot design be?

Well, you could always postulate that the reason Earthlings will be so opposed to humanoid robots was due to the events depicted in this movie.

[calliarcale]

Not that there was much hope to begin with after seeing Will Smith's face to begin the trailer.

When I first heard of this, I thought, "Oh good, they're finally gonna do Harlan Ellison's lovely screenplay" (which really did do a magnificent job of turning an anthology of semi-related short-stories into a coherent single story). Then I heard it was going to feature Will Smith. As Elijah T Bailey.

ARRRRGHGHGGHGHG!!!!

I'm not sure which is worse -- that they have Will Smith playing Bailey or that the movie stars a character who never appears in the book "I, Robot." (He appears in the Robot trilogy, however, with his humaniform robot sidekick R. Daneel Olivaw, whom Bailey only grudgingly accepts at first but grows to trust in the end.)

Hmmm..... One possible reason to not use Ellison's script is that in order to synthesize a coherent story out of a collection of individual storylines, he borrowed from many stories in the "I, Robot" collection. One of them was "The Bicentennial Man", which later got turned into a novel, and then a movie (which I haven't seen, and don't intend to; the trailers have scared me away).

[Eye-Zee]

I guess, if the plot is antithetical to an Asimov plot, why shouldn't the robot design be?
Well, you could always postulate that the reason Earthlings will be so opposed to humanoid robots was due to the events depicted in this movie.
Possibly more reasonable is to postulate that the reason Earthlings will be so opposed to humanoid robots was due to "Movie-Event" depictions like this...

[Merat]

I'll may go see the movie, but if I do its because Alan Tudyk plays Sonny.