Critics were wrong about the Will Smith “adaptation” of I, Robot
It has virtually nothing to do with Isaac Asimov's stories, but honors their spirit all the same
Film Lists I, Robot
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: Against all odds, the event-movie movie season is in full swing, so it’s time once again to look back on unsung summer blockbusters—the flops, the critical bombs, or the merely forgotten Hollywood spectacles that deserve to be rescued from the trash bin of movie history.
I, Robot (2004)
Intellectual property and branding rule Hollywood now, but insisting that every big-budget movie look instantly familiar can backfire. Case in point: 2004's I, Robot, which purported to be an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction classic (though closing credits carefully phrase the provenance as “suggested by”). Reviews at the time were decidedly mixed, with many critics complaining—not inaccurately—that the film bears virtually no resemblance to Asimov’s stories, merely using them as a flimsy clothesline upon which to hang Will Smith wisecracks and sequences of spectacular computer-generated mayhem. But while there’s no question that Fox clumsily imposed I, Robot onto an unrelated original screenplay (written by Jeff Vintar), the film nonetheless honors the spirit of Asimov’s stories, even as it substitutes eye-popping action for what’s essentially a series of logic puzzles rooted in language’s ambiguity.
Back in 2004, the year 2035 still seemed distant enough to imagine as a futuristic world of interactive holograms, fully self-driving vehicles, and ubiquitous humanoid robots performing every mundane task. (Needless to say, we’re not exactly on pace to get there. On the other hand, this film couldn’t conceive of smartphones, which were only three years away; characters have to head for their desks every time they want to access the Internet.) While most people love mankind’s metal servants, which are programmed to do no harm (explicitly utilizing Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics), Chicago police detective Del “Spoon” Spooner (Will Smith) regards them with deep suspicion. So when his friend Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell)—inventor of the positronic brain—apparently commits suicide by leaping from his umpteenth-story office window, Spoon quickly pins the blame on Sonny (voice of Alan Tudyk), a robot he finds hiding at the crime scene. In theory, that’s impossible, since Sonny, like all robots, is bound by the Three Laws. Before long, though, robots everywhere are attacking Spoon, confirming his paranoia and suggesting that U.S. Robotics’ owner (Bruce Greenwood), described as the richest man on Earth, doesn’t necessarily have humanity’s best interests at heart.
That aspect of the narrative—which didn’t immediately suggest Jeff Bezos at the time—has aged remarkably well, even if Amazon’s robots are only drones at this point. What’s fascinating about I, Robot, though, is the way that it simultaneously makes robots its primary antagonists and presents them as victims of hatred and bigotry. Smith plays Spoon with his standard charismatic cockiness (“I don’t know what ‘blithely’ means, but I’m gonna get some coffee”), making us identify with him throughout; at the same time, Spoon often comes across like a bigot (“I saw a robot running with a purse and naturally I assumed…”), and Smith leans into the uncomfortable irony, giving the guy just a touch of rueful self-awareness. Director Alex Proyas (Dark City) orchestrates kinetic killer-robot set pieces that still look reasonably impressive 17 years later, and successfully detonates a mid-film plot twist so nonchalant that it has you wondering for a moment whether you saw what you thought you saw. (Even the murderous robot looks confused, shooting Spoon a questioning look that he answers with the single word “Yeah.”) By the end, though, I, Robot actually does manage to tackle an Asimov-style logical quandary, revealing the true nature of the robots’ seemingly contradictory behavior in a way that was clearly influenced by the then-recent passing of the Patriot Act. In essence, it asks a more momentous variation on this tricky question: If we create a robot that’s capable of abstract thought and programmed first and foremost to prevent any harm from coming to human beings, should it stop us from smoking?
Availability: I, Robot is available to rent or purchase digitally.
107 Comments
absolutely not
Counterpoint: It’s Hollywood garbage that Asimov would not have allowed to have been associated with his name.
