My regular readers will know that my estimation of Isaac Asimov\u2019s work is not uniformly positive.\u00a0 I read the \u201cI Robot\u201d stories as a kid and enjoyed them a good deal.\u00a0 I think what I found entertaining was the cleverness of the interplay of the Three Laws of Robotics with the plot lines.\u00a0 Re-reading them many years later I saw that aside from the cleverness, the stories were not particularly rich in characterization or description.\u00a0 And for short stories of that era that wasn\u2019t unusual.\u00a0 So, let\u2019s say I Robot is a worthy example of its time and type.<\/p>\n
A film was made from the stories back in 2004.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Will Smith is a cop in Chicago who despises robots because of a past encounter.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 For fans of Firefly the voice of the killer robot Sonny is provided by Alan Tudyk (aka Hoban \u201cWash\u201d Washburne).<\/p>\n
I was sort of busy back in 2004 and didn\u2019t see the movie when it came out.\u00a0 But I Robot, the movie, has been in almost constant rotation on AMC for the last year or two so I\u2019ve seen all or part of it a number of times now.\u00a0 When I first viewed it I wasn\u2019t very enthusiastic for it.\u00a0 The dissimilarity from the Asimov stories probably annoyed me.\u00a0 If I grasp for any other reasons, I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, over time I actually grew to enjoy the movie more.\u00a0 It\u2019s an action adventure movie and the scenes featuring Will Smith battling enormous numbers of robots are cleverly done and quite a lot of fun.\u00a0 Tudyk does a good job making the robot character sympathetic.\u00a0 And Bridget Moynahan makes the Susan Calvin character more personable than Asimov ever did.<\/p>\n
So here we have a couple of inversions of the typical situation.\u00a0 For the most part, I find that a movie made from a book almost never lives up to it.\u00a0 But in this case, it surpasses it.\u00a0 And here is an example of a book that has decreased in my estimation over time while the movie has done the reverse.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a pretty good Will Smith action adventure.\u00a0 And he does kill a lot of robots with a big gun.\u00a0 How can you go wrong with that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My regular readers will know that my estimation of Isaac Asimov\u2019s work is not uniformly positive.\u00a0 I read the \u201cI Robot\u201d stories as a kid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[1481,149,1479,1480,43,38,265,1474],"class_list":["post-5170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-alan-tudyk","tag-asimov","tag-i-robot","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-will-smith"],"yoast_head":"\n