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Me, RobotScreenshot: YouTube
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or sometimes just our own impenetrable whims. This week: against all odds, the event movie season is in full swing, so it’s time to take a look back at the little-known summer blockbusters, flops, critical bombs or simply forgotten Hollywood shows that deserve to be saved from the trash can of the history of cinema.
Me, Robot (2004)
Intellectual property and branding now reign supreme in Hollywood, but insisting that every big-budget movie instantly looks familiar can backfire. Case in point: I, Robot from 2004, which claimed to be an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic (though the closing credits carefully express provenance as suggested by). Reviews at the time were decidedly mixed, with many critics complaining, not mistakenly, that the film bore little resemblance to Asimov’s stories, simply using them as a flimsy clothesline on which to hang Will Smith’s jokes. and sequences of dramatic computer-generated chaos. But while there’s no doubt Fox awkwardly imposed I, Robot on an unrelated original screenplay (written by Jeff Vintar), the film nonetheless honors the spirit of Asimov’s stories, even though it substitutes for some mind-blowing action. to what is essentially a series of logical puzzles rooted in the ambiguity of languages.
In 2004, the year 2035 still seemed far enough to be imagined as a futuristic world of interactive holograms, fully autonomous vehicles, and ubiquitous humanoid robots performing all the mundane tasks. (Needless to say, we weren’t exactly up to the task to make it happen. On the flip side, this movie couldn’t design smartphones, which were only three years away; characters have to head to their desks. whenever they want to access the internet.) While most people love humanity’s metal minions, which are programmed to do no harm (explicitly using Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics ), Chicago Police Detective Del Spoon Spooner (Will Smith) views them with deep suspicion. So when his friend Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) inventor of the positronic brain apparently commits suicide by jumping out of the window of his umpteenth floor of his office, Spoon quickly puts the blame on Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a robot. which he finds hidden at the crime scene. In theory, this is impossible, since Sonny, like all robots, is bound by the Three Laws. Soon after, however, robots attack Spoon everywhere, confirming his paranoia and suggesting that US Robotics owner (Bruce Greenwood), described as the richest man on Earth, doesn’t necessarily care about the best. interests of humanity.
That aspect of the narrative that didn’t immediately suggest Jeff Bezos at the time has aged remarkably well, even though Amazon’s robots are just drones at this point. What’s fascinating about Me Robot is how he simultaneously makes robots his main antagonists and presents them as victims of hatred and bigotry. Smith plays Spoon with his standard charismatic arrogance (I don’t know what gleefully means, but I’ll have a coffee), making us identify with him throughout; at the same time, Spoon often comes across as a fanatic (I saw a robot running around with a purse and naturally I assumed …), and Smith leans into the uncomfortable irony, giving the guy just a twist. of sad self-awareness. Director Alex Proyas (Dark City) orchestrates kinetic killer robot sets that still look pretty impressive 17 years later, and manages to blow up a plotline in the middle of the movie so nonchalant that you wonder for a moment if you have. saw what you thought you saw. (Even the murderous robot looks confused, giving Spoon a questioning look to which he responds with the single word Yeah.) In the end, however, I, Robot actually manage to solve an Asimov-style logical dilemma, revealing the The true nature of the seemingly contradictory behavior of robots in a way that was clearly influenced by the then recent passage of the Patriot Act. Essentially, it poses a bigger variation on this tricky question: if we create a robot capable of abstract thinking and programmed first and foremost to prevent all harm from coming to human beings, should it keep us from smoking?
Availability: I, Robot is available for rental or digital purchase.
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