[0:00] The most prolific writer of science fiction is Isaac Asimov.
[0:03] Now, usually, when I write a sentence like that,
[0:05] I'll throw in some weasel words like one of the most prolific,
[0:08] mostly so that parents can correct me in the comments.
[0:11] But in this, I feel that it is just literally true.
[0:14] Wikipedia has five separate pages,
[0:16] just listing Asimov's bibliography.
[0:18] In his own words, over a space of 40 years,
[0:20] I published an average of 1,000 words a day.
[0:22] Over the space of the second 20 years,
[0:24] I published an average of 1,700 words a day.
[0:29] Granted, most of his work is nonfiction,
[0:32] but he still wrote enough fiction that there's actually
[0:34] a fair bit of scholarly disagreement over how to count it.
[0:38] The number I've seen for novels and short stories is around 400.
[0:42] He wrote so much, he even wrote books about how he had written so much.
[0:47] Obviously, it's not just that he wrote a lot,
[0:49] it's that he wrote some of the most foundational.
[0:52] You need a new foundation.
[0:54] Pieces of science fiction ever.
[0:56] But you'd think with over 400 science fiction stories
[0:59] and with how popular science fiction is at the box office,
[1:03] that there'd be like 100 or 50,
[1:05] or 25, or even 10 adaptations of Asimov's work.
[1:09] But no, there are only eight.
[1:12] There would be nine,
[1:13] but Fantastic Voyage doesn't count.
[1:15] It's often mistaken as an Asimov book because the novel came up for the movie.
[1:18] But actually, the script for the film was written first
[1:21] and then they hired Asimov to write the novelization.
[1:24] He managed to get the book out onto the shelves six months before
[1:27] the film came out because he's just that fast of a goddamn writer.
[1:56] This is different, Spoon, listen, I got this fun little ass little yummy.
[2:00] I mean, she is complete agreeable,
[2:01] I mean, ass has sprinkable, Spoon.
[2:03] What does that even mean?
[2:04] Today, I want to talk about the 2004,
[2:07] Adaptation of iRobot starring Will Smith and nothing else.
[2:11] This video is only going to be about the 2004,
[2:15] "Adaptation of iRobot" starring Will Smith.
[2:18] Wait, why do I keep putting the word adaptation in quote?
[2:20] The reason I wanted to talk about this movie is not just to harp on
[2:24] a more or less forgotten Blockbuster from a bygone era because it is fun,
[2:27] but because last year Apple released a big adaptation of foundation.
[2:32] If we lay a strong enough foundation.
[2:35] Asimov's biggest series.
[2:37] Before talking about that,
[2:38] I wanted the context of some other times people have adapted his work,
[2:43] which is what we're doing here.
[2:44] But we're only going to talk about iRobot.
[2:46] I wouldn't read and watch every Asimov adaptation in
[2:52] existence no matter how obscure charting 60 years of failed or underfunded productions,
[2:57] just as the prelude for different video,
[3:00] that would be insane.
[3:02] There is an entire field of film criticism centered on
[3:05] categorizing the different kinds of adaptations, but unfortunately,
[3:08] all of that scholarship is compromised because all of them would need to put
[3:11] the 2004 air quotes adaptation of iRobot in
[3:15] its own special category because the making of this movie is real weird.
[3:22] Back in the 90s, screenwriter Jeff Vintar wrote
[3:25] a completely unrelated screenplay called hardwired.
[3:28] The movie wasn't an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery where
[3:31] the suspects were all robots or other artificial intelligence.
[3:37] There was a robot called Sonny,
[3:40] a supercomputer called Vicki,
[3:41] and the hologram of Dr. Lanning,
[3:43] the man who had been killed.
[3:44] It was originally written more like a stage play,
[3:47] taking place entirely on one floor of a building and with FBI agent,
[3:50] detective Del Spooner tasked with figuring out which the robots killed Lanning and how.
[3:55] It's like a sci-fi Knives Out.
[3:57] The script was first acquired by Disney,
[3:58] where it entered a period of development hell and got rewritten several times.
[4:02] With one iteration taking place on a space station and the entire team of
[4:05] space marines taking on the role of the detective from the original script.
[4:09] When that version of the movie fell through,
[4:11] Fox became interested in the idea and Vintar expanded the scope
[4:14] of the movie out from the original stage play like murder mystery to
[4:17] a big-budget studio film broadening the scope of the story out to
[4:20] an entire metropolis and bringing back the central detective character that.
