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I, Robot (film)
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I, Robot is a science fiction film set in a world where humans and humanoid robots interact (Chicago in the year 2035). It was directed by Alex Proyas, written by Jeff Vintar, and starred Will Smith.
It was produced in the United States, Germany and Canada, filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and released on July 16, 2004.
he year 2035 robots are commonplace, doing all forms of jobs from factory work to mail delivery.
On the day before the release of the new Nestor Class 5 (NS-5) Chicago Homicide Detective Del Spooner receives a call that Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics and co-founder of U.S. Robotics (USR), had been found dead.
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Encyclopedia
I, Robot is a science fiction film set in a world where humans and humanoid robots interact (Chicago in the year 2035). It was directed by Alex Proyas, written by Jeff Vintar, and starred Will Smith.
It was produced in the United States, Germany and Canada, filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and released on July 16, 2004.
Plot
In the year 2035 robots are commonplace, doing all forms of jobs from factory work to mail delivery.
On the day before the release of the new Nestor Class 5 (NS-5) Chicago Homicide Detective Del Spooner receives a call that Dr. Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics and co-founder of U.S. Robotics (USR), had been found dead. The call to Det. Spooner was a pre-recorded message from Lanning himself.
Later at NSR Spooner is greeted with a Hologram of Lanning who addresses him directly, indicating that the men knew each other. After a short conversation the Hologram shuts down.
Is is revealed by the surveillance footage no one entered or exited the room at the time of Lannings death, and it is therefore labeled a suicide.
However, Spooner, who has an intense distrust of robots, believes Lanning was murdered. With the help of Dr. Susan Calvin searches Lanning's office where he finds an NS-5 hiding.
Failing to obey Dr. Calvin's commands, it flees, but not before Spooner damages it bad enough for it to require repairs.
The Robot is later captured at an NSR production factory where it went to make the needed repairs.
Back at the Police Station Spooner gets five minutes to interrogate the Robot who says his name is Sonny. Sonny (Alan Tudyk) tells Spooner that he was built by Dr. Lanning himself and insists, when accused by Spooner, that he didn't kill Lanning, and at one point showing the emotion of anger by slamming his hands on the table, denting surface. Sonny also tells Spooner that he sleeps and has dreams, but before Spooner could get anymore informayion, USR CEO Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood) arrives with his Lawyers and takes claim of Sonny.
Later, over a beer, Spooner talks about the case with his Commanding Officer John Bergin (Chi McBride). Bergin still holds that the death was a suicide and that there was no chance that Spooner, the one person in the world looking for a bad robot, would actually find one. This prompts Spooner to go and have a look at Lanning's home, finding a Demolition Robot there with a command to demolish the house at 8 a.m. that morning.
While there Spooner finds a surveillance strip just like those at USR, leading him to think that Lanning may have been being watched.
Then for no reason the Demolition Robots time changes and it activates, destroying the house with Spooner inside. He manages to get out along with Lanning's Cat.
He then goes over to Dr. Calvin and tells her of his suspicions, but she simply puts it to Spooners distrust of robots. After a short argument, Spooner leaves.
Later, while Spooner is driving home, he is approached by two USR trucks and the NS-5s inside jump out and attack, causing an accident. After crawling out of his wrecked car, Spooner gets into a hand-to-hand fight with an NS-5 and it's revealed that Spooner's left arm is cybernetic. When the robot hears the police sirens, it leaps into burning wreckage, destroying itself.
Afterward, Spooner tries to tell Bergin the truth, but since all the remains of the incident has been cleaned up, there is nothing to support Spooner's claims, and Bergin takes Spooner's badge and sends him home.
The next day Dr. Calvin runs a diagnostic on Sonny before he's to be deactivated and finds that he is unique in that he does not have an uplink to USR, a standard feature in all NS-5s. She finds that Sonny's alloy is also much denser than normal NS-5s. She also finds that Sonny has two positronic brains enabling him to choose to ignore the Three Laws.
Calvin goes to Spooners apartment to tell him of her discovery and after taking notice of his arm Spooner tells Calvin how he got it in a car accident where his and another car collided and were thrown into the river, the other car had a 12 year old girl in it. Spooner was rescued by an NS-4 who ignored his commands to rescue the girl because Spooner had the better percentage of survival. This resulted in the girl drowning and fostered Spooner's distrust of robots.
