I am embarking on a long voyage of discovery. And like most long voyages it will be a combination of rare moments of pleasure immersed in long stretches of boredom. That’s right, I intend to review the whole Twilight Zone series in its original order. You will benefit from my suffering and will thereby know which episodes to skip, which to give a chance and which to view without fear of boredom. Greater love hath no blogger than this, that he lay down his sanity for his readers.
Season 1
Episode 1 – Where is Everybody?
Earl Holliman (the guy who played the cook on Forbidden Planet) is a man wandering around a town that seems to have had people in it immediately before but now is completely empty. He finds fresh coffee, lit cigarettes and running machines but no people. I guess it’s supposed to be mysterious and claustrophobic but mostly it’s just boring and annoying. At the end we find out he’s an astronaut in an isolation chamber hallucinating. This is preparation for a future moon mission. Granted this was made in 1959 and Sputnik launched in 1957. That means the Space Race was all the rage. So maybe this seemed more interesting back then. But honestly, it’s really dull. This was the first episode of the whole series. The fact that they would lead with this should have been a warning to viewers of what was to come. Not a very auspicious beginning.
Last July I posted a review of the Twilight Zone in which I stated unequivocally that all but a handful of the episodes are unwatchable. Once again, the SyFy Channel featured a marathon of the episodes around the holidays and once again, I found myself watching way too many of them. I recorded about fifteen of them on the cable box and proceeded to replay them almost obsessively over the last few weeks. I did find a couple more that I had forgotten were pretty good and kept re-watching the few that I do enjoy. But what became intolerable was having to deal with the commercials from the SyFy Channel each time I watched. Even fast forwarding through became so painful I finally deleted all the episodes in disgust.
The one episode that I had forgotten I liked was “Two.” Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery are soldiers from opposing armies that wander into a deserted city five years after a war has depopulated the world. Surprisingly, the sparse dialog and minimal action work remarkably well and create a genuinely affecting moment.
Anyway, I buckled under the pressure. I went on Amazon and bought the whole series on blu-ray, all one hundred and sixty odd, mostly awful shows. I guess this proves I’m a hopeless addict to bad television.
It showed up tonight and I put on “To Serve Man.” Oh well, at least there are no SyFy Channel commercials. That’s one nightmare I won’t have to face again. That’s at least an improvement.
“Mr. Chambers, don’t get on that ship! “To Serve Man,” it’s a cookbook!” Ahhhh, ain’t it grand!
Here’s my retrospective on 2018, completely subjective of course and whenever I can’t make up my mind or I don’t want to leave something out I’ll cheat and provide more than one choice. And that’s one of the wonderful things about being the boss, you get to break the rules and do what you want.
Best Quotes of the Day
Some are political, some philosophical and some just human nature. The order is just chronological of their appearance on the site.
“In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
Aristotle
“No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.”
Aristotle
“When there aren’t any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.”
Orson Scott Card
“No one likes the fellow who is all rogue, but we’ll forgive him almost anything if there is warmth of human sympathy underneath his rogueries. The immortal types of comedy are just such men.”
W. C. Fields
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
H.L. Mencken
Carpe diem! Seize the day! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.
Horace
“And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”
Soren Kierkegaard
If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
Over the course of 2018 I read and reviewed all eight of the volumes in the main series (first volume linked above) and they only got better as the series went along. It was good old mil-sci-fi space opera. I assume I won’t live long enough to see the end of the series but so far that isn’t a problem. I look forward to the next installment soon and am in no way tired of this particular universe. Kudos to Anspach and Cole. Long may they stoke their dumpster fire at the Edge of the Galaxy!
Vega is an acquired taste for me and as I’ve written about him, “It’s for those who like gritty crime dramas with a staccato, post-modern, minimalist writing style.” Even though my tastes are a little more conventional I appreciate that there is an audience for the more unusual so I look around for interesting stuff. As I’ve said before, your call.
Non-Fiction
The two books listed below provide two different takes on the way to interpret the results of ancient DNA analysis.
