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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."
They made a friggin' Will Smith Action Movie.
Why do they even bother buying the rights to something they couldn't really care less about, artistically?
Feels more like MiB3 than the book I read. Looks like it could be good but at the moment I wish that they would not call it I Robot...
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
I just watched the featurette, the trailed and looked through the web site. While the 3 laws of robotics are mentioned plenty of times and of course the movie is named after an Asimov story nowhere do they give credit to Isaac Asimov. The man may be dead but I'm dissappointed for him.
I think you're referring to Bicentennial Man, which was indeed based on a story of the same name. I'm not sure what other collections it's appeared in, but it's most defintely in Asimov's Robot Visions short story collection.
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thankfully we're all far more cynical now
*cough*Blair Witch Project*cough*
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The most distressing thing I see from this trailer is the fact that they have in one of their text snippets "Rules are made to be broken" or some equally stupid garbage. One of the things Asimov made perfectly clear in all his writings was the fact that whatever else the roboticists did they NEVER EVER EVER broke the 3 laws. It really pisses me off that there marketing automatons have the nerve to include the phrase "as suggested by the writings of Issac Asimov". He suggested no such thing!
'I, Robot' was the first *adult* (ie, no pictures in it) book I ever read as a kid, at the age of maybe 4 or 5. I still have the exact copy of the book even now. I remember being very disappointed when I found out that robots didn't really exist.
And now it looks as though Asimov is going to be fucked over by Hollywood. For Christ's sake, they had Akiva fucking Goldsman writing the script! The man who wrote 'Batman & Robin', 'Lost In Space' and a whole pile of other shit. Asimov can still write better than Goldsman, and he's *dead*. This fucktard shouldn't be writing v1agra spam, never mind major motion pictures.
In Asimov's stories, the whole point of the Three Laws was that they were never actually broken! Human error led to situations where robots were caught in conflict between their explicit orders and the Laws, or they *seemed* to be breaking one Law - but only to obey another. However, in the trailer we see crazed robots chasing and attacking humans left, right and centre. Somehow I don't think we're going to get Powell and Donovan puzzling out what's gone wrong, step by step.
Even the trailer is selling it as Bad Boys 3: Cybercops, what with Smith doing all his Fresh Prince schtick. I actually *like* Will Smith, but I don't want him doing wacky bullshit in an Isaac Asimov adaptation!
And we even get an emotional robot right there in the trailer. Again, Asimov's robots may have *seemed* to have emotional responses in the stories, but it was invariably due to orders-vs-Laws conflicts that made them act oddly, or projection on the part of the humans interacting with them. Some of the robots in his stories (especially Daneel Olivaw) may have had personalities, but they were still *machines*, and behaved as such.
Shit, and I had some hopes for this film - before I saw the trailer - too. It might even make money - "Will Smith vs killer robots? Keeeewl!" - but it's probably going to be even more insulting to Asimov than 'Paycheck' was to PKD.
You must think in Russian.
Apparently Aasimov actually believed the three laws to be immutable physical laws, rather than plot devices.
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Thank you very much for reminding me of this. IIRC, this Bjork video was the first UK DVD single released, and the robots were damn near identical to these.
Actually, the robo-Bjorks looked better.
Of course, I knew lots of people who said, "You know the scene where Neo shoots everything? That was the best part!" Apparently the parts of the movie I enjoyed went right by them. Maybe I, Robot will be the same way. Those looking for an action movie will get that, and those of us wanting action and something thought-provoking to talk about afterwards will get our way, too.
Here's hoping. :-)
Kind of like the mess they came up with for Starship Trooper. Sheech that was horrible!
In its own right I think that was a rather entertaining and at times superbly funny flick. I suppose that it wasn't quite what fans of the book were expecting but what Verhoeven came up with worked quite well as a movie.
Actually, I'm less concerned about Will Smith than about the fact that they cast some hot chick straight out of the Coyote Ugly Bar to pose as Susan Calvin. But let's keep an open mind.