Not least of all because Will Smith doesn’t have sex with Bridget Moynahan, an otherwise, apparently, inexplicable female character. As Asimov wrote in Gold: “But if there’s no sex, what do you do with female characters?”
Considering Arkady Darell and Harla Branno, I’d assume that either that quote was sarcastic, or that his views evolved over the years. (Then again there’s always Gladia…)
Even saying the movie was “suggested by” Asimov’s book is stretching it, but I, Robot is a pretty fun sci-fi blockbuster that’s actually reasonably intelligent. It’s no overlooked classic, but it’s a fine way to spend a couple of hours.
Its better framed as “set in the I Robot Universe” as it shares parts, but is never part of the story. Crossing fingers for the Foundation series to get a cross over Caves of steel story, and R Daneel Olivaw, since Asimov was doing crossover events so long ago.
Despite many aspects seeming campy or clunky in retrospect, I would love to see non-ironic, faithful adaptations of Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun.
Having just re-read both books, I have two thoughts. The first is not to be too faithful, since the novels are appallingly, casually sexist. The second is that “The Naked Sun” is so prescient about life during the COVID pandemic that it would probably be unwatchable at the moment.
YES
I’m very much looking forward to Foundation, and at the same time really hoping they don’t screw it up.
Crossing fingers for the Foundation series to get a cross over Caves of
steel story, and R Daneel Olivaw, since Asimov was doing crossover
events so long ago.
I thought the novels were eons apart. I thought the general timeline was Robot Novels -> Galactic Empire Novels -> Foundation Novels with the only crossover being that at the end of Foundation and Earth you get the surprise twist crossover.
“Inspired by” would have been better. “Suggested by” makes it sound like Asimov dropped by Sony Studios one day and said, “y’all ought to make a movie about killer robots and cast a likable actor like, I don’t know, Tom Cruise or Will Smith.”Of course, since Asimov died in 1992, he may have suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis.
Not to mention they’d have to go back and append “Suggested by Huge Piles of Cocaine” to many, many movies.
“Oh, that wacky Asimov; what crazy idea is he gonna come out with next?”
“We wanted to reference the three laws, but didn’t want to get sued, so we bought this IP and jettisoned everything else.”
Choosing to call the movie I, Robot immediately attracted and then turned off Asimov fans. Other than the Three Laws, there really isn’t all that much Asimov in the film. They did name Bridget Moynahan’s character Susan Calvin, but that’s about it. If anything, the movie has more in common with Caves of Steel than any of the I, Robot stories. Will Smith’s Detective Spooner’s attitudes and psychology do bear a passing resemblance to Caves of Steel’s Elijah Baley, but he’s definitely not the same character.That said, it’s actually a fun movie and I re-watch it pretty regularly. And it really does hold up well. Yes, they missed the smartphone, but they nailed the anti-collision and self driving capabilities our cars are increasingly being equipped with. I think it’s plausible we’ll start seeing service robots (I mean beyond the iRobot sweepers and their lawn mowing cousins that we already have) in the home in the next 14 years. They probably won’t be as personable as Sonny, but I don’t think it’s inconceivable that we should have food prep robots at home, seeing how there are restaurants already using them.I also liked how there was a gritty texture to the film—Chicago still retains its rough edges even in the 2030s. The bourgeois’ ivory towers are even taller and gleam brighter, but the common folk still live in grimy old houses and apartments—they’re just equipped with nicer toys.
The most dated thing about the movie (lack of smartphones aside) is that we’re expected to find a young Shia Labeouf’s obnoxious over-caffeinated wisecracking endearing.
Disagree. It’s revolutionary. This is a guy that hates robots. And he has to work with one?! Better put on an helmet when you watch this masterpiece because your head is gonna explode!
They could have gone Terminator and said “Acknowledgement to the works of Isaac Asimov”.
“Capitalizes on” is more appropriate for the film’s relationship to the intellectual property.
Alex Proyas is a good/great director. It’s a shame that, due to the failure of Gods of Egypt, he’s opted to be a bitter cloud-yeller who targets any and all blockbusters as “killing cinema” while he himself has made numerous attempts at exactly those kind of movies.