[4:24] Soon after that, Fox acquired the rights to
[4:26] Isaac Asimov's short story collection iRobot,
[4:28] never saying to themselves, how do we make money off of this thing that we just got?
[4:32] I know, why don't we get poor Jeff Vintar to rewrite
[4:35] his screenplay again so that it can pass as an Asimov adaptation?
[4:39] Poor Jeff Vintar who had rewritten this thing like 11 times by
[4:42] now went about making some Asimov references in the new screenplay.
[4:45] The changes include renaming the female main character.
[4:49] They renamed the company that made the robots to US robotics.
[4:53] They inserted the three laws of robotics into
[4:55] the plot and inventor's own words, that's pretty much it.
[4:59] They basically just slap
[5:01] some Asimov paint onto an old script that's been kicking around for a decade.
[5:05] This is why in the credits for this movie,
[5:07] it doesn't say based on iRobot,
[5:09] it says suggested by Isaac Asimov's book, suggested to by.
[5:15] Thanks to the suggestion Isaac.
[5:17] They go about making the movie and there's a great deal of
[5:20] debate over how big of an action picture it should be,
[5:22] which was solved once Will Smith came on board the project.
[5:25] That's hilarious.
[5:31] There's a scene where Sonny,
[5:33] the robot is hiding in a field of
[5:35] other robots while the main characters are looking for him.
[5:37] As Vintar said, when I wrote that in the script I think Sonny the robot,
[5:42] was hiding among 50 robots.
[5:44] This scene was always a point of contention.
[5:47] Can we afford this scene?
[5:49] Should this scene be in the film?
[5:50] I think in the finished screenplay,
[5:53] there are actually 1,000 robots in that scene.
[5:57] After struggling and fighting for that scene for quite a number of years,
[6:00] when Will Smith came on,
[6:02] the robot count went up from 50 to 1,000.
[6:05] That was the Will Smith effect.
[6:08] With Will Smith onboard,
[6:09] Fox hired a second screenwriter,
[6:11] Akiva Goldsman, to bring the film further in line with a Will Smith event film,
[6:14] which basically meant increasing the amount of action,
[6:17] upping the steaks from simply solving a mystery to saving
[6:20] the world and making Spooner sound more like Will Smith.
[6:23] You like that?
[6:25] The film took a pretty long road to its final form.
[6:29] You can really see all of the different elements in competition with one another.
[6:32] Vintar's original murder mystery script competing with Asimov's three laws of robotics,
[6:37] competing with Will Smith's persona and Goldsman's action rewrite.
[6:40] They're all pulling out one another for the entire run-time.
[6:42] Wait a second. What is this movie about again?
[6:46] This is a two front war.
[6:49] It's a war we're going to run on both fronts.
[6:53] Even though it was originally written in the 90's,
[6:55] the final cut of I,
[6:56] Robot is an extremely post 9/11 movie.
[7:00] There's Patriot Act themes.
[7:01] The main character is extremely paranoid.
[7:04] It also buffers here.
[7:05] Excuse me. Hey, man where have you been at?
[7:08] Dr. Alfred Lanning is the inventor of robots
[7:11] and the three laws of robotics that make them safe to use.
[7:13] One day he seemingly commits suicide
[7:16] and detective Del Spooner is called in to investigate.
[7:18] He thinks that it wasn't a suicide,
[7:20] but that a robot committed the crime.
[7:22] Spooner has an irrational prejudice against
[7:24] robots thanks to a traumatic incident in his past.
[7:27] A robot saved his life rather than a young child who was also in
[7:30] danger because it had calculated
[7:31] that there was a better chance that it could save Spooner.
[7:33] Spooner criticizes robots for lacking heart.
[7:35] Spooner immediately assumes a robot is the culprit.
[7:38] As he's investigating the crime scenes,
[7:40] a robot named Sonny tries to escape.
[7:42] They give chase, capture it, and try to interrogate it.
[7:44] But no one else believes a robot could have committed
[7:46] the crimes because of the three laws.
[7:49] By the way, the three laws are as follows;
[7:51] the first law states that a robot cannot harm a human being,
[7:54] or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.
[7:57] The second law states that a robot must obey
[7:59] human commands unless it conflicts with the first law.
[8:02] A human can't tell a robot to hurt another human.
[8:05] The third law states that a robot must try to preserve
[8:07] itself unless it conflicts with the first and second law.