Having viewed the trailer (got through eventually from one of the links someone posted), I don't know why anyone would want to see it...taking it off the web by /.ing and - ideally - taking the film out of production entirely would be the best gift the producers could offer.
I picked up "Robot Visions," a collection of Asimov robot stories and essays, last week because it had a couple stories I had never read and a number I just hadn't read in a while. Asimov's writing, which discuss the posibilities of human missunderstandings and technology problems as well as just being well written enjoyable sci-fi, has nothing to do with the crap that Will Smith is starring in.
As other people on this thread have said, the movie is inherently incompatible with Asimov's visions. The Three Laws aren't suggestions or helpful guidelines for robots to follow. They are physically built into each robot and cannot fail without the robot being 'insane' or broken beyond any posibility of repair. The vision of hundreds of robots attacking humans, being defended by Will Smith and "Dr. Calvin" (the idea of Dr. Calvin shooting at a robot is yet another thing to add to the growing list of "Why this movie looks inherently flawed") is an abomination against Asimov's work.
This movie looks, smells, and tastes like the 'sci-fi' crap Hollywood has been shitting out.
-Trillian
Very rarely is technology itself the focus of the the story - even in the robot stories where a specific robot often seems to be in focus, as one of the main characters in the story, they tend to be only props used to make some point.
This is a common thread with most of the sci-fi that survives long term. HG Wells, the Time Machine stands the test of time because the technology of the time machine isn't relevant to the story line. For that matter, the story could more or less have been told without time travel - just like in for instance Gullivers Travels, the whole journey is just an excuse to set the scene the way the authors wants.
Gibson survives because he's detached enough from technology to write about it in very broad strokes - there are very few details to get hung up about as "dated".
Philip K. Dick survives because most of his stories are about his characters, not about the technology they surround themselves with.
And so on...
The sci-fi that dates badly is the techno-fetishist stuff that is about the technology, as opposed to the consequences of the technology.
The three laws have been used in many sci-fi stories that involve robots, and not just the ones by Asimov. Other than it has the three laws and a story concept like the one from one of Asimov's book I don't see this as an Asimov story. I'll probably see this movie, but I would still rather see Harlan's script get filmed but that will never happen; what with the rep. he has go with movie studios.
Dungeons & Dragons had elves, dwarves, and wizards in it. It is certainly inspired by JRR Tolkien's work. But you don't see it being called "Lord of the Rings", do you?
Asimov's Laws effectively ended the 'Frankenstein' phase of robot stories in written SF. Good SF at least takes a shot at taking into account the sociopolitical aspects of technology. It's obvious that we will never be legally allowed to build AI that controls potentially lethal force without some protection against it being used against us. [Exceptions will of course be made for DoD robots, but they will no doubt have their own safeguards.] Once Asimov's Laws were in print, SF authors could never get away with selling books about robots going amok and turning on their human masters. Everyone knew that the government would demand the Three Laws or a close analogue be installed in every robot
Ah, well. Movies tend not to be as intellectually evolved as books, so we're treated to the Terminator series, and now the greatest spectacle of script syncretism since The Tower and The Glass Inferno movie adaptations were forged into The Towering Inferno. I'll probably contribute to the insanity by paying to watch this bastard, then look forward to seeing it parodied in a future Scary Movie release.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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get a clue...
It was frigging Beverly Hills in space.
While the book has a lot of good points about a facist government, human nature (the book starts off with humans attacking an alien world to make them more willing to negotiate later) and war the movie never gets past the "ohh, look at these big guns and these big breasts" stage.
The news-flashes was good though. Actually it's pretty much the ownly thing in the movie which I thought was in the spirit of book.
Had it been released under another name I probably wouldn't have loathed it so. It's just that I have this thing about movies that completely ruin a good story.
Oh, I got that it was making fun of itself, I just found it to be downright insulting to the original material.
The book was written in the aftermath of a world war, so the idea that citizenship could only come after military service was a very poignant concept. Think about it. Citizens elected other Citizens to office. Citizens would understand the price of freedom.
Crud. Must resist urge to go on drunken Heinlein buying spree at Amazon...
You've never seen Six Degrees of Separation, have you?
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