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Major Spoilers Ahead
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I saw Yo, Robot (the title in Spanish that still seems amusing) last week. Its pretty to look at and Will Smith does...Will Smith. I think thats fun, though it is a little bit like Men in Black without Tommy Lee in places, with a touch more nudity of our buff hero.
Still, if the special effects are enough to see you through the film, you'll like it, and if they aren't then the rather thin plot may disappoint. Its not awful, however, and I quite enjoyed the mixture of eye candy, one liners and techno detective story. My expectations were quite low, however.
Really Lots of Spoilers Now.
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But, as a scifi geek, the question remains as to how much of a (dead) hand Asimov had in this film. And the answer is....not much.
To be fair, the film makers had obviously read some Asimov. Themes were borrowed from the books, although with no real feel for a consistent experience. This is partly due to the nature of the beast. Asimov didn't write action and this is an action film. Asimov sometimes reported action, but was far more interested in logical puzzles and tinkering with the ideas within framework that he set himself.
So, for instance, the scene in the film that felt most Asimov flavoured was when Smith interiews Sonny. The fact that Sonny is the most developed character in the film is pure Asimov and that scene, where the tough street cop is confronted with the possibility of a far more sophisticated mechanised intelligence than he thought possible, also rang true. Many things about that scene felt right, like when Sonny says - "I didn't kill Lanning" - and, as an Asimov reader, it was obvious exactly what he meant. Its a little crude and obvious, but it is at least in the right spirit, and it is a shame that the film needed to return so quickly to being a special effects extravaganza.
The final revelation, also, borrows from Asimov and is reminiscent of the whole "Zeroth Law" malarky. But the execution was half hearted. In an Asimov story, there wouldn't be a super compter directing all the robots. He liked subtlety over brute force and would have found a way for the robots to become convinced rather than controlled (to be fair, the film is not entirely clear on this point but the criticism still stands).
Also, Sonny being able to ignore the three laws is just wrong. There are rules to Asimov, and this came close to a deal breaker for me. Its allowed to be as contrived as you like, but the Laws should be sacrosanct.
More importantly, perhaps, is that Asimov's robots are the good guys. They are better than us, though we don't know it. Occassionally there are a few misguided, though usually via human agency, robots. But the central message in Asimov has always seemed to me a profoundly pro-technological one. That the film employs the theme of robots taking over the world, even with the half hearted qualification, was far too technophobic for a film that claimed inspiration from Asimov.
All in all, I thought it was enjoyable, but then I am pretty undemanding if a film blows a fun million showing me pretty explosions. And Yo, Robot was more than that, though not much more.
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