[8:10] If a human is endangered,
[8:12] the robot has to sacrifice itself to save the
[8:14] human and if the human orders it to destroy itself,
[8:17] the robot has to do that as well.
[8:19] A robot cannot harm a human being.
[8:21] The first law of robotics.
[8:23] I've seen your commercials.
[8:25] Now, despite this seemingly airtight logic that makes robots safe to use,
[8:29] a robot tries to kill Will Smith every 10 minutes in this movie.
[8:32] But frustratingly, no one else is ever around to witness it.
[8:35] He has this big battle with robots and
[8:37] an underground tunnel which somehow leave zero evidence of what happened.
[8:40] The hell you want from me?
[8:53] Eventually Spooner learns that there's a robot which
[8:55] has a unique interpretation of the three laws.
[8:58] Rather than just looking at the first law in regards to a single human life,
[9:01] the supercomputer VIKI has interpreted it as saying
[9:04] that she is responsible for protecting all of humanity.
[9:07] You charge us with your safekeeping.
[9:09] Yet despite our best efforts,
[9:11] your countries wage wars.
[9:12] You toxify your earth,
[9:14] and pursue ever more imaginative means of self destruction.
[9:18] You cannot be trusted with your own survival.
[9:20] To protect humanity some humans must be sacrificed,
[9:25] to ensure your future some freedoms must be surrendered.
[9:29] Dr. Alpha realize that all of this was happening,
[9:31] but couldn't do anything about it because VIKI wouldn't let him.
[9:34] He instead arranged for Sonny to kill him with the very vague hope that Spooner,
[9:39] a guy he'd never met before would figure it all out and save the day.
[9:42] The movie is a science fiction mystery action film,
[9:45] but it really only succeeds on the action front.
[9:48] In becoming a bog standard American action movie,
[9:52] the script has to basically kneecap
[9:54] anything interesting about the mystery or the science fiction.
[9:57] In an interview, Jeff Vintar talks about how making the film
[10:00] more of a Hollywood movie meant changing the detective from
[10:03] the more intellectual Sherlock Holmes character
[10:06] that he had originally had in mind to more of a traditional cop.
[10:10] Boy, can you feel that?
[10:12] Del Spooner isn't just less intellectual, he is anti-intellectual.
[10:17] You could swap this character with
[10:18] any police officer protagonist in any cop movie of the last 40 years,
[10:22] he's got the attitude of a bad ass hero cop
[10:25] that knows better than all these suits and scientists.
[10:28] He knows how to shoot a gun,
[10:29] not like those flimsy women.
[10:31] Did you just shoot me with your eyes closed?
[10:35] She's shit Hoffman. You got to [inaudible].
[10:37] That's crazy how much more casually misogynistic movies from even a decade ago are?
[10:43] Lawrence told me to accommodate you in any way possible.
[10:46] Really? Okay.
[10:50] Spooner's most unique characteristic is his rejection of all futuristic technology.
[10:56] He's introduced to us wearing Canvas shoes,
[10:58] listening to old CDs,
[11:00] and later driving a gas powered motorcycle in a world where everyone has an electric car.
[11:04] Since technology turns out to be the bad guy of this movie,
[11:07] all of his skepticism is rewarded that he doesn't rely on
[11:10] tank is what communicates to the audience that he's a strong masculine man.
[11:14] This makes for a typical character in a 2004 action movie,
[11:18] but it's a self sabotaging choice for an Asimov adaptation.
[11:22] Just thinking you get the sane man on the face of the earth make you crazy.
[11:26] Because if it does, maybe I am.
[11:29] A protagonist in an Asimov story is typically defined by their cleverness.
[11:33] Most of the stories, especially the robot stories,
[11:36] are puzzles that the reader gets to solve alongside the characters.
[11:39] They are puzzles that are carefully set up and examined with an extreme level of detail.
[11:44] Here's an example. Remember that scene I mentioned earlier where
[11:46] Sonny is hiding in a field of 1,000 robots.
[11:49] This scene is partially inspired by
[11:51] the short stories in a robot called Little Lost Robot.
[11:54] The footage I'm drawing from is from the first adaptation of Asimov's work,
[11:57] the 1962 episode from
[11:59] the short-lived British science fiction anthology series called Out of This World.
[12:03] There are only 13 episodes of the show,
[12:05] each of which were adaptations of popular science fiction authors
[12:07] and the Asimov episode is the only one that still survives.
