Asimov's "I, Robot" Gets Movie Treatment

sdimbert writes "Isaac Asimov's classic collection of short stories about the role robots play in humankind's future is being made into a movie set to release on July 16, 2004, starring Wil Smith. The most notable part of the release build-up is the fact that the movie's trailer, most often seen before screenings of The Returnn of the King plays more like a product commercial (like Apple's flat-panel iMac ads) than a movie trailer. Suffice it to say that most of the audence that saw it with me had no idea they had just seen a movie trailer; they actually believed that someone was going to start selling a "fully automated domestic assistant" some time next year."

The Missing (Trailer) Link

[GeekLife.com]

Quicktime Link [akamai.net] from Movie-List.com [movie-list.com]

To view the ad...

[jacoplane]

go to the official site [irobotnow.com].

Trailer

[HornyBastard77]

Here [irobotnow.com]

Re:Wil SMith?

[Tango42]

No, Calvin was more of a narator, IIRC. The main characters were the 2 field testers, really. Only the last few stories actually included Calvin to any great extent.

Re:movie title misleading?

[Tango42]

Caves of Steel was a novel, I, Robot was a series of short stories. They are both based on Positronic Robots, with the 3 laws of robotics, but they are different stories. Caves of Steel is set much futher in the future, for a start (in fact some of I, Robot is set in the past now, because Asimiov was too optimistic)

Direct Link, but Quicktime

[Aapje]

http://a772.g.akamai.net/5/772/51/96ec7e42288f68/1 a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02 589f25382f668c9329e0375e8177dec6493fc5bcd3c9e0d81/ i_robot_fox320.mov

Enjoy yourselves.

Re:Wil SMith?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true... but since it technically is a collection of short stories, there really is no main character, although Dr. Calvin provides a narrative connection between all of the stories. It looks like they are taking the plot from one of the stories and making that the central plot of the movie. Maybe they should have just made it a Daneel Olivaw story instead, like _The Caves of Steel_, since those books are actual detective stories.

At any rate, I can't get past Will Smith... I tend to associate him with MIB and stuff like that. He's never impressed me as an actor.

That's not a link, dumbass, that's just a URL.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a link [akamai.net]. AC so I'm not a karma-whore.

Re:Wil SMith?

[Anonymous Coward]

Susan Calvin was inspired by a young blonde woman named Irene that Asimov had a crush on when he was in college. Making her model beautiful, though, is the wrong way to go. You want someone who is attractive, but whose intelligence and personality are her main features.

Re:Direct Link, but Quicktime

[the real darkskye]

For the href challenged Quicktime here [akamai.net]

Lucas did it already :(

[AtariAmarok]

think the Foundation series of books is much better than I, Robot.

George Lucas already ripped Trantor and has shown it to us on the screen as Coruscant.

Harlan Ellison

[Transient0]

Apparently IMDB gives the screenwriting credit to Akiva Goldsman who apparently also wrote Lost In Space, A Beautiful Mind, Practical Magic, A Time to Kill and Batman and Robin.

Talk about a hit and miss record.

Really, it's a crime that they aren't using Ellison's screenplay. Asimov himself was quite fond of that adaptation, I can't help but wonder how he'd feel about this new one.

Bicentennial Man

[thepuma]

Didn't Robin Williams [washingtonpost.com] do this already in Bicentennial Man [haro-online.com]? There was even a scene where they talked abou the three laws of robotics [anu.edu.au].

Re:Three rules safe ?

[gauauu]

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_Of_Roboti cs [wikipedia.org]

Safe because it's programmed with the 3 laws!

[GuardianBob420]

From this page [auburn.edu]:

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Re: You laugh...

[A55M0NKEY]

But I think battery life is one of the main reasons we don't see more robotic gizmos for sale. That vacuum cleaner disc that they sell on TV looks like it wouldn't hold more than a cup of dirt, and probably has less power than a dust buster. But if it were equivalent to my 12 amp dirt devil upright, then it would look interesting. Batteries are the stumbling block. Blind people already keep their houses 'just so' so that they can use robot-like algorithms to find stuff. ( i.e. the refrigerator is 10 steps to the left of the bedroom door, follow the wall right 3 1/2 steps turn left open a door, one step ahead is the kitchen table, feel it, the fridge is directly behind the secondof four chairs. Quadraplegics might keep their houses Asimo-friendly so that it would be able to fetch things out of the fridge for them or whatever. You could have a simple 'bot for kids that moves any item with a 'toy' rfid tag from the floor to a toybox.
If there were decent batteries, one might see an Asimo type 'bot around the house or even a segway-style stair climbing vaccum cleaner with decent amps right now.

Re:I thought it was a product

[Zathrus]

How exactly do they expect people who have never read anything by Asimov to catch on that this is a movie?

I'll admit it's hard to tell from the trailer -- the only tip off (assuming there's no green screen at the start) is the small (C) 2003 TCF at the end. And the fact that it's playing during the trailer section of the movie and not the ads section.

That said, the theater I saw RotK in had one big tip off -- a large cardboard I with "Robot" running down the face and "Will Smith" at the top. I believe there was various and sundry info at the bottom - the website URL, copyright notice, and "coming July 2004" or somesuch. The Will Smith bit is the tip off.

It's really "The Caves of Steel"

[ForemastJack]

I browse at +3, so if someone's mentioned this, sorry. But it's clear from the IMDB [imdb.com] entry that this is not an adaptation of Asimov's I, Robot, but rather Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Here's what IMDB says:

In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.