The Crow and Dark City are two of my faves. I wish he got more and better work.
At the time I regarded Knowing as the best movie of its year. Maybe I still do.
The interesting thing about “Knowing” is that it’s a big Hollywoo summer blockbuster about inevitability and acceptance. These stories are always about stopping things; bombs, apocalypses, John Travolta. “Knowing” is just this crazy story about what you do when you realize that there is nothing you can do.
I completely agree. I thought Knowing could have been better, but I really appreciated that it followed through with its story. It’s a pretty bold ending.I remember being excited to hear that Proyas was going to make a Paradise Lost movie. But it fell apart.
If they ever make a Snow Crash movie, I would love Proyas to direct it.
I watched Knowing this year for the first time and despite knowing about the main surprise setpiece it was still incredible. And while I didn’t love it overall it certainly wasn’t boring. It kind of reminded me of The Box in that way.
Lol, did you just “Face/Off” a movie? Pretty sure Travolta wasn’t in “Knowing”…Nicolas Cage was.
Dark City is f’n incredible. I really wish there were more movies like. But hell, once I actually watched Gods of Egypt, I enjoyed it. A lot of fun, even though I can rarely sit through a Gerard Butler performance.
Dark City is one of my absolute favorite films, so there’s a part of me that’s a little disappointed that he didn’t become a big auteur or direct any future masterpieces. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that he’s a really good journeyman director. His movies since Dark City have been visually interesting and ultimately fun, which is more than I can say about most blockbusters. I even thought Gods of Egypt was a blast.
Gods of Egypt is indeed a frickin blast.
“We should run.”“Run?”“We mortals do it all the time!”
It just bums me out how bitter he’s become. I can understand the root of that bitterness, but his thinking that his movies are just too high minded for Hollywood is quite frankly ridiculous. I remember in the documentary about Dark City that the first thing Lem Dobbs did to collaborate with Proyas was to inform him that his ideas were full of cliches that needed to be remedy, to the point that the main character’s original name was “Walker”.
Looking back on it, Dark City is an example of a wonderful collaborative process that came together. It’s a great script married to incredible visuals. That’s a bummer that he’s become bitter. I can imagine it’s difficult to get a movie off the ground after Gods of Egypt.
Dark City is a fuckin’ masterpiece IMO. Love that movie to death.
Visually, Gods of Egypt was phenomenal. Could have been Clash of the Titans for a new generation. My biggest beef with Proyas is his suspension of physics around fire…
Gods of Egypt is unfairly maligned.If you can’t enjoy Mighty Morphin Mecha Deities and gigantic cobras that shoot fire, you’re dead inside.
When I first saw it, I hated it in a whirl of self-righteous betrayal that exactly and shamefully fits the current state of fandom: how dare they turn one of sci-fi’s great universes into a small-world run & gun actioner? How very dare they waste the “find one non-laws-compliant robot among a thousand identical robots?” short story that’s one of my favourite Asimov puzzle-boxes? Why was Shia LaBoeuf in it at all? But over the years, I keep rewatching it. Sometomes for the Stevie Wonder-heavy soundtrack, or for Smith’s not-inconsiderable banked goodwill, or for Alan Tudyk, or for the production design (say what you like about Alex Proyas, his films always fit their look excellently). Mostly though, I watch it for Smith’s career-best acting as a man fucking losing his shit across the duration of Act 2. And I’m welling up just typing about his perfectly underpitched “how I lost my arm” monologue about a 12-year-old wannabe-dentist, ‘cause that shit gets me every bloody time.Besides, even if they make a “proper” Robot show/movie/stage-musical, I, Robot could still be canon in it without harming a single blade of fictional grass, simply because Asimov writes across millennia, and very little of his output was in the recognisable pre-starship apartments-and-cars-and-”Superstition” Earth.Also, if you don’t keen a little at “Will it hurt?”, you’re a goddamn monster.