“The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
“Who We Are and How We Got Here; Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Past” by David Reich
David Reich being an academic embedded in the politically correct culture of the university system treads ever so gently around the edges of how the science of human genetic history should be interpreted. Cochran and Harpending are much more direct and sometimes possibly presumptuous in the conclusions they draw from the evidence. Both books together tell a fascinating story of how much we now know about the complex and diverse origins of the various human populations.
This is a kids’ movie but it far exceeds any of the other “superhero” movies for just plain entertainment value. I won’t say it was as original as the first installment but it mostly kept to the spirit of the original and provided a fun vehicle for parents (or grandparents) to enjoy a movie with their kids.
This is a twofer. For younger folks I’ll only recommend the new version by the Coen Brothers. For people who grew up on the John Wayne movies of old I recommend they view both movies back to back in chronological order. They each have facets to its advantage. Each differs slightly from the source material. But each is a fine movie. And I’ll also recommend the novel that is the source for the movies. It also has facets that aren’t available in either movie.
Music
Country Music
Album of the Year
Colter Wall by Colter Wall
Song of the Year
Pan Bowl by Sturgill Simpson
My music choices are very idiosyncratic so I won’t try to justify them. To paraphrase a recent annoying politician, they just reflect who I am Pan Bowl is an older song from Simpson’s 2014 album.
TV
The only truly notable television I watched in 2018 was the State of the Union address by the president. Everything else was at best just okay.
On – Line Articles
Here are the articles that I thought were informative on our political situation. There were many others that were intersting but these seem to encapsulate the developments in the political thinking this year. Basically it’s the red-pilling of the normies.
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lensmacrophotography with Sony A7 III, Minolta 200mm f\4 macro lens and extension tubes, long horned beetleMonotropa uniflora, Indian pipe, ghost plant, corpse plant, Sony A7 III with Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro lensSony A7 III with the Sigma MC-11 Adapter and the Sigma 180mm f\2.8 APO Macro EX DG HSM OS for Canon
Today Camera Girl and I took grandsons Primus and Secundus to the local multiplex and watched a double feature of
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Aquaman
Between tickets and popcorn this went for about a hundred bucks. And it was horrible. Having to twice sit through the interminable coming attractions and other advertising video was pure torture. Ralph Breaks the Internet was mildly amusing but twice as long as it needed to be. Plus, at the end I found out that Sarah Silverman was one of the voice actors. By the time Aquaman began I was bored and queasy from eating greasy popcorn.
It wasn’t bad. There was a little too much girl power being pitched and of course none of it made any sense at all but taken as a whole it wasn’t bad. The plot was ridiculously contrived and the evil half brother motif might as well have had Thor and Loki’s names filed down to protect DC from being sued by Marvel.
The special effects are, of course, spectacular. Due to his human/Atlantean hybrid ancestry the title role is performed as a regular guy who just happens to be a super hero that can breath under water and control the denizens of the deep. The rest of the Atlanteans try to sound like some kind of quasi-medieval nobility, sort of like how the Asgardians in the Thor movies do. It’s a little silly but not terrible.
I’ve never followed the Aquaman character before. I figured he was just the DC version of Submariner who was the lamest of the Marvel superheroes. From the ending sequence and the way these superhero franchises are handled it’s certain that there will be sequels. Not that I think there need to be any.
Bottom line, the movie has plenty of action and drama. The main character is likable and fulfills the function of a superhero by being heroic. And finally, the grandsons thought it was very good. So it fulfills its primary role, it amuses kids.
Aldiss was a British science fiction author and “Who Can Replace A Man” is the name of a short story collection published in 1965. From my exposure to the English films and theater from that time period they seemed like a thoroughly unhappy bunch. A lot of that shows up in Aldiss’s stories. There’s a dreariness and an almost claustrophobic atmosphere to some of his work which I can’t enjoy. But mixed in with these will be a gem. Out of the fourteen stories in this collection two of them are excellent and highly recommended.
“Old Hundredth” is the story of a megatherium (giant sloth) riding on a baluchitherium (sort of like a prehistoric giant rhinoceros) in search of transubstantiation into a musicolumn. This piece of insane storytelling is remarkably enjoyable and feels like some kind of impressionistic water color of a beautiful landscape rather than a science fiction story. I’ve always greatly enjoyed rereading it.
