I, Robot (2004) vs Asimov — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] The most prolific writer of science fiction is Isaac Asimov.

[00:03] Now, usually, when I write a sentence like that,

[00:05] I'll throw in some weasel words like one of the most prolific,

[00:08] mostly so that parents can correct me in the comments.

[00:11] But in this, I feel that it is just literally true.

[00:14] Wikipedia has five separate pages,

[00:16] just listing Asimov's bibliography.

[00:18] In his own words, over a space of 40 years,

[00:20] I published an average of 1,000 words a day.

[00:22] Over the space of the second 20 years,

[00:24] I published an average of 1,700 words a day.

[00:29] Granted, most of his work is nonfiction,

[00:32] but he still wrote enough fiction that there's actually

[00:34] a fair bit of scholarly disagreement over how to count it.

[00:38] The number I've seen for novels and short stories is around 400.

[00:42] He wrote so much, he even wrote books about how he had written so much.

[00:47] Obviously, it's not just that he wrote a lot,

[00:49] it's that he wrote some of the most foundational.

[00:52] You need a new foundation.

[00:54] Pieces of science fiction ever.

[00:56] But you'd think with over 400 science fiction stories

[00:59] and with how popular science fiction is at the box office,

[01:03] that there'd be like 100 or 50,

[01:05] or 25, or even 10 adaptations of Asimov's work.

[01:09] But no, there are only eight.

[01:12] There would be nine,

[01:13] but Fantastic Voyage doesn't count.

[01:15] It's often mistaken as an Asimov book because the novel came up for the movie.

[01:18] But actually, the script for the film was written first

[01:21] and then they hired Asimov to write the novelization.

[01:24] He managed to get the book out onto the shelves six months before

[01:27] the film came out because he's just that fast of a goddamn writer.

[01:56] This is different, Spoon, listen, I got this fun little ass little yummy.

[02:00] I mean, she is complete agreeable,

[02:01] I mean, ass has sprinkable, Spoon.

[02:03] What does that even mean?

[02:04] Today, I want to talk about the 2004,

[02:07] Adaptation of iRobot starring Will Smith and nothing else.

[02:11] This video is only going to be about the 2004,

[02:15] "Adaptation of iRobot" starring Will Smith.

[02:18] Wait, why do I keep putting the word adaptation in quote?

[02:20] The reason I wanted to talk about this movie is not just to harp on

[02:24] a more or less forgotten Blockbuster from a bygone era because it is fun,

[02:27] but because last year Apple released a big adaptation of foundation.

[02:32] If we lay a strong enough foundation.

[02:35] Asimov's biggest series.

[02:37] Before talking about that,

[02:38] I wanted the context of some other times people have adapted his work,

[02:43] which is what we're doing here.

[02:44] But we're only going to talk about iRobot.

[02:46] I wouldn't read and watch every Asimov adaptation in

[02:52] existence no matter how obscure charting 60 years of failed or underfunded productions,

[02:57] just as the prelude for different video,

[03:00] that would be insane.

[03:02] There is an entire field of film criticism centered on

[03:05] categorizing the different kinds of adaptations, but unfortunately,

[03:08] all of that scholarship is compromised because all of them would need to put

[03:11] the 2004 air quotes adaptation of iRobot in

[03:15] its own special category because the making of this movie is real weird.

[03:22] Back in the 90s, screenwriter Jeff Vintar wrote

[03:25] a completely unrelated screenplay called hardwired.

[03:28] The movie wasn't an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery where

[03:31] the suspects were all robots or other artificial intelligence.

[03:37] There was a robot called Sonny,

[03:40] a supercomputer called Vicki,

[03:41] and the hologram of Dr. Lanning,

[03:43] the man who had been killed.

[03:44] It was originally written more like a stage play,

[03:47] taking place entirely on one floor of a building and with FBI agent,

[03:50] detective Del Spooner tasked with figuring out which the robots killed Lanning and how.

[03:55] It's like a sci-fi Knives Out.

[03:57] The script was first acquired by Disney,

[03:58] where it entered a period of development hell and got rewritten several times.

[04:02] With one iteration taking place on a space station and the entire team of

[04:05] space marines taking on the role of the detective from the original script.

