Hollywood Betrays the Vision of Dr. Asimov

[Janus]

After reading the reviews and seeing the promos, all I can say is that the "Good Dr." must be spinning in his grave! To make a movie based on his work that revolves around a plot by robots against humans is a slap to his face and memory.

Dr. Asimov created the three laws of robotics for the express purpose of writing stories that bucked the "Frankenstein complex" that plagued so many robot stories of the time. This movie is the complete antithesis to that.

It's getting to the point that I'm starting to cringe every time that I hear that Hollywood is going to do a trearment of a classic SF story or novel. All I can think is "How are they going to screw this up?"

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Or what significant plot is sacrificed to make room for all of those special effects.

 

[recon]

Maybe it would just be best for us to boycott the movie.

 

[russ_watters]

Could you expand a little, Janus (or provide a link?)? I'm completely ignorant of Asimov's work here. What are the 3 laws, for example?

edit: n/m - recon's link was pretty good.

 

[FZ+]

Don't panic too much. The director said on his website that the 3 laws are never actually broken. And besides, he must have met with the approval of whoever owns Asimov's intellectual property rights. Remember too, that most of Asimov's robot stories involve testing the Three Laws to their limits. Eg. The robot with weakened first law which could have attacked humans, the supercomputer which went crazy, the robots which took over the space station for their religion, the robot murder suspects, robots killing robots to give the appearance that robots were killing humans, the robot governer of the world, robots redesigning the three laws (such as the zeroth law, which Proyas has hinted at...) And so on and so forth.

Don't panic. Yet.

 

[eJavier]

First Law:

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

Second Law:

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

Third Law:

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

source: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/Asimov.html#Laws1940


I remember one story in particular though, where some robot had a Law 0, which could allow him to injure human beings.

 

[DarkAnt]

I read I Robot a few years ago and I saw the trailer with all those robots attacking people. I love this book what they are doing to it isn't right. According to lies.com it was supposed to be some action film called hardwired, but they are just using Asimov name for publicity. How would non-geeks react if they just took their favorite classic and changed the whole meaning of it? I bet asimov is turning in his grave as I type this.

 

[Gokul43201]

Clearly, it's just a marketing ploy to title the movie "I, Robot." That way, the producers can be sure to rope in a large segment of Asimov fans.

It's like having John McCain sing the praises of President Bush. It's just wrong !

 

[Gokul43201]

Now if someone made a good movie (series) based on the Foundations, I wouldn't miss it for the world. On the other hand, that would be like the hardest plot to movie-ize.

 

[Dagenais]

Will Smith talks about it a bit in this interview as well as the movie:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/smith.html

 

[Janitor]

I've got the first two R. Daneel novels bound in one book. Daneel was a robot detective who was very careful not to do harm to humans, and who was optimized to seek justice.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

I don't care about the plot for i robot... honeslty set the bar low... then you can be surprised however the teaser special effects look orgasmic so that's what I will be spending my 7.50 to see.

 

[PRodQuanta]

I remember reading Asimov's book on the laws of robots.

If anybody gets a chance, look at this month's Popular Science's FYI section. The topic is about how physicist (like us) are having more and more troubled with flawed science in Hollywood. It goes on to talk about how Central Florida U. has begun a class studying these movies, and how they are flawed.

I distinctly remember reading how, in the movie Armagendon, If you were to actually put a nuke in the center of a astroid the size of Texas, and blow it in proximity to where they did in the movie, there would have been 2 half-Texas sized asteroids that would have collided with Earth 400 meters apart.

Check it out.

Paden Roder