The story “Who Can Replace a Man?” is more prosaic and recognizably science fiction in its content but it provides a self-consistent and believable vision of what a world of robots would be like after humans disappear. It’s fun even when it’s bleak.
After these two stories recommendations become qualified.
“Poor Little Warrior!” is the story of a time travelling brontosaurus big game hunt. It follows in the footsteps of Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” but outdoes it in grimness. It has that British mid-century dreariness but has some cheerful horror at the end. To each his own on this one.
“The Impossible Star” is equally grim but does include and interesting imagining of how proximity to a black hole might affect the human animal. I’ll give it a passing grade.
Finally, “The New Father Christmas” is dreary enough but so odd that it gets points for holding my interest. I’ll give it a D+.
The rest of the stories, although they have interesting facets are just too downbeat for me to enjoy or recommend. If you do decide to read the New Father Christmas and enjoy it then maybe you can find value in the rest of the collection. Once again, to each his own.
One time I mentioned on the site that I wondered what a combination of science fiction and fantasy would be like. TomD, whose opinions on matters political, photographic and literary are always enlightening, immediately volunteered two examples, The Majipoor Cycle and the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. I have previously reviewed the Majipoor books. Here I will address D.O.D.O. and just to get it out of the way the acronym stands for Department of Diachronic Operatives, a government issue time travel story.
Neal Stephenson wrote this book with Nicole Galland. I’ve heard of Stephenson but never read him before. I’d never heard of Galland before this book. So, the book finally got to the top of the pile and I just finished it on Thursday past. The first thing I can say is that this is a hybrid creation. The outline of the story is a time-travel science fiction story of the giant government project category. On that framework is a story that combines historical fiction, fantasy and a satiric contemporary novel about day to day life in a government bureaucracy. The other fact about the story is that most of it is a first-person narrative by a modern female character. And this particular character is a college teaching assistant with expertise in linguistics. And I am intimately familiar with this subspecies. And I’m not greatly sympathetic to its idiosyncrasies. Also, the story takes place in Cambridge, MA. And I am also intimately familiar with the habits and foibles of the people who live there. And I am also not greatly sympathetic to their idiosyncrasies either. So, this starts me out in the wrong place as a reader and reviewer.
Moving on from there, the story ingeniously constructs a scenario where the present-day American military becomes worried about losing a global arms race in magic. Military intelligence has somehow detected anomalies in the present that lead them to believe that someone has figured out how to travel back in time. And based on a thorough computerized analysis of historical documents, they believe the method involves witchcraft. And since witchcraft doesn’t seem to exist anymore, they need to figure out how to revive it. And reviving it hinges on manipulating quantum states of matter and invokes Schrodinger’s Cat who literally shows up in the story (the cat, not the Schrodinger).
From there we meet a Japanese scientist/Mayflower descendant, husband/wife team, which is a category that believe it or not, I’m also personally familiar with. He’s a quantum physicist who has been investigating the mechanism that the story needs to restore magic and she is the descendant of a burned Salem witch. Mix in a surviving one hundred and eighty-year-old Hungarian witch, a dashing young army lieutenant colonel, a plucky and annoying female linguist (these last two being the love interests in the story) and assorted scientists, generals, computer geeks and bureaucrats both academic and military and you have the cast that becomes project D.O.D.O. Once they succeed, we add into the stew, witches from colonial Massachusetts, Elizabethan London, thirteenth century Constantinople and various times and places in medieval northern Europe. And the non-witch historical characters include Byzantine emperors and empresses, Varangian guards, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Burbage and a raiding party of Vikings in a Walmart.
The text is a collection of Victorian era journal entries, Elizabethan era letters, some medieval vellum codices, U.S. military documents and a copious collection of e-mail messages from a variety of bureaucratic organizations. The story is in several voices modern and antique but as mentioned above is primarily the journal of the young woman linguist who is the protagonist and the focal point of several of the original plot elements.
