I, Robot

Posted September 7, 2004 to Movies category.

Hollywood has been making a ton of movies based on books these days. Even when the movie is really good, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it still falls far short of the book. This isn't because the movies could have been improved, for LOTR was very good, but an inherent failure in the ability to represent a book as a video/audio narrative.

Anyways, I,Robot takes a great book, throws out just about everything, then rips it's arms off and beats it with the bloody stumps to make sure nothing is left of Asimov's ideas and proceeds to make the standard Hollywood movie. Ironically, Asimov was portraying exactly the opposite of what this movie does.

The basic plot of the movie is: Man builds robot, robots try to take over world. Man Wisecracking smartaleck plus beautifull chick destroy robot. The End. One of the main reasons Asimov started writing robot stories was because he hated this cliche. At the least the movie should have been titled something instead, instead of fooling millions of Asimov fans that this movie has any connection to his writings.

As for the movie itself, it's just typical Hollywood fare, good mindless mayhem with all the physics thrown out. The best review of the film:

"A real missed opportunity - a potentially groundbreaking film reduced to a mess fit only for the slack-jawed mallrats that it is being aimed..."
>> Peter Sobczynski

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well what do u expect. hollywood can never adapt anything. i remember stephen king hated the movie adaptation of his novel "the shining". its rare to check a movie which has captured the essence of the book. hollywood just wants fast money. their movies dont make sense. i prefer watching european movies which make some sense. anyway at the end of the day i have to watch some hollywood flicks coz they are kinda interesting.

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