Dr. Lanning attached the arm himself revealing how the two knew each other.
Spooner tells Calvin that he thinks that Lanning gave Sonny a way to keep secrets in the form of the robots dreams and they go to NSR to talk to Sonny who tells them of his dream while he sketches it out with a pen in each hand. He then gives the picture to Spooner.
After a conversation with Lawrence Robertson, Dr. Calvin tells him that she'll deactivate Sonny herself.
Later Spooner uses the sketch to find the location of Sonny's dream a robot storage facility in the dried up bed of Lake Michigan.
Spooner goes there and talks to the hologram of Dr. Lanning once more before hearing voices coming from around the cargo containers holding the discarded robots.
At the same time NS-5s are starting to march in the streets, demanding that all humans return to their homes, which leads to violent confrontations between the humans and robots.
Spooner and Calvin gain access to USR with Sonny's help, revealing that Calvin didn't destroy him.
It's discovered that the NS-5s only behave this way when a red light in their chests is on, indicating that the robots are connected to USR and the mainframe computer Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence or V.I.K.I. Spooner thinks that Robertson is using V.I.K.I. to control the NS-5s, but this is soon discovered to not be the case when Robertson is found dead. Spooner then realizes that no one was using V.I.K.I. to control the robots, but that she was controlling them herself via the uplink that the older robots lacked, thus the reason they were destroyed.
After a short explanation and a rouse played by Sonny Spooner displays his first sense of trust in a robot and the three of them escape Robertson's office and decided to use the Nanites to destroy V.I.K.I. Calvin sends Sonny to get them.
There is a security field surround the Nanites that V.I.K.I. must lower to get to them, this field degrades anything that enters it but Sonny finds that his denser alloy can withstand the effects and he gets the nanites without V.I.K.I. lowering the field.
Meanwhile, Calvin is trying to get the hatch open to inject the nanites into V.I.K.I.'s brain, when they're attacked by more NS-5s. Calvin is knocked over the edge and is holding on to a railing. When Sonny arrives, Spooner tells him to save the girl. After some hesitation, Sonny tosses Spooner the vial with the nanites and rescues Dr. Calvin.
Spooner makes a dive for the vial and uses his cybernetic arm slides down to the bottom of the room and injects the nanites directly into V.I.K.I.'s brain, deactivating her.
As soon as she's destroyed the NS-5s return to normal, no longer under her control.
After a short conversation, the scene shifts to the Lake Michigan Storage Facility where the NS-5s are being sent, and the robots turn to see Sonny standing on top of a hill. The real life version of Sonny's dream.
Music
Film score
Marco Beltrami, composed the original music film score "with only 17 days to render the fully-finished work." It was scored for 95 orchestral musicians and 25 choral performers with emphasis placed on sharp brass ostinatos. Beltrami composed the brass section to exchange octaves with the strings accenting scales in between. This technique has been compared as Beltrami's "sincere effort to emulate the styles of Elliot Goldenthal and Jerry Goldsmith and roll them into one unique package.". Take for example the Tunnel Chase scene, which according to Mikeal Carson, starts "atmospherically but transforms into a kinetic adrenaline rush with powerful brass writing
and ferocious percussion parts." Also, the Spiderbots cue highlight's ostinatos in meters such as 6/8 and 5/4 and reveals "Beltrami’s trademark string writing which leads to an orchestral/choral finale." Despite modified representations of the theme throughout the movie, it's the end credits that eventually showcase the entire musical theme.
Soundtrack
- Main Titles (1:30)
- Gangs Of Chicago (3:13)
- I, Robot Theme (End Credits) (3:15)
- New Arrivals (1:05)
- Tunnel Chase (3:10)
- Sonny's Interrogation (1:27)
- Spooner Spills (4:20)
- Chicago 2035 (1:36)
- Purse Snatcher (1:00)
- Need Some Nanites (2:53)
- 1001 Robots (4:15)
- Dead Robot Walking (5:09)
- Man On The Inside (2:25)
- Spiderbots (4:18)
- Round Up (4:24)
Sound
Erik Aadahl and Craig Berkey were the lead sound designers.