Despite my obvious lack of sympathy for the protagonist and several other of the main characters, the story works on its own terms. The characters are self-consistent and wherever I am competent to compare them to their real-life exemplars highly accurate. Because of the details of the time travel mechanism, the action is of necessity episodic and sometimes repetitive. This situation is written pretty well and only results in a little slowness in the action at the beginning of the book. Toward the end the pacing picks up quite a bit and the book ends by resolving the latest crisis but the finish requires that there will be sequels.
My opinion on the book is that if you are like me and rather dislike bureaucrats and modern women then you will have limited sympathy for the protagonist and several of the main characters. There is a good amount of swashbuckling action by the military officer who is a main character and likable. The story line is extremely clever as a science fiction plot. So, I recommend it as a story with the proviso that men of my generation will be tempted occasionally to toss the book at the wall when modern New England feminist empowerment rears its ugly head.
You may be asking yourself, is photog becoming demented? Didn’t he already write a review of Them!? The answers to those questions are yes and no. I have referenced Them in several posts about cheesy 1950s science fiction movies. But it has never gotten its own exclusive treatment. Well, I mean to remedy that situation, pronto.
Them! is the grand-daddy of all atomic energy fear films. Instead of fearing cancer and radiation sickness we are provided with a much more rational fear, giant ants. It is 1954 and nine years after the first atomic bomb was tested at White Sands, New Mexico. During those nine years ants have been traipsing around the New Mexico desert ignorant of their future as future contenders for mankind’s crown as King of the Earth. But the wait is over. A small prop plane is inexplicably cruising over the desert and spots a little girl holding a doll aimlessly walking in the hot sun. The pilot alerts a nearby police cruiser which intercepts the little girl and finds that she’s catatonic. With the help of the pilot they trace her point of origin to a recreational vehicle parked in the desert. On closer inspection the officers discover that one side of the RV has been ripped to shreds. But being crack forensic experts and logical linguists, they proclaim that the RV wall, “wasn’t caved in, it was caved out.” Whoever wrote the deathless prose of this dialog is partly responsible for the sad position we currently find ourselves in, vis-à-vis cultural and actual illiteracy. Later on, the policeman redeems himself when at a general store that has been similarly destroyed, he declares, “this wasn’t pushed in, it was pulled out.” Okay, stupid rant over.
Based on blood found in the RV the officers determine that the girl is the only survivor of an attack. On the way back from finding the girl and the trailer they stop off at a local general store and find it similarly damaged and the store owner brutally killed. One of the police officers, Ed Blackburn is left at the store to guard the remains. His partner, Sgt. Ben Peterson played by James Whitmore, drives off and shortly afterward, Blackburn is heard off camera firing his revolver at some thing and then screaming as he suffers horrible death.
Evidence found at the site of the RV, a foot print, is sent to the FBI for identification and so the story moves on to its next logical step, Santa Claus is called in. Or more precisely Edmund Gwenn who played Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street. Gwenn plays Dr. Harold Medford a world-renowned myrmecologist who with his myrmecologist daughter have come to lead the effort to save the world from the giant ants. Representing the government is FBI agent Robert Graham played by James Arness. Arness who later found fame as Marshall Dillon on TV’s Gunsmoke is the brave, competent hero of the movie and the love interest for the myrmecologist daughter. And to provide local color Ben Peterson is always on hand to provide the comic relief.
With the help of the scientists, the army locates the giant ant nest and destroy it with cyanide gas. But after inspecting the inside of the nest the scientists break the bad news. New queen ants have escaped the nest and will be forming new nests elsewhere. Now a war room is set up and armed forces from all the services mobilize to battle the giant ants on land, on sea and in the air. Dunt, dunt, daaaah!!!
The final showdown takes place where it must, in the storm drains of Los Angeles. And in fitting fashion, the ants capture two little boys who wander into their nest and are rescued by the US Army. Unfortunately, Ben Peterson dies saving the boys but dies the good death of a hero. And when the ants are finally finished off Dr. Medford gives a speech and tells us that the atomic age is fraught with danger and giant insects.