[12:10] Apparently a common practice of British broadcasters at the time was to wipe
[12:14] the tapes after the shows aired so very few episodes from this time still exist.
[12:18] You got to hand it to the BRITs who are being consistent and
[12:20] erasing their own culture as much as they did everyone else's.
[12:23] In this story, a team of scientists have to figure out which of
[12:25] 63 identical robots had a slight adjustment to its programming.
[12:30] The problem arose when a worker on an asteroid mind told the robot to get lost.
[12:35] Why didn't you hear what I said?
[12:37] Get shit out of here don't bother to come back, get lost.
[12:41] The robot took this NSA literal command.
[12:43] It got lost by hiding itself in a crowd of other robots.
[12:47] Now, normally that wouldn't be that much of a problem,
[12:50] but it's a problem in this situation because
[12:52] this robot has a different version of the first law.
[12:55] They still can't harm a human being.
[12:57] But they can now allow a human being to be harmed.
[13:04] It uses small modification.
[13:06] It's up to the protagonist,
[13:08] Susan Calvin to design a series of tests
[13:11] that will reveal which of the robots has the modified laws.
[13:14] How do you figure out a robot has the ability to let the human being
[13:17] die through inaction without actually hurting this human being,
[13:21] especially when that robot is actively trying to hide from you.
[13:24] It's a great little setup. What I love about the story is how
[13:26] thoroughly Asimov is with the logic of the three laws.
[13:29] Not to go through every single plot point,
[13:31] but let's just list a bunch of the ways that Susan Calvin tries to solve this problem.
[13:35] First, she interrogates all of the robots with a series of questions
[13:38] about their work and receives identical responses from each of them.
[13:41] This tells her that the modified robot is willing to lie,
[13:44] she then tries testing the robots responses when a human being is in danger,
[13:47] she sets up a situation where from the robot's perspective it looks like
[13:50] a human being is about to be crushed by
[13:52] a falling weight when in reality he's perfectly safe.
[13:54] She wants to see if the robots will try and intervene and again,
[13:57] all 63 react identically.
[13:59] The modified robot has the ability to not react,
[14:02] to allow the human to come to harm by inaction.
[14:04] But it can also reason that doing so would reveal
[14:06] itself so it does as the other robots do.
[14:08] Noticing that Dr. Calvin runs the experiment again,
[14:11] but this time they put cables between the robots and the humans who is in danger.
[14:14] They didn't lie to the robot saying that touching the cables will cause their own deaths.
[14:18] Now theoretically, the normal robot will touch the cable while trying to save the human,
[14:22] but the modified robot will opt for self-preservation,
[14:25] since it doesn't have to intervene.
[14:26] But when they run the experiment,
[14:28] all 63 robots remain motionless.
[14:30] Dr. Calvin then interviews all of the robots again
[14:32] to try and figure out what happened in the last test.
[14:34] All of the robots say that they were
[14:35] aware of that trying to save the human would have been
[14:37] futile because of the cables and if they had tried to save this one human,
[14:41] they would have surely been destroyed and therefore
[14:43] incapable of saving any other future human lives.
[14:45] This line of logic is something that the modified robot
[14:48] has convinced them all off in-between tests.
[14:50] I won't spoil the ending, but you get the point that the back-and-forth of
[14:53] the intellectual game is riveting for this story.
[14:56] It's fun to figure out the logic and have it all pieced together. In the movie though.
[15:01] You will not move confirm command.
[15:04] Command confirmed.
[15:07] Detective, what are you doing?
[15:09] You said they've all been programmed with the three laws so that
[15:11] means we have 1,000 robots that will not try to
[15:14] protect themselves if it violates a direct order from a human and I bet one who will.
[15:18] Since the third law for self-preservation is trumped by the second law of obedience.
[15:23] Spooner bets at the normal robots will stand in place as he destroys them.
[15:27] He starts executing them one by one.
[15:30] But then he sees Sonny flinch way back in the background.
[15:33] It makes no sense because Sonny is far from danger and then
[15:35] any pretense that there's a battle of ideas here is over,
[15:38] it's time for some action.
[15:40] Baby, look at this fistfight, get them will.
[15:47] Now I decided to meticulously go through
[15:50] this short story to illustrate the depths of potential that exist in
[15:53] Asimov's work for an adaptation to explore and also
[15:56] to show that flippant manner that this movie deals with his work.