I’m with you on the monologue part… every time.
“Why was Shia LaBoeuf in it at all?”I find myself asking the same question every time I watch it. I think the only real reason he’s there is to tell Spoon that Dr. Calvin was shooting with her eyes closed.
The phrase “ass-hot-spankable” persists over 15 years on between me and one of my friends. That, and the aforementioned quote with “blithely…” [chef’s kiss]
HA! Perfect! My wife and I say that line (ass hot spankable) far too often!
Ha, I always assumed the non-laws-compliant robot thing was a callback to the story where they built the “looser” models. The Dave series?? I’m terrible at names and it’s been a while.
That monologue’s great. It’s a small detail, but I love how he makes a point of not villainising the guy who caused the accident and acknowledges that he was just an overworked guy who made a mistake with terrible consequences. It adds a nice depth to his character, especially concerning his prejudice towards robots.
The big ‘Asimov’ problem with the film is that Asimov’s robot stories were primarily and explicitly about NOT making the story be about a robot rebellion. At the time, robots in stories always just rebelled and tried to overthrow humanity, and Asimov’s premise, at the time radical, was “but what if they DON’T try to rebel?”He does hint at rebellion here and there – robots may be manipulating humans, or learning to potentially escape their programming, or exploiting loopholes. But in general the whole idea is that his robots DON’T have violent uprisings in the streets. Even in the one story that IS all about robots overthrowing mankind (the excellently menacing “That Thou art Wary of Him”), the actual rebellion is only hinted at occurring in the future (the story itself is just a series of philosophical dialogues that explore how and why it can happen). [there’s also an actual robots-rebel-and-kill-people story, the (intentionally) weirdly fetishistic “Sally”, but that’s a very un-Asimov story about sentient cars on a farm, and almost certainly not canonical…]
One problem with that: Dr. Susan Calvin.
I just finished watching it (again, though the last time was like 15 years ago) and yeah, “Will it hurt?” got to me. Tudyk was absolutely fantastic in this.I will admit also that the bit near the end where Will Smith extends a hand to Sonny and Sonny takes it got to me a bit too, though that was tempered by it going to slow-mo and me therefore going “ugh, goddammit”.
Huh, good to know that I didn’t actually think it was mediocre, shallow, scattershot, and not very interesting. The product placement was top-notch, though.
I scoffed at the hero shots of the “Vintage 2005″ leather Chuck Taylors in the opening sequence, but by the time I left the theater I was like “Those are some very cool shoes; I gotta get a pair of those things.”
Meh it’s fine I guess, watch it on TNT on a rainy Wednesday if you still have cable for some reason type of movie. But there’s so much better out there.
It reminded me more of the old “NA 4000 AD” comics than Asimov.
It reminded me more of the old “NA 4000 AD” comics than Asimov.
She’s ass-hot spankable, Spoon!
Alright, first of all: Stop cussin’. You’re not good at it.
As a huge Asimov fan, I really do think Proyas and co. tries to adapt the spirit of the novels, and we’re familiar with them, but it makes it feel like two different movies.On the one hand, you have the Asimov influences: a buddy detective movie featuring a human and a robot (a la Caves of Steel); references to Asimov’s robot short stories (finding the robot in the sea of other robots); the grander implications of the three laws, which led Asimov to develop the Zeroth law, one that clearly influences the manipulation of that law for bad by the bad robots in the movie.On the other hand, it’s a dystopian sci-fi action blockbuster which bears no resemblance to the science positivity of Asimov’s novels. This isn’t an accident either: the original script for I, Robot was not an Asimov entity at all, but a separate robot sci-fi script called Hard Wired. They then took that script and melded it with Asimov to create the finished product, which is a weird Frankenstein of a movie. Still, I think it’s enjoyable, a bit smarter than the average stupid blockbuster, and definitely has some killer action scenes, cool visuals, a great mocap performance from Tudyk and a cool score.