That's good, as far as I'm concerned. Lije Bailey was one of Asimov's better characters, and it's the introduciton of a certain R. Daneel. But the imdb credits also list a "Dr. Susan Calvin" as a character -- she's from I, Robot...hm...

Oh, hell, who knows what they doing. I'll wager that the end product bears no resemblence to anything Asimovian.

On the other hand, Bridget Moynahan is in the movie, and there ain't nothing [imdb.com] wrong [imdb.com] with that [repubblica.it].

Re:The real I, Robot

[IPFreely]

I was refering to this movie, not to Ellison's script, which I have not read.

Re:The real I, Robot

[dwj]

Yes, according to Yahoo! Movies [yahoo.com], the script supposedly owes its roots to a certain Jeff Vintar:

This film is based upon elements from all nine of the stories in the "I Robot" anthology by Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). This film is not a direct adaptation of any of the nine stories in that book, but is instead a prequel of sorts to them, having its origins in a script by Jeff Vintar that was originally called 'Hardwired' that was adapted to fit into Asimov's stories, but not based on any specific one.

Quick Rundown of the Movie

[Kaishaku255]

The trailer isn't very helpful in explaining what the movie is about. But this [yahoo.com] might be.

BTW, I have a lot of misgivings about a movie when they say things like 'This film is not a direct adaptation of any of the nine stories in that book, but is instead a prequel of sorts to them, having its origins in a script by Jeff Vintar that was originally called 'Hardwired' that was adapted to fit into Asimov's stories, but not based on any specific one. ' It sounds like they are capitalizing on the Asimov name without actually using his stories.

Re:Actually Believed?

[YomikoReadman]

BMW has done an entire series of those here in the states. One of them even had Madonna in it. You can find them all here [bmwfilms.com] at BMWFilms.com

Not quite, where is Daneel?

[hellfire]

Now, I admit I can't view half the I, Robot movie site because flash is broken on my web browser at work and its impossible to fix without a reinstall, but the credits on IMDB show no evidence of Daneel. If there's no Daneel, its not Caves of Steel.

What it does sound like is a munging of several Asimov ideas into an action flick, and Asimov is decidedly NOT action. Del Spooner isn't even the right character name for Caves of Steel.

I don't think you can call it Caves of Steel, but what you can call it is a licensing of the basic idea around Asimov's universe and adapting it so that the general populace can relate to it in an action movie.

I.E. all you are going to get that's asimov-related are the three laws and a couple of character names.

Re:Safe because it's programmed with the 3 laws!

[The Fun Guy]

You forgot the Zeroth Law:

0. No robot may harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

All the of the others should be amended to reflect this law (called Zeroth because it should have come before the First). The idea is that a robot could, in seeking to prevent harm to a human, prevent that human from performing some self-sacrificing action for the good of humanity (say, rushing into a deadly radiation area to shut down a failing nuclear reactor before it goes critical and destroys the city), thereby causing more harm than good. The Three Laws were invented by humans for robots, but the Zeroth Law was invented by a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw.

A chance for quality

[Doc Ruby]

Will Smith was very good in the excellent suspense _Enemy of the State_ [imdb.com], playing opposite Gene Hackman [imdb.com]. _I, Robot_ [imdb.com] features James Cromwell [imdb.com], not exactly Hackman's calibre, but possibly pro enough to press Smith into acting. It depends on whether director Alex Proyas [imdb.com] brings out their best, or just cashes in on the Asimov [imdb.com] brand.

Re:Apple ads?

[Gonzotek]

Of course, you're wrong in several ways (Denzel?!?), but the one I'll choice to nitpick about is that Asimov made no mention of black characters. Are you absolutely sure you've read I, Robot?

The final Chapter, The Evitable Conflict has a man named Lincoln Ngoma, described as "a big, dark man, strong faced and handsome", who is a Co-Ordinator of the Tropic Region.

-=Gonzotek=-

Re:Apple ads?

[STrinity]

I wonder, how much does the book make an issue of the race of the characters? If the character's race isn't relevant to their actions or the plot, then there's no reason for them to be played by a a "white" actor as opposed to someone else. Why not pick an actor who will bring something interesting to the stage? Who the Hell cares about what amount to little more than cosmetic differences in the characters?

Well, not to put to fine a point on it, but this movie isn't based upon the book in any meaningful sense. First off, the concept is a lot closer to The Caves of Steel than I, Robot; but more importantly, the script wasn't even written as an adaptation -- the studio bought an original script then realized they owned the rights to a similar book, so they slapped the title on and made a few changes.

This is the same thing that happened with Starship Troopers.

Lars isn't smoking: About I Robot...

[AtariAmarok]

Eando Binder actually wrote a tale called "I Robot" in 1939, which predates Asimov's story by 11 years. It was apparently in the "Adam Link" series, and it appeared in Amazing.

Please see this page [216.239.39.104].

Re:imdb.com description

[canadian_right]

Yes, I think you are correct. "I, Robot" is a collection of short stories, all playing with the "3 laws" and how they can cause interesting, tragic, and funny situations.

The "Caves of Steel" is a novel that sounds more like the movie. I live near were they are filming the movie. They turned a local street into a futuristic shopping strip (kind of an art decco / 50's jetsons mish mash) where a crowd of robots runs amuck. Don't recall there every being robots running amuck in any of Asimov's robot stories.