FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

In the future, robots will assist humans with daily life. They’ll start handling all the jobs that we don’t want to do. They’ll be ruled by three laws that force them to do everything in their power to keep humans safe. But, what if something goes wrong in the programming? What if one of the robots could ignore the three laws? What if one of those robots murdered its creator? With everyone in the world saying it’s impossible, one man must investigate this crime and prove them wrong.

The film takes place in the year 2035. So, that means in just 31 years, they’ll have completely restructured society to accommodate super high speed, self-driving cars, scanning security systems, overabundance of robot workers, etc. They better get started now. Why not set the movie in some year not in our lifetimes? We’d still believe it. If the only reason it’s set in 2035 is because the book was, then they really should have changed it. Virtually nothing is the same as the book.

Those expecting a faithful adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s story collection of the same name will be sorely disappointed. The only things that remain are a couple of character names, the title and the three laws of robotics. Detective Spooner, the lead role (played by Will Smith) is nowhere to be found in the book, nor is this storyline. But despite all of this, (the movie is just “suggested by” the book) writers Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman stay true to the spirit of Asimov. Nothing is as it seems and the ending is something of a surprise, although probably not as hidden as Isaac would like. They even inject humor in much the same way (a lot of it failed). The only thing that really differs is that Asimov tends to use the minimum amount of characters to tell the story. Here we have largely insignificant people like Spooner’s grandmother and this kid named Farber who shows up twice for no real good reason. I also could have done without the divorce story line that really amounted to nothing.

Also seemingly unneeded are the dizzying shots that circle around certain actions. It seems like they’re just showing off. Nothing on screen indicates a need for such hurricane-like camera work and I found it distracting. Most of it worked. The action was pretty clear cut and showed the battles between man and machine pretty clearly. However, I still don’t like the CG. Very early on, you can tell that nothing in the city was actually in the same room as Will Smith during shooting. It was a bad composite job. The robots look like everything else that’s computer generated. The main robot has some good subtle expressions going for it, but overall is still not my thing. Is there anything else they could have done to fix this? Redesign the robots so that people could fit inside. Film a few, copy and paste them into the army needed and there you go. It would look a lot better. The acting isn’t all that great either. Smith gives the best performance, which is all I’ll say about all that.

Overall, the movie is still a good one. It lacks the atmosphere of a “Blade Runner” but still has plenty of mystery and action to keep it entertaining and interesting throughout. It may not directly follow Asimov’s tale, but I think he’d still approve it as an extension of the book. It’s good to see that science fiction can still use it’s brain.

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