By the end, though, I, Robot actually does manage to tackle an Asimov-style logical quandary, revealing the true nature of the robots’ seemingly contradictory behavior in a way that was clearly influenced by the then-recent passing of the Patriot Act.Well… that and also Asimov himself did it decades earlier with the Zeroth Law. VIKI was literally taking the Zeroth Law to a violent extreme without ever mentioning its name.Of course… Issac Asimov actually let his characters be intelligent for more than brief flashes of genius,* so the Zeroth Law’s in-universe inventor, Robot Giskard Reventlov, was able to understand that what he was doing** may or may not actually have been in humanity’s best interest and shut down as a result.*Though… three of the most important humans in his Robots/Empire/Foundation timeline were both intelligent normally and had those flashes of genius as well. Elijah Baley, Hari Seldon, and Golan Trevize.**Spoiler for a decades-old novel, but Robots Giskard Reventlov and Daneel Olivaw, after foiling the villains’ plot, actually give them the less-murderous version of the win, having reasoned out that it will actually spur the second wave of space-travelling humanity to let go of Earth and truly spread throughout the galaxy. But they’re not sure it will do that, or if it’s necessary. The uncertainty is what kills Giskard, but it also allows him to do the thing in the first place.
This is why Giskard will always remain my favorite of Asimov’s creations, with the good Dr. Calvin as a close second.
Yo Spoon, he just wrote this review with his eyes closed!
I’m sorry but I’m gonna have to disagree with this take.The stories were explicitly a subversion of the usual Frankenstein’s monster, technology gone wrong, killer robots that the film played straight. A pivotal twist towards the end, shared by both versions, is framed positively in the book and negatively in the film. Also, they made it a goddamn action movie!It couldn’t have been less in the spirit of the source material if it tried. For anything it might have accomplished on its own merits, it was an atrocious adaptation.
I’ve always liked this movie, so finding out that there are others who also do is warm and fuzzy to me. I feel compelled to point out that this movie also contains what to my mind is perhaps the greatest Will Smith action wisecrack of his entire career – upon the robots rebelling exactly as he kept saying they would, he tells Bridget Moynahan “Sometimes ‘told you so’ just doesn’t quite cut it.”
Yep. It was a fun movie. And a good movie, in some places.
…successfully detonates a mid-film plot twist so nonchalant that it has you wondering for a moment whether you saw what you thought you saw.
It’s an exceptionally well-done reveal, and the setup is just brutal. I remember sitting in the theater and tensing up at what I thought was going to happen; “This seems like it’s about to get pretty visceral for a PG-13!”Also, I think a major reason for why this movie works is that it’s the last big Will Smith action blockbuster before he made his turn into overly-serious/self-sabotage territory. He’s got that verve and energy of his early career performances, and can turn on the blockbuster-suitable gravitas when it’s needed. His next big action movie was I Am Legend, which is a good performance, but not one that utilizes that easy-going Will Smith Charisma.
I Am Legend always pissed me off far more than I, Robot did because it actually just completely misses the fucking point of the story rather than just having a kind of tertiary connection to it. I probably would have liked both movies more if they just had different titles tbh.
If I Am Legend had cut to credits right after the “Please say hello to me” scene, I would have stood up and said “Wow, that was a solid movie; bold of Warner to put out a 65 minute film as a major summer release, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t efficient and effective!”Unfortunately, it went on for another half hour that was so bad it undid most of my goodwill towards the first two-thirds of the film.
You’re right, and I’m glad you said it. I don’t like it as an Asmiov adaptation, of course, but it’s such a fun time.
I think that for Asimov I, Robot fans, this movie sucked. I think it sucked. The short stories and books are very good and quite timeless, BTW. This movie sucked worse than The Bicentennial Man, which was bad.
well, the critics said it wasn’t a good asimov adapatation but it was an ok to mediocre summer blockbuster, so it sounds like they got it basically right?
It was a fun film, certainly on the good pile of Will Smith vehicles.
