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I, Robot Trailer Available
thehomeland writes "A new 'I, Robot' movie is coming out based on the Isaac Asimov book series, starring Will Smith. I saw a teaser at the theatre back at the LOTR:ROTK showing, but it looked so much like a commercial I didn't even realize it was a trailer until I saw a logo that said '3 Laws Safe'. Now there's a regular trailer as well as a nice featurette for better details."
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/i_robot/
irobot_m480.mov.torrent
From what I heard, the new movie isn't directly based on any of the stories. It started as an original work & was adapted to add parts of the Asimov universe.
"I, Robot" reminds me of a Chris Cunningham video clip that he did for Bjork.
Sure there is. The following is from "synopsis" at www.irobotmovie.com:
Will Smith stars in this action thriller suggested by the classic short story collection by Isaac Asimov, and brought to the big screen by dynamic and visionary director Alex Proyas ("Dark City," "The Crow"). In the year 2035, robots are an everyday household item, and everyone trusts them, except one, slightly paranoid detective (Smith) investigating what he alone believes is a crime perpetrated by a robot. The case leads him to discover a far more frightening threat to the human race. "I, ROBOT" uses a spectacular, state-of-the-art visual effects technique to bring a world of robots to life.
It's a common Hollywood practice to cut trailers to "hot" tracks from any source, including other movies. I've heard parts of the score from Backdraft in trailers for all sorts of films, and I wouldn't be surprised if they lifted a section directly from the score from Matrix Revolutions. Yes, when they air it, it's licensed. However, when the editors are looking for music, anything is game (I imagine that the old Napster was a great tool for them, while it lasted.)
Personally, I think cutting in recognizable sequences from other movies is an extremely risky thing to do, as anyone who can recognize the music cannot help but make a connection (either good or bad) between the film that the music was originally scored from, and the new film...
In his older books, Asimov said that the three laws of robotics could be implied or used as a plot point in other people's books, but never delineated. Many books did in fact use the laws of robotics without explaining them or citing Asimov. I don't know if he changed that stance later on in his life... I'm only about 1/2 way through reading all 500 of his books.
The ______ Agenda
Actually, most of the panic was just marketing spin.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Oh, but they did break the three laws of robotics in the most obvious way in one of his stories, a number of robots were manufactured without the first law (never harm a human being...).
The plot of the story was that one of these robots made it into a large population of robots with all three laws and Susan Calvin had to sort it out (while of course saying that these lesser roboticists were morons for creating robots without the first law).
Unfortunately I do not remember the title of the short story, nor the collection in which it appeared, it was over 10 years I read it. Perhaps someone else can help me with that? This would probably be a fairly early collection of short stories by Asimov.
To help the memory, the reason they were created was to serve as help on a science station (in space, I think), where humans were submitted to low levels of radiation which killed the positronic brains instantly.
The scientists accepted the low risk of harm for the sake of observing whatever it was, but the the three laws of robotics didn't allow the robots to idly stand by and let even that low level of harm happen. And when they rushed in, they were instantly killed by radiation.
That's because it's not I-Robot. They chose to use a script called "hardwired" instead of the script written by Harlan Ellison. The decision to name it 'I, Robot' was made by some fox execs after the fact.
There is no doubt that this is nothing more than Men In Black and Independence Day. Will smith is not a sci-fi actor and he shouldn't be. He turned sci-fi into a black commedy children's movie. I'm just glad that he declined the role of Neo in The Matrix, as he was originally casted to do.
The story is "Little Lost Robot." A portion of the NS-2 (or "Nestor") line of robots were made with a *PARTIAL* first law -- "No robot may harm a human being." It left out "or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That was so the robots weren't compelled to rush into the radiation chamber ina futile attempt to save the human in it. The other 2 laws were left intact.
Actually he was very good in Six Degrees of Separation.
There's a lot of talent there, but he's mostly using it to make cheap^H^H^H^H^Hexpensive action movies and some not-very-good dramas (Ali, Bagger Vance).
He's got a lot of on-screen charisma, which is actually one of the most important skills an actor can have. People respond well to him, and that's a hard thing to teach. (I'm a director, and I've tried.) He's got some range, though he's at his best when it's light-hearted (his rap career, his sitcom, Men in Black).
But I keep looking for him to follow up his very good (not brilliant, but very very good) performance in Six Degrees. I haven't seen that yet.
Keanu... well, Keanu tries. I was actually the only one on the world who liked him in Much Ado About Nothing. He was interesting in My Own Private Idaho. He was actually rather good in that awful Something's Gotta Give. He really, really wants to be a Good Actor, but he'll have to settle for being charismatic.
The movie really doesn't have anything to do with "I, Robot," as far as I know -- the original script for it was called, IIRC, "Hardwired." To be fair, it was supposed to be a pretty damn good script, but when it was bought by the studio that also had done some development work with "I, Robot" and owned the film rights to the name, they decided to merge the two concepts, because to someone with a Hollywood marketing executive's deep insight they're close enough (detective trying to solve murders committed by a robot). Really, though, it's still "Hardwired," with some of the names from the Asimov stories.
I'll be curious to see if it's still a good movie, but I don't expect it to be a good adaptation of anything related to Asimov's works. The fact that it's pretending to be is unfortunate marketing spin.
This movie does not deal with true asmovian robots.
The three laws were to be so deeply ingrained in the positronic brain of the robot that to disobey any of them would cause "roblock", the robot would freeze up.
As mentioned above, there were a group of robots working in a radiation laboratory. The robots would rush in to save
the humans, only to destroy themselves (the radiation frys positronic brains and is relatively harmless to humans)
so a new batch of robots was purchased with part of the first law "or through inaction..." removed.
The Robots themselves came up with a zeroeth law:
A robot may not allow humanity to come to harm, even at the expense of the other laws.
These robots could kill to safeguard humanity.