would you rather see I, Robot 2 or the Caves of Steel film?

[Christopher]

Instead os making a super great thoughtful film with profound notions, they made a blockbuster for the popcorn eating crowd, and then made them think.

I think they knew what they were doing.

Right. A pure Asimov film would've been a box-office bomb. The majority of the moviegoing audience these days has different tastes than that. But give them a movie that caters to their expectations about SF and pepper it with some Asimovian ideas, and you can draw them in and then expand their horizons a little.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Thank you!
Yews, that's what they did!, as for myself, I think that, while they didn't make me bust a vein in thought, they certainly made the kind of film that I would like to see more of. I'd like to see films where the audience has to meet the filmmakers halfway, but, in the interim, I'm happy just having the audience have a great time watching the action, but then having a few questions afterwards actually helps. "What did that last shot of the film actually mean?" is an example...

 

[Admiral2]

It does have a relationship to what it's based on. It's a story which, at its core, is driven by the existence and consequences of the Three Laws of Robotics. Yes, it's a different kind of story about the Three Laws than Asimov would have told, but it's still a story about the problems that arise from the Laws, and that's what Asimov robot stories are all about.

And if the movie is the best they can do with one of Asimov's themes, I would prefer to stick with the written material and that Hollywood find something else to adapt...as I said ages ago.

Dark City was dense.

I can't tell whether you mean that in a positive or negative sense.

Dense as in stupid, thick, lame, overwrought and mind-bogglingly boring, so pretty much negative.

That's not the movie I saw.

So you missed the part where Will was circus balancing on a flying motorcycle to deliver two hand-guns of terror to a single robot? Or the part in the USR tower when he leaped from one catwalk to another wielding a submachine-gun like a switchblade? Cause I'm pretty sure those scenes are in there, and those are the scenes I was talking about.

And it's laughably inaccurate to characterize Will Smith as a "gangsta" rapper. His work in that genre was characterized by its light, humorous tone, and his upbringing was wholesome and middle-class. This is a man who doesn't even like to use bad grammar. (Seriously. It's a whole thing with him.) Not to mention that he's had far more fame and success as an actor than as a rapper.

Y'know what I hate about you, Chris? It's that you're so fucking arrogant you insist on explaining things in detail that I already know! And what kills me this time is that you didn't even pay attention to what I wrote. My exact words were: "a rapper gangsta-firing automatic weapons..." I did not call Will Smith a "gangsta rapper", but he doesn't have to be one to act like one in a movie, and that's all he did in this one. He was trash-talkin' and gunslingin' and basically bad-assing his way through an Asimov robot story, and the concepts clash in my head. It's jarring.

What makes Alan Tudyk special?

That's... just... such a sad thing to hear. I can't even respond to that.

Here's an idea: Try explaining what's special about him.

Before IR I'd only seen him in Firefly, which I hated. Since IR, I've only seen him in V and Transformers, Dark of the moon, and none of these performances justify the way you fawned over him in the previous post. Anybody with a serene voice could have played Sonny. Why was Alan Tudyk such a must?

There was a TV show that came on way back when called "Probe" that was a essentially an anthology series of the type of science mysteries that Asimov was known to write about. He was one of the producers.

It wasn't an anthology series except in the sense of having a "case-of-the-week" format. It was an ongoing series with a regular cast, starring Parker Stevenson as reclusive, eccentric genius Austin James and Ashley Crow as the sidekick who pulled him out of his shell and got him involved with the world. (It's kind of like if Walter Bishop and Astrid from Fringe had their own show, except more sedate.)

Motherf---er...see above, Chris...

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

So you missed the part where Will was circus balancing on a flying motorcycle to deliver two hand-guns of terror to a single robot? Or the part in the USR tower when he leaped from one catwalk to another wielding a submachine-gun like a switchblade? Cause I'm pretty sure those scenes are in there, and those are the scenes I was talking about.

So, those are the kinds of scenes we'd find in a blockbuster movie.

I don't see people complaining about the ridiculous hallway fight in Inception. Actually people love that scene. I don't see them complaining about the Bat-pod in the Dark Knight and how it can use a wall to do a quick 360 degree turn. I also don't see people complaining (much) about how Romulans live in the drill yards from where tons of pure energy is being dissipated, and they are armed with swords to fight anyone who happened to miraculously land on the drill.

 

[Set Harth]

I don't see people complaining about the ridiculous hallway fight in Inception.

Nothing to complain about. Dreamshare is not reality, and it follows rules
( gravity shifts ) of the fictional setting as defined by the film. Also, the dreamer is the action hero of their dream level.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

And Asimov didn't even choose or want the title; he objected to it because it was already the title of a story by Ernest and Otto Binder (the basis of the Outer Limits episode of that name and its later remake).

Funny you should mention the Outer Limits episode becase when I saw the trailer for the film thats what I thought they were adapting, becuase I didn't even know about the Asimov novels yet.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I don't see people complaining about the ridiculous hallway fight in Inception.