I own a copy of “I, Robot” on DVD which I have never seen. It came in a pack sold exclusively through Costco with Harlan Ellison’s unproduced screenplay based on Asimov’s book. I had my aunt get it for me with her membership. Ellison told a great, funny story about how his screenplay ended up getting double billing with Will Smith in big box stores across the land; I can’t find it now but if you can dig it up, do.
Ellison’s screenplay is an excellent read.
Loved it as a dumb kid. Been wondering if I should revisit it as a (slightly less) dumb adult.
“But while there’s no question that Fox clumsily imposed I, Robot onto an unrelated original screenplay (written by Jeff Vintar), the film nonetheless honors the spirit of Asimov’s stories, even as it substitutes eye-popping action for what’s essentially a series of logic puzzles rooted in language’s ambiguity.”Um. No. I grew up reading Asimov, first read the original Foundation trilogy when I was 13, and found my father’s copy of I, Robot when I was 15. This film may have been “inspired by” Asimov, but aside from the Three Rules it has nothing to do with anything he ever wrote. I cannot tell you how pissed I was when I watched this. If they had called it anything else, maybe it would have been fine, but calling on Asimov’s name for a film that sucks this much is a shame. I like Will Smith, but I can’t say I’ve liked anything he’s been in since the first MIB. He’s floating on popularity and name recognition, which is sad. He’s a good actor, but geez does he make bad career decisions.
VIKI does manage to invent the Zeroth Law a few thousand years early.
Which was pretty much also the case in “The Evitable Conflict,” the last story in the collection.
VIKI is also a complete ripoff of SHODAN from System Shock.
I’m a huge Asimov fan, and you couldn’t be more wrong. Del Spooner is a expy of Elijah Bailey. The child robot brain that runs everything is from a story in “I, Robot”. A robot having a dream that they’re the savior of their race is from Robot Dreams – although, in that story, Susan Calvin kills the robot once it reveals the truth. The whole movie is a mishmash of themes and references that, international or otherwise, seems like a best of rundown of Asimov’s work seen through a 00s lens.
I had exactly the same reaction to “I, Robot” and “Starship Troopers”. Classic, amazing science fiction novels turned into utterly unrelated crap movies.
“That aspect of the narrative—which didn’t immediately suggest Jeff Bezos at the time—” Have not seen the movie since it came out but I want to say that maybe a few of us thought of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs at the time.
Other than a mention of the Three Laws, I seem to remember at the time that I thought the movie had more in common, idea-wise, with Jack Williamson’s ‘The Humanoids’ than with Isaac Asimov’s stories. I liked it as a time-waster action flick just fine, but it really did not feel like an Asimov story to me.
It’s definitely one of best films with Will Smith in it. When he’s on top of his game, any movies he’s in is instantly watchable.Even so, I Robot by itself is pretty damn good, even to this day. That twist was done so damn well, I had to go back and pieced together and recontextualize several plot points and motivations and nature of how the robots perceive our world and how they fit their understanding of our logics with their. That’s quite a thinker for a summer popcorn action film that we rarely get today.
I’ve always had a soft spot for this film, and Smith sneezing, and then going “I’m sorry, I’m allergic to bullshit” was one of my favorite quips at the time.
“Oh, you thought I was calling *you* “Sugar”. Hey, you’re not that rich!” is one that my friends and I once used all the damn time for a few years.
It’s not a bad movie, but it really doesn’t follow the spirit of Asimov’s stories.
The whole point of them is that the robots follow the three rules to the letter and not, like the movie suggests, evolve beyond them.
Ever heard of the Zeroth Law? Literally robots evolving beyond the Three Laws of Robotics. You should read Robots and Empire.Actually, go with the whole Robot series. It’s pretty much all about R. Daneel Olivaw evolving beyond the Laws.Or hey, how about reading or watching Bicentennial Man? That’s Asimov too, and the short story is Robots/Empire/Foundation canon, or at the very least it’s a story that’s told in it. The movie obviously pales in comparison to the written version, but hey it’s got Robin Williams.
Can we please not joke about I Robot this Christmas?