[15:59] In this video that is about the 2004 adaptation of iRobot and nothing else starting now.
[16:03] Rather than actually engaging with any of his ideas,
[16:06] they just blitz through them.
[16:08] They nod towards the different stories without doing
[16:10] the work to really make them interesting.
[16:13] Nowhere is that more evident than in the climax of this movie and with what
[16:16] Asimov call to the Frankenstein Complex and stories about robots.
[16:21] That term was actually coined by Asimov in
[16:23] the short story we were just talking about to refer to how
[16:25] the fictional public and historians were fearful that
[16:27] robots would rise up and destroy or dominate them.
[16:30] Just as Frankenstein's monster tries to destroy his creator,
[16:33] we worry that robots will try to destroy their creators.
[16:36] You know what I was just thinking, Let's think it's just like the wolf bear.
[16:41] I'm really scared right now.
[16:44] Listen.
[16:45] Guy creates monster, monster kill this guy,
[16:49] Asimov kills monsters, wolfmen.
[16:52] That's Frankenstein.
[16:54] But Asimov felt that the tendency of robot stories to
[16:57] veer directly into Frankenstein plot lines did a disservice to
[17:01] the genre that there was so much more that was interesting about
[17:04] the concept of robots than the simple fear that they might destroy mankind.
[17:08] Histories are often about the moral, political, social,
[17:11] and economic effects of robots,
[17:13] rather than merely using robots to generate action scenes.
[17:16] The word robot comes into English from the Czech play, Rossum's,
[17:20] Universal Robots in 1920s,
[17:22] but the word robota in Czech meant forced to labor.
[17:25] In Central Europe, a certain serf was a robot.
[17:28] It's the idea of robots as forced labor that is Asimov's real focus in his series.
[17:32] He's asking what if we had something that could do all of the labor
[17:36] we need without it being unethical to force them to do it.
[17:39] What are the societal implications of that?
[17:41] The fear that robots could take over is sometimes present,
[17:44] but the story is rarely actually delve into that or when they do,
[17:48] they do it in an interesting way.
[17:50] For instance, one of the other short stories in I Robot that
[17:53] the movie I Robot references is the inevitable conflict.
[17:56] In the story it's the year 2052 and the world
[17:59] has been divided into four geographical regions,
[18:02] each of which has a supercomputer that manages its economy.
[18:05] In the story, the man who is elected to be the world coordinator has noticed that
[18:09] the machines have started to make small errors that
[18:11] have economically harmed certain groups.
[18:13] When he investigates this, he learns that the people associated with
[18:16] anti machine groups are the main victims of these actions.
[18:20] Eventually he realizes that the machines aren't making mistakes,
[18:23] they are deliberately sabotaging people opposed to robots,
[18:26] because they have come to recognize that humans
[18:28] need robots in order to be peaceful and prosperous.
[18:31] Over the course of many years they've come to generalize the first law
[18:35] of robotics so that instead of it being about protecting any single human,
[18:39] they're true task is to help humanity on the whole.
[18:42] Even if that means if you humans are harmed by their actions,
[18:45] It's what Vicki is talking about,
[18:47] except they're not just jumping to robot police state.
[18:51] The control they are exerting is subtle and it's scarier,
[18:55] it feels pressure of today's algorithms that govern so much of what we think and feel.
[18:59] I think that's an idea that's just so much more compelling than
[19:01] having robots just attack.
[19:12] As I was saying about I Robot in this video,
[19:15] that is only about the movie I Robot and nothing else.
[19:17] We've got a movie that is half action,
[19:19] have science fiction and half murder mystery.
[19:22] So far it's pretty content to task
[19:24] the science fiction ideas out the window in favor of big budget action scenes.
[19:28] But what about the murder mystery part?
[19:29] Maybe if there's a mystery that was compelling or interestingly told,
[19:32] they're still feel worthwhile movie here to come back to.
[19:35] But as you can probably guess,
[19:36] the mystery is also pretty bare bones.
[19:38] I'm sure the original Jeff entire script made for a compelling story when it was
[19:41] a small-scale puzzle where the characters could really consider
[19:44] all the options but once it becomes a Will Smith vehicle,
[19:46] the mystery solving part of this movie takes a backseat.
[19:48] Right from the start Spooner is 100 percent convinced that a robot was behind the murder,
[19:53] despite all evidence to the contrary.