Nothing to complain about. Dreamshare is not reality, and it follows rules
( gravity shifts ) of the fictional setting as defined by the film. Also, the dreamer is the action hero of their dream level.

That may be. Yeah, everyone praises it, but I was so much trying to figure out what dream I was in that this fight wa hardly a deal-breaker anyway. Arthur wasn't that distinguished a character- he had the suit and stuff, and was (no doubt purposefully) bland, at least compared to Eaves and the others. So, this fight wasn't as exciting as it perhaps should have been.

But I was trying to make a point that not every action scene in a blockbuster has to be in sync with the theme of the story. I was talking about objections of the (frankly badass) scene where Spooner jumped form his motorcycle with two guns drawn.

 

[Christopher]

How shocking, for there to be action scenes in an action movie! For shame!

Having action doesn't mean you can't have ideas too.

 

[Set Harth]

Try explaining what's special about him.

Before IR I'd only seen him in Firefly, which I hated. Since IR, I've only seen him in V and Transformers, Dark of the moon, and none of these performances justify the way you fawned over him in the previous post. Anybody with a serene voice could have played Sonny. Why was Alan Tudyk such a must?

Steve the Pirate.

 

[Stevil2001]

I don't think anyone in this thread has said the film should have been 100% faithful to the novel.

And I'm not saying they did. I'm saying that I, Robot isn't a single cohesive thing to begin with; it's a loose sampling of a fraction of Asimov's positronic-robot stories, specifically the fraction written before 1950. So even defining what "faithful to I, Robot" means in the first place is far from elementary. Faithful to what parts of it? What aspects of it? There's no single plot to be faithful to. Ellison's screenplay is evidently more or less faithful to the unifying conceit of the collection, the interview of Susan Calvin as a framework for the stories, but that frame is a somewhat artificial imposition on the original works.

I guess I just don't have any intellectual or emotional loyalty to I, Robot as a distinct and separate entity. To me it's just the earliest piece of a larger whole, a loose agglomeration of the first nine of several dozen stories in the series. I don't see it as something that's complete within itself, just as a sliver of something bigger.

So tell me, what is "faithful to I, Robot?" What does that actually mean when we're talking about a loose and non-comprehensive anthology like this? It doesn't have to be fidelity to the plot, because there are nine plots, ten if you count the frame. Fidelity to the characters? Sure, I can see that. Creating a film that's built around Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning and Steven Byerly and Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan would certainly be more faithful than one that's built around Del Spooner and Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning. But there are Susan Calvin and Steven Byerly stories that aren't part of I, Robot because they were written after 1950. I, Robot is a nebulous concept. So I think if someone wants to tell an original story arising from the Three Laws and including Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning, and they decide to call it I, Robot, I think the definition of what I, Robot is in the first place is fuzzy enough that I don't have a problem with that.

First, I don't feel the need to describe some hypothetical film I'd like to see, anymore than when I review a book and say that the plot has holes do I need to explain how to fill them all. I agree with you that I, Robot is a fuzzy concept (the vaunted Ellison script actually adapts an Asimov robot story that's not in I, Robot), but even so I don't think the film adequately depicted it.

Second, I think you undersell the importance of the frame narrative. Even though there's no common character in every story, there is a continuous narrative to the book, telling a story of technophobia, resistance, and acceptance, culminating in the brilliant "The Evitable Conflict." Even though every story in I, Robot is in The Complete Robot (if I remember right), I'll never get rid of I, Robot because the frame narrative is integral to my reading of those stories.

Finally, being unfaithful to Asimov is not why I dislike I, Robot. (I personally feel that "faithfulness" is a silly criterion by which to judge an adaptation.) I dislike it for not being very good. And being kinda stupid.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I think faithfulness is a silly criterion too, and I think I, Robot is a pretty good film for the kind of film it's trying to be. It's not smart by the standards of Asimov's work, true, but it's smart by the standards of Will Smith summer blockbusters.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that a lot of people talk about how the film should've been "faithful to I, Robot," but I'm not sure what that means and I think a lot of the critics don't know what it means either, especially when they call I, Robot a novel. I think if the subject on the table is fidelity to the source, it's important to start off by defining what that actually means, and that's a more complicated question than online discussions of the film tend to acknowledge.

 

[Stevil2001]

I can see that.

Can we agree that the scene with the "vintage shoes" is terrible?

 

[Christopher]

If I correctly recall what you're referring to, it's problematical only to the extent that annoying product placement is an endemic problem in movies and TV, not specifically the fault of this movie. If anything, at least the character has a valid reason to call attention to the shoes and care about them, and it actually contributes to his characterization because his fondness for antiques reflects his phobias about modern technology. I've seen worse uses of product placement.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I like the fact that Will smith's "humor" comes form a deep-seeded cynicsm