Supreme Admiral
Captain
I just found the article out a seconds ago. I don't know if this is real or not.
Is this for real? I, Robot 2?
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I thought that as summer tentpole movies go, I, Robot turned out pretty well. Naturally it had to have lots of action and wisecracks and turn Susan Calvin into a babe because it was a summer tentpole, but within those inescapable parameters, it managed to be fairly intelligent and a reasonable distillation of the core ideas of Asimov's universe.
People complain that it was "nothing like the book," but that's missing the point. The book was an anthology. I, Robot was a blanket title -- not even Asimov's choice of title -- for a series of very loosely connected stories. The movie was intended to be a loose prequel to those stories, another installment under the same blanket title. So I don't have a problem in principle with a second prequel; it's all in the execution.
People complain that it was "nothing like the book," but that's missing the point. The book was an anthology. I, Robot was a blanket title -- not even Asimov's choice of title -- for a series of very loosely connected stories. The movie was intended to be a loose prequel to those stories, another installment under the same blanket title. So I don't have a problem in principle with a second prequel; it's all in the execution.
I had read somewhere that the movie was already in production as a separate story with obvious similarities when the studio got the rights to use "I, Robot", that the differences were more because they added the Asimovian bits later on in the process... anyone know if that's accurate or not?
Yeah, it had the problems of a summer tentpole, but I still enjoyed it. While noone has made a great Asimov film, the ones that tried have at least been enjoyable (I liked Bicentennial Man as well).
All I know is that I want a proper Foundation movie. Not I, Robot 2.
That's essentially correct.
The film was to be entitled "Hardwired," and during the pre-production Proyas, for whatever reason, kept referring to it as "I, Robot." He liked the title, decided it was a better title, and discovered that there was a book with the title. The rights were bought, and the screenplay was tweaked to bring it more in line as something Asimovian.
I tend to agree with Christopher above; it's not an adaptation of Asimov's work, but as an extension of it, the film works pretty damn well. I, Robot, the film, makes a lot more sense as a prequel to The Caves of Steel than Asimov's own book does, to be honest; a robot uprising, as seen in the film, would go a long way to explain Earth's antipathy toward robots.
Hmm... is it possible that Susan Calvin's reputed plainness in the stories is more a function of her attitude, her attire, or perhaps the viewpoint characters' preconceptions, and that in her younger years she actually did look like Bridget Moynihan...?
On the other hand, it strikes me as a continuity problem that VIKI came up with the Zeroth Law well before "The Evitable Conflict." With that precedent, you'd think it wouldn't have taken so long for the characters in the story to figure out what was happening.
On the other hand, it strikes me as a continuity problem that VIKI came up with the Zeroth Law well before "The Evitable Conflict." With that precedent, you'd think it wouldn't have taken so long for the characters in the story to figure out what was happening.
Could Moynihan grow up to look like Joanne Woodward (Ellison's choice to play the elderly Calvin in his I, Robot screenplay)? I don't see why not; Woodward was pretty damn attractive in her younger years.
You raise a good point.
The thing is, Asimov never intended, when he wrote his robot stories, that they would all fit together. Then, trying to fit in someone else's interpretation on top of an already creaky foundation is going to cause some conflicts.
Eh, I really enjoyed I, Robot. I don't really see the need for a second movie though. Like I Am Legend, which was also reported to possibly have a second movie a while back, I felt that it ended perfectly, and should just be left as a stand-alone.
Me too.
Shouldn't that be "Awww, hellll no!"
The proposed plot sounds RDM/BSGish.
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