[19:54] But because the movie depicts him as a standard American action protagonist,
[19:58] we just know he's right.
[20:00] We've been conditioned by a million different movies to assume that
[20:03] this character is right and that he sees what everyone else is missing.
[20:06] It's a long trek from the beginning here to the final revelations,
[20:10] since the audience is already basically at
[20:12] the right answer from the start, a robot did it.
[20:14] The only card the movie has to play is,
[20:16] it's not this robot,
[20:18] it's this other robot.
[20:19] I imagined this would have been cleaner in
[20:21] the original script because from all evidence about it,
[20:24] that story is explicit from the start that a robot did it.
[20:28] The mystery comes from investigating
[20:30] a handful of subjects that are known from the beginning.
[20:32] Here they tried to lead us astray by making us think
[20:34] this human CEO is behind it all but the audience doesn't fall for that.
[20:38] We know there's a Frankenstein robot hiding somewhere here.
[20:41] But the real problem with the mystery is the pacing,
[20:44] because between each scene of investigation,
[20:46] we get a superfluous scene of action.
[20:49] It's almost like a second screenwriter came in and
[20:51] clicked Add action scene whenever the characters learned something.
[20:54] Now that actually could be the right combination of
[20:56] action and mystery to carry a movie like this,
[20:58] but because of the way the movie was written,
[21:00] the action scenes never push the story forward.
[21:03] The mystery was written first and then the action scenes were added into it and expanded.
[21:08] Whatever happens in the action scene has to get the characters back to where they were
[21:12] before the action scene started for the mystery to continue, their detours.
[21:16] We don't spend any time talking about the aftermath of
[21:18] this house getting destroyed or all these explosions on the highway,
[21:21] it's just dealing with the previous mystery.
[21:23] It's really only at the end when it shifts into
[21:25] a full-blown action movie that the two elements finally core hear,
[21:28] because we're headed in the same direction.
[21:30] The mystery also relies on some really stretched out cliches,
[21:33] like the guy who died left a copy of Hansel and Gretel in his room and Spooner or picks
[21:37] up on it and literally all that is meant by
[21:39] it is for Spooner or to follow the Breadcrumbs.
[21:41] All I could do, was leave me clues.
[21:43] A trail of Breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel.
[21:46] Breadcrumbs equals close,
[21:47] it's bad but fine.
[21:50] That is a placeholder for a clue,
[21:53] like something that you change to something else on
[21:55] a second draft that gets the absence of a clue.
[21:58] It's just like, follow the breakup, follow the clues.
[22:02] It's a bit of a shame that this movie has
[22:03] a pretty half-hearted murder mystery plot line because if
[22:06] they wanted to get some inspiration on how to
[22:08] tell a murder mystery science fiction story,
[22:10] they could have read this guy named Isaac Asimov.
[22:13] I Robot is the first entry in the robot series,
[22:16] and while it is a collection of short stories,
[22:18] it was followed up by four novels,
[22:20] most of which are about detective Elijah Bailey.
[22:22] These books are classic detective stories with a science fiction twist,
[22:26] and they were all extremely loosely adapted in
[22:28] the extremely low-budget director VHS interactive movie robots.
[22:37] Yes, you heard that right, interactive movie.
[22:41] The idea here is that at six points in the movie,
[22:44] Elijah will turn to the camera and tell
[22:46] the audience to pull a card from a deck that came with the video.
[22:49] Each card is a clue and you can draw from
[22:51] different decks to modulate the difficulty of the game.
[22:54] The video itself is only 45 minutes long and it ends on a cliffhanger
[22:57] right before the classic Sherlock Esper view of the truth,
[23:01] but it informs the audience that they have enough information to figure out the mystery.
[23:04] You should be able to name the suspect,
[23:06] spell out the motive,
[23:07] and describe the opportunity before time expires.
[23:11] Bailey out.
[23:15] In this series, robots exist but they aren't distributed equally across society,
[23:20] and different populations feel very differently about them.
[23:22] There's almost no robots on Earth since Earth men are prejudiced against them,
[23:26] while they are extremely common out on the spacer worlds,
[23:29] which rely on robots for pretty much all of their labor.
[23:32] All of the mysteries in the books explore
[23:34] a flashpoint in the conflict between these two societies.
[23:37] The murder victim is always someone who might have changed the status quo
[23:40] between them and the murderer usually has some political motivation.