Despite how thoroughly I’ve mocked this movie, I actually enjoy it immensely. Other than the laughably fake animatronic ants the production values for the movie are quite good and the actors are actually very effective for the most part, including the character actors performing the bit parts as police, military and civilian participants. My favorite scenes are where the scientific expertise of the Medfords is showcased for the benefit of the poor ignorant soldiers and police. While under attack from their first giant ant Dr. Medford makes sure he uses the Latin singular and plural versions of the word antenna when instructing the police to shoot at the ant. “Shoot the antennae, shoot the antennae,” he yells and once one of these has been shot off he continues “now shoot the other antenna.” In another scene Dr. Medford is attempting to convince the Pentagon that the giant ants are an existential threat to humanity and he uses an ant film clip that looks like it could have been made by my high school biology teacher.
Them! is a wonderful time capsule of the 1950s. Americans are the good guys and giant ants are definitely bad. What could be simpler?
Terry Gilliam is best known as a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But he also had a second career as a motion picture writer/director. His best-known movie was Brazil, about a dystopic future where the all-powerful security state reaches an absurdist level of control.
But the movie that I am interested in here is a less well known but sunnier exercise. The movie opens up within a walled town besieged by the Turks at a time that is identified as being in the 18th Century, The Age of Reason, Wednesday. A small acting company is putting on a comical play of the legendary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, when in the middle of the first act the real Baron Munchausen interrupts the play to refute the slanders, he claims are being made against himself. The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson who is in attendance in the audience and is the military governor of the town and a staunch proponent of the Age of Reason, takes offense at the Baron’s aspersions against reason and logic and threatens to throw the Baron and the whole acting troupe over the wall to the Turk. The Baron claims he is the cause of the Turkish assault on the town and spends the rest of the movie assembling his legendary comrades to save the town from both the Turk and the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson. The Sultan and Jackson, behind the scenes are actually on excellent terms and take turns winning battles in order to keep the war going on forever.
Some very excellent actors are included in the cast including Jonathan Pryce as Horatio Jackson, Robin Williams as the King of the Moon and Eric Idle as Desmond and Berthold. The reason Idle has two characters to play is another conceit of the movie. The play actors of which Idle is one look exactly like the Baron’s actual comrades and so the movie actors play both parts. Robin Williams as mentioned, is King of the Moon and his characterization has a split personality. When the King’s head is detached from his body, he has a light, zany, Italian-accented voice an impish personality. But when the head and body are joined Williams takes on the voice and personality of what could most easily be described as an angrier version of Benito Mussolini.
The English actor John Neville plays the Baron and smaller parts are distributed to well-known actors like Oliver Reed and Uma Thurman who portray the gods Vulcan and Venus respectively. Even Sting (of Police singing fame) has a cameo as the “Heroic Officer.”
The plot, such as it is, has the Baron sailing to the Moon, falling into Mount Vesuvius to meet Vulcan and Venus and being swallowed by a giant sea monster, all performed as part of his search for his servants. Along the way he flirts with Queens, goddesses and even a few commoners. At all times he somehow has long stem roses to hand out and he invariably compares the beauty of each women to Catherine the Great “whose hand in marriage I once had the honor to decline.” On one occasion he makes the remark to three women at once. When an auditor of this exchange challenges him that they couldn’t all remind him of Catherine the Great, the Baron petulantly replied, “Why not? Bits here and bits there!”
The movie is obviously a hymn to fantasy and whimsy and the final showdown has the Baron conquer not only reason and reality but even old age and death itself. It’s an utterly ridiculous movie that is full of fantastic visual effects and fairy tale imagery. It probably will not appeal to all tastes. I highly recommend it to those who can enjoy elaborate nonsense.
Technically I guess this is a book series review. Jim Butcher has produced fifteen books in his Dresden Files series of urban fantasy novels. Starting in 2000 he published about one a year. The series follows the career of Harry Dresden, a Chicago wizard who consults with the Chicago PD whenever a vampire, werewolf or other evil magical being invades his territory. Butcher provides back story on Harry’s relation to the various hierarchies of supernatural beings starting in the first novel Storm Front but one of the very impressive aspects of the series is just how complex the interrelation between the various fantasy elements of Harry’s environment becomes. In addition to the wizards that he is nominally a member of, he has varied bad relations with the Three (Black, White and Red) Houses of vampires, the Summer and Winter Queen’s faerie realms, an assortment of demi-gods, several types of lycanthropes, zombies, ghosts, Christian Knights a Chicago Mafioso and any number of demons and devils.