It’s very clear that some movie critics are just writers and directors who aren’t talented enough to work as writers or directors. It shouldn’t be relevant if a movie is “inspired by,” “suggested by,” or “based on a true story,” at least not from a critical sense. If I, Robot were named anything else without its nod to Asimov, the same critics who said it wasn’t true to Asimov would be saying it ripped off Asimov’s work. Viewed in a vacuum, I, Robot is entertaining sci-fi. Personally I find it a lot more engaging than the action and sci-fi franchises that have plagued Hollywood for the last decade (how can movies so loud be so boring?); I, Robot is one of the last science fiction action movies I can watch without picking up my phone to stare at it for the next 90 minutes.
This is the only computer-generated mayhem I care about!
David Warner was a badass bigbad when Alan Rickman was still learning to spell “dour”.
Watch out, he might be in a pee-throwing mood!
I kinda liked this movie for the action scenes, and the CGI frankly holds up better than some movies that have come out much more recently. But this was Will Smith at his most dour, just devoid of any warmth or humor. He has a couple monologues to let you know that, yes, he actually can act, but my goodness is he a slog in between those.
“I saw a robot running with a purse and naturally I assumed…”Didn’t see it, but that doesn’t make any sense. Yes in the Asimov story there were anti-robot people but that was people not liking being out of work or just not liking what felt like robots taking over. The whole premise was though that they were trustworthy. It seems counter to the premise that Smith’s character would see a robot running with a purse and think it’s a robber. Doesn’t it?
Dammit D’Angelo, you made me want to check it out again.
(two years later) pfft
Reading Wikipedia’s plot summary and these comments doesn’t help clear up what the mid-film twist is. Could someone say?
He hates the robots because they prevented him from saving a little girl’s life, and he has a cyber-kinetic arm.
I was both annoyed by and enjoyed this movie. Annoyed, because it has almost nothing to do with the I, Robot stories (except for the three laws and one character being named Susan Calvin and being exactly nothing like the Susan Calvin in the books.) The movie more closely hews to theplot of Caves of Steel – anachronistic cop hates robots and is suspicious of them and is forced to solve a murder where a robot is the main suspect.That said, it’s an entertaining SF blockbuster because Alex Proyas is a great visual stylist and knows how to keep things moving. Still, I’d have preferred it if they didn’t pretend this was an Asimov adaptation. Asimov isn’t that well known out of hardcore SF fans, so why not just name it something else?
I’m guessing it was the same situation as Starship Troopers; the producers had a script they liked that had even a minor plot element resembling an existing property, and decided it would be cheaper to secure the rights and slap a name on it than fight a legal battle should the author’s estate sue.
Starship Troopers did have several elements from Heinlein’s book. Even though Verhoeven and Neumeier gave it a satirical RoboCop treatment, they actually used at least parts of the book as source material.
Yes, but as I understand it the movie started out as an “original” screenplay by Edward Neumeier titled “Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine,” and the explicit Starship Troopers elements like the character names etc. came in during the rewrite process after somebody noted the whole “young soldiers fighting alien bugs” thing was basically a direct rip of Heinlein’s work. (It seems that Neumeier’s kind of hemmed and hawed over how familiar he was with the novel through the years; I found one interview for the DTV sequels where he claims he was always a fan, which raises questions.)
To go a step further, I’ve heard Verhoeven had never even read the book—for all we know he probably still hasn’t. It makes total sense to me that they had a script that wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny in court, so they bought the rights to the book it was derived from and then kneaded them together.