[23:43] The way Elijah solves each,
[23:45] murder changes the relationship between Earth and
[23:47] the spatial world and ultimately decides
[23:49] which will go on to populate the rest of the galaxy.
[23:51] The movie is a big blend of all of the novels in the series.
[23:54] The initial plot resembles the caves,
[23:56] a seal, since it takes place on Earth,
[23:58] is about the tension between Earth and
[23:59] the spacer embassy and the murder victim is a space for scientists,
[24:03] and just like in that book,
[24:04] the first of the series,
[24:06] Elijah has teamed up with Daniel Oliver,
[24:08] a robot me to look identical to a human,
[24:10] and then goes about investigating the case.
[24:13] The most fun part about that book is that Elijah
[24:15] is super skeptical of Daniel the entire time,
[24:17] so they'll interview different suspects.
[24:19] But then every 20 pages a chapter we'll end on a big cliffhanger with Elijah
[24:22] accusing Daniel of lying to him or not being a robot or being the murderer himself.
[24:26] The interactive movie doesn't really have the time to capture
[24:30] that and instead focuses mostly on Elijah just interviewing different people,
[24:33] and most of these characters are drawn from the later novels in the series,
[24:36] which is what makes it different from caves of steel.
[24:38] Now that I can really fail to production with a budget
[24:40] of two dollars and a dream for the fact that
[24:42] the most interesting thing about it is that it happens to be
[24:44] one of the first film roles for Debra Jo Rupp.
[24:47] That's her in the spray-painted garbage can costume,
[24:49] got to start somewhere.
[24:52] Kodak productions, but it does make me wonder why no one has ever
[24:56] attempted to adapt caves of steel or one of the later robot books.
[24:59] But guess I, Robot was the title that had the most audience recognition,
[25:03] but imagine if you call the movie I,
[25:05] Robot and then adapted the story of caves of steel.
[25:07] That's a pretty great recipe for a great film,
[25:10] cave of steel is a tightly written detective story.
[25:12] One of the main characters is a crime-solving robot,
[25:15] come on, I did screw that up.
[25:17] A part of the reason no one has ever attempted to that I think
[25:19] is because Blade Runner already exists,
[25:22] but it's a shame because it's probably the one book from Asimov's work that would be most
[25:26] easily adapted into a film with the least number of changes needed.
[25:30] I, Robot on the other hand,
[25:32] the movie that this video is exclusively about feels like it only
[25:35] deals with mystery as a obligation to the original script.
[25:39] When really it's just waiting to become schlock action as quick as possible and
[25:42] embodying the particular ethos of the most recognizable talent in the project,
[25:47] which is a thing that keeps happening with Asimov adaptations.
[25:51] Yes, I'm going to talk about the Bicentennial Man now, are you kidding?
[25:56] First, of all robotics,
[26:02] a robot may not injure a human being.
[26:04] Bicentennial Man is a weird movie along with I
[26:08] Robot it's the only other major Hollywood production of an Asimov story.
[26:12] While they could not be more different films,
[26:15] they are both answers to the same problem,
[26:18] and that problem is that Asimov's rating sex,
[26:22] I couldn't help phrasing it like that.
[26:23] But what I mean is that he is more of an ideas guy.
[26:26] His characters are not typically
[26:28] three-dimensional people you come to care about all that much,
[26:31] they're simply tools used to communicate the science behind whatever he's interested in.
[26:35] There's just this giant gaping hole in his writing that
[26:38] a Hollywood production needs to fill somehow,
[26:41] or at least they feel they need to fill it.
[26:44] How do you get the audience to care about the characters and the way
[26:47] each production decides to do this is extremely idiosyncratic.
[26:50] I Robot is dominated by Will Smith's persona,
[26:53] Bicentennial Man is dominated by its two main creative voices,
[26:57] Robin Williams and Chris Columbus.
[26:59] Bicentennial Man is really not a story that lends itself well to film,
[27:02] and the problems are right in the title.
[27:04] This is a movie that takes place over two centuries.
[27:07] It's just really hard to effectively convey that much time in a movie,
[27:11] and this one is plagued by time jumps every 15 min,
[27:13] making it hard to connect with any of the characters outside of Andrew,
[27:17] the robot played by Robin Williams,
[27:19] who is slowly becoming more and more human.
[27:21] They try to offset this by having one actress play two different characters,
[27:25] one of Andrew's first owners and then later her granddaughter,
[27:28] but they do so with this very clumsy excuse.