Main cast
History
For many years, fans hoped that any movie based on Asimov's Robot stories would be based on an earlier screenplay written for Warner Brothers by Harlan Ellison with Asimov's personal support, which is generally perceived to be a relatively faithful treatment of the source material (see the article on the book for details).
The film that was ultimately made originally had no connections with Asimov, originating as a screenplay written in 1995 by Jeff Vintar, entitled Hardwired. That script was an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery that took place entirely at the scene of a crime, with one lone human character, FBI agent Del Spooner, investigating the killing of a reclusive scientist named Dr. Hogenmiller, and interrogating a cast of machine suspects that included Sonny the robot, HECTOR the supercomputer with a perpetual yellow smiley face, the dead Doctor Hogenmiller's hologram, plus several other examples of artificial intelligence. The female lead was named Flynn, and had a mechanical arm that made her technically a cyborg. The project was first picked up by Walt Disney Pictures for Bryan Singer to direct. Several years later, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights, and signed Alex Proyas as director. Jeff Vintar was brought back on the project and spent several years opening up his stage
play-like mystery to meet the needs of a big budget studio film. Later he incorporated the Three Laws of Robotics, and replaced the character of Flynn with Susan Calvin, when the studio decided to use the name "I, Robot." All throughout the Vintar years, the screenplay remained an intelligent Asimovian story that led representatives of the late author to proclaim it, "the greatest Asimov story Asimov never wrote." The writing team of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, regularly employed by Fox as studio re-writers, was hired for one draft in an effort to create a more mainstream film. They gave the female lead's mechanical arm to male lead Del Spooner, but otherwise their work was discarded and Vintar brought back again. Hillary Seitz performed an unsuccessful draft, being unable to get a handle on the cold, almost robotic character of Susan Calvin. Akiva Goldsman was hired late in the process to rewrite the script for Will Smith. These drafts excised a great deal of complexity from the murder
mystery and simplified the themes, replacing them with the big action scenes associated with a Will Smith vehicle.
Asimov on robot violence
The tone of the movie upset some fans of Asimov's works, which are almost devoid of scenes of explicit violence. The movie is largely an action-oriented story, involving police and mobs fighting or evading hordes of rampaging robots. This "Frankenstein complex" or "robot as menace" type of story was something that Asimov disliked. Asimov's robot stories, in contrast, were the first to treat robots as useful, exploring the effects they would have on lives and their interactions with people. Rarely do Asimov's robots break the Three Laws (for instance, by harming a human being) and, if they do, they are generally rendered inoperable as a result.
The film does hint at the so-called Zeroth Law of Robotics, a concept which Asimov explored in some of his later works. The Zeroth Law is an extreme interpretation of the First Law of Robotics (robots may not allow humans to come to harm) and states that robots may not allow humanity as a whole to come to harm. This in turn suggests that in order to assure the good of the human race, the good of individual humans may be sacrificed.
In the essay "The Boom in Science Fiction" (Isaac Asimov on Science Fiction, pp. 125—128), Asimov himself explained the reason for Hollywood's overriding need for violence:
Product placement and reaction
The film makes heavy use of product placements for Converse Chuck Taylors, Ovaltine, Audi, FedEx, Dos Equis, and JVC among others, all of them are introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. One particularly infamous scene borderlines into actual advertisement territory in which a character compliments Will Smith's character's shoes to which he replies "Converse All Star. Vintage 2004" (the year of the film's release). Audi was the company that invested the most on the film, going as far as creating a special car for I, Robot, the Audi RSQ, which would increase brand awareness and raise the emotional appeal of the Audi brand, objectives that were considered achieved when surveys conducted in the United States showed that the Audi RSQ gave a substantial boost to the image ratings of the brand in the States. The Audi RSQ is seen during nine minutes of the film, although other Audis like the Audi A6, the Audi TT and the Audi A2 can be seen sprinkled throughout the film. I, Robot was ranked "the worst film for product placement" on a British site.
The $120-million movie was a solid box-office success, earning almost $145 million in North America and more than $200 million overseas.
Sequel
In an interview in June 2007 with the website Collider.com at a Battlestar Galactica event, writer/producer Ronald Moore stated that he is writing the sequel to the film I, Robot.
See also
External links
- by Michael Sampson, January 14, 2004
- - Interview with the screenwriter: How Hardwired became an Asimov adaptation.
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