And in addition to the growth of the fantasy landscape, Harry himself grows in the telling. He starts out as an almost ridiculous figure of fun who barely survives only because he heals very well. But across the series of stories he takes on the characteristics of a hero. He loses those he loves and sacrifices his own well being to protect his neighbors and innocents who are often thrust into the jaws of death by proximity to Harry’s homicidal enemies. And we see Harry’s relationship with Lieutenant Karrin Murphy of the Chicago PD evolve. They start out as uneasy allies. But owing to the impossibility of reconciling the requirements of human law enforcement with the reality of battling supernatural monsters they often found themselves as adversaries. Over time they become as close as family and Karrin ends up as probably Harry’s closest friend on earth.
We meet members of Harry’s bizarre extended family including a half brother who is part vampire and his god-mother who is a powerful faerie in the Winter Queen’s Court. And Harry even becomes a father although under very tragic circumstances.
This is all just a rambling miscellany of some of the elements of this series that come to mind. No new volume has come out since 2014 so my memory of it isn’t crystal clear. But what is certain is that this is a fantastic series of urban fantasy books that entertains on multiple levels. The story telling is compelling. The characters are memorable and interesting, the evil ones no less than the good, and Harry most of all. And Harry Dresden becomes a familiar and likable friend whose acquaintance you look forward to renewing in each book. The whole series is a first-person account in Harry’s voice. You laugh as his crappy Volkswagon Beetle gets smashed for the hundredth time by some monster and has to be repaired on the cheap again because Harry is always broke. You recoil in shock when Harry’s pathetic unheated basement apartment, so often attacked by supernatural forces, is finally burned to the ground.
I’ll cut this short here. I highly recommend the Dresden Files novels. I haven’t read any of the independent short stories that have been added to the corpus recently so I won’t vouch for those. I’m hoping someday Jim Butcher will give us more of the series. They are excellent.
My regular readers will know that my estimation of Isaac Asimov’s work is not uniformly positive. I read the “I Robot” stories as a kid and enjoyed them a good deal. I think what I found entertaining was the cleverness of the interplay of the Three Laws of Robotics with the plot lines. Re-reading them many years later I saw that aside from the cleverness, the stories were not particularly rich in characterization or description. And for short stories of that era that wasn’t unusual. So, let’s say I Robot is a worthy example of its time and type.
A film was made from the stories back in 2004. It bears no resemblance to any of the stories but involves the concepts of the three laws and how they relate to a world that has adopted an almost universal use of robots in commercial, industrial and even personal service. Will Smith is a cop in Chicago who despises robots because of a past encounter. The plot revolves around his investigation of a murder that contrary to the requirements of the three laws has apparently been committed by a robot. For fans of Firefly the voice of the killer robot Sonny is provided by Alan Tudyk (aka Hoban “Wash” Washburne).
I was sort of busy back in 2004 and didn’t see the movie when it came out. But I Robot, the movie, has been in almost constant rotation on AMC for the last year or two so I’ve seen all or part of it a number of times now. When I first viewed it I wasn’t very enthusiastic for it. The dissimilarity from the Asimov stories probably annoyed me. If I grasp for any other reasons, I’ll point to the presence of Shia LaBeouf in the cast in a part so insipid that it makes you shake your head wondering what the director was thinking.
Interestingly, over time I actually grew to enjoy the movie more. It’s an action adventure movie and the scenes featuring Will Smith battling enormous numbers of robots are cleverly done and quite a lot of fun. Tudyk does a good job making the robot character sympathetic. And Bridget Moynahan makes the Susan Calvin character more personable than Asimov ever did.
So here we have a couple of inversions of the typical situation. For the most part, I find that a movie made from a book almost never lives up to it. But in this case, it surpasses it. And here is an example of a book that has decreased in my estimation over time while the movie has done the reverse.
I Robot is not a film version of the Asimov stories and it does not break any new ground as a science fiction movie either for the special effects or for original story telling. But it’s a pretty good Will Smith action adventure. And he does kill a lot of robots with a big gun. How can you go wrong with that?