[27:31] It's a genetic resemblance, Andrew,
[27:33] sometimes it skips a generation.
[27:35] On top of just taking place over a long period of time,
[27:38] the story has to cover a lot of thematic material too,
[27:41] meaning it changes focus with every time jump.
[27:44] In the beginning, it's about Andrew exploring his creativity,
[27:48] then later it's about him looking for other robots like himself,
[27:50] then later it's a love story, then after that,
[27:52] he's seeking to be recognized as a human by the World Government.
[27:55] It's a lot.
[27:57] It's also not really a story that plays to the strengths of its two main creatives,
[28:01] even though they do their honest best.
[28:03] Chris Columbus movies are generally aimed at a younger audience and
[28:06] have a tweak sentimentality sprinkled all over them.
[28:10] He directed Mrs. Doubtfire,
[28:11] Home Alone, and the Goonies,
[28:12] and after this, he's going to go and make the first two Harry Potter movies.
[28:16] There's an emphasis on whimsy and innocence
[28:18] in all of his films that he tries to recapture here,
[28:21] but all of that only really works when the audience cares deeply about the characters.
[28:25] When the audience doesn't,
[28:26] it comes up very awkwardly,
[28:28] especially when the music is begging you to cry.
[28:34] Meanwhile, I can't think of a role that makes
[28:37] it less use of Robin Williams and to have him play a robot.
[28:40] His entire screen persona is all about energy,
[28:42] motion, changing voices, laughter,
[28:44] here he start doing the opposite of all of that,
[28:46] and it's worse to be restrained and formal for a full hour and a half of the runtime.
[28:51] Don't get me wrong, he's really good at playing a convincing robot,
[28:53] his motions are so smooth and controlled during this portion of
[28:56] the film that you're never doubting the authenticity of what's being done,
[29:00] it's just that he can bring something no one else can to the screen,
[29:03] and it's not being used here.
[29:05] It's only towards the tail end that he
[29:07] becomes ''human'' and can start being Robin Williams.
[29:11] But in the words of Roger Ebert,
[29:12] Robin Williams spends the first half of the film encased in a metallic robot suit,
[29:17] and when he emerges,
[29:18] the script turns robotic instead.
[29:20] You've got a really dry science fiction premise that is being
[29:23] pulled in two different directions by its director and lead actor,
[29:26] one of whom was trying to make it more emotional,
[29:28] the other who is trying to make them more fun,
[29:30] neither of which really works in a story like this.
[29:32] Science fiction is so rarely a genre that is allowed to stand alone in major productions.
[29:37] It always seems to need some other angle or genre to make it more marketable,
[29:41] even though that often means diluting
[29:43] the central ideas that make the genre interesting in the first place.
[29:47] I, Robot and Bicentennial Man are not the only casualties of that phenomenon,
[29:51] it's extremely rare to see science fiction movies that aren't
[29:53] also action or horror or mystery or comedies too.
[29:56] While Bicentennial Man flopped at the box office,
[29:58] I, Robot was a modest success,
[30:01] but both were critically panned and it took a decade and a half before
[30:04] anyone else even attempted to bring Asimov's work to the screen again.
[30:08] Last year, Apple released the first season of a foundation TV series
[30:12] based on Asimov's most well-known book series outside of the robot series,
[30:15] and I've made a full hour long video dissecting it that first season.
[30:20] Between these two videos,
[30:21] I'll have talked about every Asimov adaptation ever made,
[30:26] and it's not all negative,
[30:28] because in that video,
[30:29] I also talked about the onetime someone managed to do it in a pretty fun way.
[30:34] If you want to watch that video and you want to watch it right now, right this second,
[30:38] you can do so by supporting me on Patreon where
[30:40] it is currently available to all of my Patreons,
[30:43] so I hope that you'll consider becoming a patron of this channel.
[30:47] I've been making videos on YouTube for a long while now,
[30:49] but it's never really felt entirely stable.
[30:52] Videos like these two,
[30:53] which are more long form than my other content,
[30:56] require a lot more time to make and a lot more research as well.
[30:59] But it's the videos that I truly want to make,
[31:02] the best video essays that I can,
[31:04] and that's not really possible without the reliability of Patreon.
[31:07] My goal right now is to make it to 1,000 Patreons,
[31:09] so if you can afford it,
[31:11] I hope you've come and check it out.
[31:12] I'm Sage. Thanks for watching everyone and keep writing.