18
votes
I, HATE, I, ROBOT - a video about the 2004 "adaptation" of 'I, Robot' suggested by Isaac Asimov... and nothing else.
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- Title
- I, HATE, I, ROBOT,
- Authors
- Just Write
- Duration
- 32:05
- Published
- Nov 4 2022
Before watching this, I'll note that I enjoyed the film as its own thing with Asimovian themes rather than a straight adaption, which would be quite hard to do in a movie format while keeping it engaging. I, Robot was a collection of short stories with no unifying narrative, while this is a Will Smith action vehicle that picks and chooses stories from it to incorporate. In particular I'll note that the loudest criticism I've heard, 'the villain is a killer robot and Asimov never wanted those in his books hence three laws' isn't correct as the villain is an adaption from the Asimov story "Mathematical Games".
There is no Asimov story called "Mathematical Games".
However, I'm going to assume that, like many other people who I've seen use unusual titles for Asimov's works, you were reading a translated version of one of his stories, with a similarly translated title. I'm further going to assume that the story you're referring to was "The Evitable Conflict": the one with four Machines (super-computers) who run the world and cause some minor negative economic impacts on humans who are anti-robot. (I'm making these assumptions based on many discussions I've seen in /r/Asimov with people reading non-English versions of Asimov's works.)
The connection between V.I.K.I in the movie and the Machines from Asimov's story is discussed in this video. I'd love to see your take on that, after you've watched it.
Wiki mentions "Mathematical Games" was a working title for The Life and Times of Multivac:
It doesn't give a citation but the phrase does appear to show up multiple times in the story.
Thanks for that! I'd forgotten about that story.
Yes, I read an early edition of I, Robot that still had that name for the story in question.
'I, Robot' was published in 1951, and collects nine stories written between 1940 and 1950,
According to the Wikipedia page that @TemulentTeatotaler provided, 'The Life and Times of Multivac' was written in 1975, more than 20 years after 'I, Robot' was published.
Also, there are no stories in 'I, Robot' about Multivac; in fact, the first story that features Multivac was written in 1954, three years after 'I, Robot' was published.
I'm not saying you haven't read that story. Another comment of yours makes it clear that you have read it. But you can't have read it in 'I, Robot'. In fact, as far as I can tell, this story has only been included in two collections:
The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
The Complete Stories, Volume 2
I assume you have a copy of 'Bicentennial Man [etc]' on your shelves somewhere... ;)
Mathematical Games was the original title of "The Life and Times of Multivac", a story set after the sort of AI takeover depicted in the movie in which all of humanity is an eternal prisoner to keep them from doing anything dangerous. The protagonist plays math games to pass the time since no-one is allowed any objects even slightly unsafe.
Well, that's a twist.
Usually when people say the villain in the 'I, Robot' movie actually did come out of Asimov's, they mean the evil computer that uses a version of Asimov's Zeroth Law of Robotics, and they point to the story 'The Evitable Conflict' to show how the evil computers control humanity, and to the novel 'Robots and Empire' as evidence of the Zeroth Law.
I'll be honest: I'd forgotten about 'The Life and Times of Multivac'. Thanks for bringing it back to my attention. I've re-read it. I see the connection with V.I.K.I. in the movie.
I wonder whether Jeff Vintar or the many other writers who had their fingers in this pie used 'The Evitable Conflict' or 'The Life and Times of Multivac' as their model for a world-controlling computer. Or both! hmm...
As a collection of short stories, I feel like "I, Robot" would have really shined as a limited-run episodic series à la "Phillip K Dick's Electric Dreams".
I am not fond of this show. The last thing I want in my PKD is forced melodrama.
I enjoyed it.
On the other hand, I don't expect the movie to be anything like the book, haven't read Asimov since my early teen years, and I never had bonded with the stories.
Same for "Foundation". Enjoyed that too.
Foundation has been great. It's got some of the best world building I've seen in recent sci-fi. I haven't read the books, so I don't personally know how accurate it is to them, but like you said, people should expect it to be it's own thing.
The short answer is "not at all".
The long answer involves a lot of shouting and swearing and ranting. ;)
Agreed! And while I'm swearing and ranting I'm also enjoying the series.
The series also did a good job (In my opinion) with depicted decline by standstill, even tough you can never fully "standstill".
I can't enjoy it. I tried for a few episodes, but I just kept noticing how much it's not Asimov's 'Foundation'. Like the 'I, Robot' movie, the so-called "adaptation" is nothing like the alleged source material. Not even close. I wanted to watch Asimov's 'Foundation' on screen, not David Goyer's not-Foundation.
Sounds like it would be good to watch it before reading it.
I only watched the first episode and didn't like it, then I saw how later episodes were described on /r/SciFi and I knew I was out.
The thing that bothered me the most in that first episode is his they decided to go non-linear^2 and all it does is ruin it IMO. I can't stand a lot of modern TV shows.
Incidentally, I'll also add that Bicentennial Man, the comedic drama with Robin Williams, deeply affected me as a child and made me terrified of aging and losing everyone older than me, which ironically was the exact opposite of the movie's message. After reading the story, I believe you may enjoy its accuracy far more than I, Robot despite what you may see as extraneous material (romance subplot, comedic tonal shift).
As someone who has read and enjoyed the Robots series by Asimov a long time ago but never read I, Robot, I had no idea the movie had nothing to do with the book. In a way it makes my dislike of the movie feel somewhat justified, I've never really liked it and can't quite say why... I guess it just felt like generic 2000s action schlock, and not even good schlock like other sci-fi adaptations, for example Total Recall and Starship Troopers.
This is also a good reminder that I need to read Foundation one of these days...
A shame we didn't get a movie closer to the book but I found the BBC Radio show on it really enjoyable:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20560772/?ref_=nm_flmg_c_9_act
I worked on this movie in Vancouver. It was just so fun working with Will Smith. You could always tell when he was on the set because people were laughing wherever he was.
This video takes me back to things I ranted shortly after seeing the movie, including using really big "quotey fingers" to say "adaptation". It's a shame we didn't really get much I, Robot in I, Robot.
Wasn't a fan of the movie, just because it didn't feel good. Low effort action film with all the usual tropes and pandering.
The video does a great job breaking that down, but it's also nice to see them going into detail on the great plots asimov has done that could be adapted. It's a bunch of untapped potential but its hard to get anything through production hell.
It's also a shame because the original script they've destroyed to create the film is a great concept.
So I've now watched the video. Unfortunately, while from the title and thumbnail I expected a thorough breakdown and analysis of I, Robot, the video is more a look at the movie in the context of other adaptions in the buildup to the creator's essay on Apple TV adaption of Foundation. To that end, it's a wide but....not-deep look, using it as a reference point to bounce off into the other works and the original books.
For example, the movie features a sequence in which a house is demolished with Will Smith's character, Spooner, still inside. This was done by the villainous VIKI remotely updating the demolition robot's schedule...except a plot point is that VIKI can't override older model robots, hence the scene later in which the new NS5s thoroughly destroy the junked NS4s to get them out of the way. That demobot clearly sees Spooner in the house, but for whatever reason keeps putting him in danger. It's a huge plot hole and violation of Asimov's conception of robots, but it's never brought up. Nor is the film's incarnation of Susan Calvin with a cliché rape survivor backstory per director's commentary, or Sonny as a Messiah figure for robots that are hinted to be more sentient than their human masters would like to think.
I'm not going to watch this as I enjoyed the movie as to what our future is heading towards.
It'll be a cross between this, Wall-E and Terminator. Interesting times ahead
Please, please don't joke about I, robot this Christmas!