Day 150: This is what happens when a coworker is cleaning off their shelves and comes to the office with a box of free-for-the-taking DVDs.
I Robot
📚 fifty-one of 2020: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sure, Asimov’s gender politics don’t age particularly well. But he was always a brilliant and breezy writer, and for all his faults, he’ll always be a favorite. This collection of robotic puzzlers is always enjoyable.
Up, up and at ’em
Guess it’s about time I should poke my head up around these parts again, huh?
Been a good weekend — a little too hot and muggy at times, but overall, quite enjoyable. Saturday I took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island for a blogger’s picnic, and sat and chatted with Julie and Ted Leung and their three girls, Anita, Chip, Beth and her new son (all of six weeks old), and Robert and Myriam Scoble for a few hours. I ended up plopping down on a blanket and spending a good amount of time with the Leung’s girls, all of whom were adorable — and since Julie already mentioned Michaela showing me the owie on her middle finger (“Look at what I’ve got!” as I try to keep from laughing too hard as she gives me the bird) than I guess I can too. ;)
Between the heat and not sleeping terribly well for a couple nights, Saturday night became a night of rest, doing very little aside from dinking around on the ‘puter, ordering pizza, and kicking back to watch The Abyss. I really enjoy that movie, especially the extended special edition cut, and that ended up being just the night I needed to recuperate.
I debated heading down to check out the Bite of Seattle festival on Sunday, but decided that it was a bit too muggy outside for me to go traipsing around Seattle, so I wandered down to the theater to see I, Robot instead. Overall, not horrible — but not great, either. Pretty much just standard summer movie fare more than anything else. A few amusing lines here and there, decent special effects, and very pretty to look at (I do enjoy Alex Proyas‘ directing), but aside from the title and the Three Laws of Robotics, any connections to Asimov were few and far between. Character names and a couple situations lifted from the pages of Asimov’s robot short stories, but the spirit of Asimov’s writing definitely wasn’t there. It’s not so bad that I’d recommend staying away, but if there’s another movie you’re more interested in, don’t go out of your way to see I, Robot.
And now the weekends done, the week begins, and I try to catch up with everything else in the world that I missed over the past few days.
Whee!
iTunes: “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Vanessa Mae from the album Violin Player, The (1995, 7:49).
New I, Robot trailer out
There’s a new trailer for the movie I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov‘s writing. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, but, as with all movie properties based on works that I’m a fan of, there was some definite trepidation.
On the one hand, not only were they adapting the stories of one of my favorite authors, but they also tapped one of my favorite directors, Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City). On the other hand…Will Smith stars. Nothing against Will Smith personally, as I generally enjoy the films I see him in, but I’ve never seen him do much serious work — his strengths seem to have been in comedic and action vehicles. Asimov, on the other hand, while often extremely funny, has more of a cerebral, often punnish sense of humor to his writing, and his works are generally far stronger on dialog and concepts than they are on action.
Now that I’ve seen the new trailer, I have to say, I’m more than a little worried. I was hoping for more strong, “thinking-person’s” science fiction along the lines of A.I., Contact, Gattaca, or Dark City (four of the best sci-fi films in recent years, in my opinion). Instead, what I got was…well, a Will Smith action-comedy, from the looks of it.
Admittedly, I’m basing this solely on a two-minute trailer, but I don’t think I’m entirely unjustified in being worried. Opening with shots of Smith’s Detective Spooner riding his motorcycle through the city streets of Chicago, we follow him into the offices of “the richest man in the world” as a murder investigation starts. The businessman offers Spooner coffee, then asks if there’s anything he can to do help.
“Sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“For the coffee.”
“Oh…”
“Oh, you thought I was calling you ‘Sugar’? Hey, you’re not that rich.”
From there, we move to quick shots of the investigation, as Spooner interviews the robot suspected of killing a human. Interspersed with the clips are Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics — kind of.
Asimov himself often said that his Three Laws were probably the most famous lines he had ever written, out of his entire body of work, and have served as inspiration for many of today’s top robotics theorizers and designers as our technology progresses to the point where humanoid robotic creations are becoming more and more possible. The laws, as Asimov originally wrote them, are:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The laws as given to us in the I, Robot trailer, are now:
- They cannot hurt us.
- They must do what we say.
- They can protect themselves.
Okay, the essence is still there, and it’s entirely possible (and I’m hoping that) the original laws are quoted and expounded on in the film, and that these are merely the two-second screentime trailer versions. It was still enough to make me cringe.
From there, we move to quick action clips interspersed with dialog. In one, a robot jumps out of a window, flips over a couple times, and falls to the pavement, landing with a pavement-cracking jolt in a pose that could have been lifted straight from either of the trailers for the recent two Matrix movies or from the trailer for Underworld. Okay, it’s a cool shot and a good pose, but do we need to see it in every action movie trailer to hit the screen?
A few more clips later, we’re treated to an apparent robot mob in full attack mode, complete with smashing through doors, Aliens-style scuttling across walls and ceilings, robots backhanding and attacking people, and general mayhem, with all the robots suddenly sporting glowing red eyes and torsos (which gave them an amusingly ET-like look to me).
I will freely admit that the trailer looks good visually, and the effects look like they’ll be quite good. I just wish I wasn’t as worried about what had been done to the work of one of my favorite science-fiction authors.
I guess I’ll be able to form my final opinion July 16th, when the film opens. Until then, I’ll just be keeping my fingers crossed.
iTunes: “Darkness III” by In Absentia from the album Blood and Computers II (1994, 3:25).
Too cool for words
Ooers…this is the kind of thing that convinces me that there is still some good stuff going on out there.
I just found a listing on the Corona Coming Attractions movie news/rumor site detailing a film that I will have my skinny lil’ butt planted in the seat for come opening day — HardWired. Alex Proyas (director of The Crow and Dark City) directing a sci-fi murder mystery where the suspects are Artificial Intelligences and/or robots, and it’s going to be the first in a series of films based upon the ideas and concepts from Isaac Asimov‘s I, Robot stories?!?
I am so there.