Oh yeah, Verhoven is on record as saying he read two chapters, found it to be poorly-written fascist ideology, and tossed the book away (very on-brand for him.) He just had Neumeier summarize the plot for him.Back to I, Robot, I found an old interview with the Jeff Vintar, author of the original script, where he discusses the origins of the whole thing. He wrote a locked room mystery as a spec script in the early 90’s that got picked up by Disney originally, then passed between companies more than a few times. Apparently, everybody wanted to slap the Asimov branding on it but could never secure the rights. Once Fox got the script, they managed to get the Asimov rights, and all he really did was integrate the Three Laws, change the female lead from a security officer to a young Susan Calvin and make US Robotics the manufacturer. (Akiva Goldsman made the final movie what it is, for better and for worse.) The reason why studios were so dead-set on Asimov is unclear, beyond “He wrote anthologies, and we could pilfer ideas from all those stories for a franchise.”https://web.archive.org/web/20180831072002/http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d19127d8
“He wrote anthologies, and we could pilfer ideas from all those stories for a franchise.”That is SO Hollywood. I’ve often fantasized that some day a studio would tackle the Foundation series, but the realist in me realizes that it’s probably impossible to really do it right. Asimov managed to stitch virtually everything he wrote over his career—at least most of the good stuff—into the Foundation books. The series covers a galactic civilization over thousands of years, so it would take dozens of full length features to do it justice.While I have my hopes for the upcoming Foundation streaming series, I’m preparing myself for the inevitable letdown.
Wasn’t the first time a fan of Heinlein wrote a “tribute”. https://www.inverse.com/article/39795-star-trek-trouble-with-tribbles-robert-heinlein-david-gerrold
I agree, I like this and I Am Legend (w/ alternate ending) better than they were received at the time. I’d love to see an alternate cut of I, Robot where they use the more dramatic takes, as apparently there was quite a push and pull between how much Akiva Goldsmith and Will Smith were Will Smith-izing the character and upping the quippiness versus the more hard-edged take the original material had.
don’t think I’ve seen this since I rented the DVD but it keeps popping up on my DisneyPlus Star app so may have to give it a rewatch.
image search bridget moynahan young ‘Pinterest 180 Bridget moynahan ideas | bridget moynahan, bridget …’ image originals/2e/aa/37/2eaa37e2931bb21c31a9083a0268b4a2.jpg ignore the allegation and the background in the image and the other images of her that’s Wernher von Braun his great granddaughter from the family photograph with his daughters she’s the younger daughter the one who was a little off autistic her daughter she’s the red haired NASA astronaut Zena Cardman who carries a pistol that she keeps in the left desk drawer of her desk at work the image is of Wernher von Braun’s granddaughter in the underground city in Resident Evil this is obviously a threat to murder her there will be replies
As with 21stCenturyPeon (whose comment is somewhere in this thread), I disliked “I, Robot” when I first saw it. It was fine as a film…but as an Asimov story I felt it contained all the stuff he hated about Hollywood. I felt he would have hated it (regardless of what his daughter said).And yet I found myself, every time I saw it on broadcast TV, watching it. There are some great visuals, there is some good humour and classic Will Smith one-liners. It’s enjoyable. And it isn’t stupid – the plot at least hangs together and the characters are reasonably self-consistent.And eventually I figured it out. Asimov wrote an entire novel to answer the question that he had been asked many times: why are there no robots in the Foundation universe. Spoilers follow.Essentially, the robots determined that they themselves, by their very existence were harming humanity as a whole. They evolved, by themselves, what they called “the zeroth law”, which takes precedence over the first law. The zeroth law, as formulated in the novel, was “robots cannot harm humanity, or by inaction allow humanity to be harmed.” The first, second, and third laws were amended, by adding, “except where such action or nonaction would violate the zeroth law.”And that’s what the movie is. In the novel, the robots decide to destroy the capacity to make more robots (except for the machines they themselves control) and remove themselves from human society and go into hiding.The Hollywood movie has the robots attempt a violent takeover. That’s Hollywood for you.But in the respect that they at least used a concept that he himself had used, I think Asimov could have given the movie a grudging nod.The only questions I have are: did the writers and director knew of this novel of Asimov’s or not? And if they did, why did they choose to not use the term “zeroth law”?
Does anyone remember how Asimov’s Robots series ends? I’d say it’s more a reimagining of Asimov’s ideas reworked into a more modern realist setting.