[04:09] When that version of the movie fell through,

[04:11] Fox became interested in the idea and Vintar expanded the scope

[04:14] of the movie out from the original stage play like murder mystery to

[04:17] a big-budget studio film broadening the scope of the story out to

[04:20] an entire metropolis and bringing back the central detective character that.

[04:24] Soon after that, Fox acquired the rights to

[04:26] Isaac Asimov's short story collection iRobot,

[04:28] never saying to themselves, how do we make money off of this thing that we just got?

[04:32] I know, why don't we get poor Jeff Vintar to rewrite

[04:35] his screenplay again so that it can pass as an Asimov adaptation?

[04:39] Poor Jeff Vintar who had rewritten this thing like 11 times by

[04:42] now went about making some Asimov references in the new screenplay.

[04:45] The changes include renaming the female main character.

[04:49] They renamed the company that made the robots to US robotics.

[04:53] They inserted the three laws of robotics into

[04:55] the plot and inventor's own words, that's pretty much it.

[04:59] They basically just slap

[05:01] some Asimov paint onto an old script that's been kicking around for a decade.

[05:05] This is why in the credits for this movie,

[05:07] it doesn't say based on iRobot,

[05:09] it says suggested by Isaac Asimov's book, suggested to by.

[05:15] Thanks to the suggestion Isaac.

[05:17] They go about making the movie and there's a great deal of

[05:20] debate over how big of an action picture it should be,

[05:22] which was solved once Will Smith came on board the project.

[05:25] That's hilarious.

[05:31] There's a scene where Sonny,

[05:33] the robot is hiding in a field of

[05:35] other robots while the main characters are looking for him.

[05:37] As Vintar said, when I wrote that in the script I think Sonny the robot,

[05:42] was hiding among 50 robots.

[05:44] This scene was always a point of contention.

[05:47] Can we afford this scene?

[05:49] Should this scene be in the film?

[05:50] I think in the finished screenplay,

[05:53] there are actually 1,000 robots in that scene.

[05:57] After struggling and fighting for that scene for quite a number of years,

[06:00] when Will Smith came on,

[06:02] the robot count went up from 50 to 1,000.

[06:05] That was the Will Smith effect.

[06:08] With Will Smith onboard,

[06:09] Fox hired a second screenwriter,

[06:11] Akiva Goldsman, to bring the film further in line with a Will Smith event film,

[06:14] which basically meant increasing the amount of action,

[06:17] upping the steaks from simply solving a mystery to saving

[06:20] the world and making Spooner sound more like Will Smith.

[06:23] You like that?

[06:25] The film took a pretty long road to its final form.

[06:29] You can really see all of the different elements in competition with one another.

[06:32] Vintar's original murder mystery script competing with Asimov's three laws of robotics,

[06:37] competing with Will Smith's persona and Goldsman's action rewrite.

[06:40] They're all pulling out one another for the entire run-time.

[06:42] Wait a second. What is this movie about again?

[06:46] This is a two front war.

[06:49] It's a war we're going to run on both fronts.

[06:53] Even though it was originally written in the 90's,

[06:55] the final cut of I,

[06:56] Robot is an extremely post 9/11 movie.

[07:00] There's Patriot Act themes.

[07:01] The main character is extremely paranoid.

[07:04] It also buffers here.

[07:05] Excuse me. Hey, man where have you been at?

[07:08] Dr. Alfred Lanning is the inventor of robots

[07:11] and the three laws of robotics that make them safe to use.

[07:13] One day he seemingly commits suicide

[07:16] and detective Del Spooner is called in to investigate.

[07:18] He thinks that it wasn't a suicide,

[07:20] but that a robot committed the crime.

[07:22] Spooner has an irrational prejudice against

[07:24] robots thanks to a traumatic incident in his past.

[07:27] A robot saved his life rather than a young child who was also in

[07:30] danger because it had calculated

[07:31] that there was a better chance that it could save Spooner.

[07:33] Spooner criticizes robots for lacking heart.

[07:35] Spooner immediately assumes a robot is the culprit.

[07:38] As he's investigating the crime scenes,

[07:40] a robot named Sonny tries to escape.

[07:42] They give chase, capture it, and try to interrogate it.

[07:44] But no one else believes a robot could have committed

[07:46] the crimes because of the three laws.

[07:49] By the way, the three laws are as follows;

[07:51] the first law states that a robot cannot harm a human being,

[07:54] or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.

[07:57] The second law states that a robot must obey

[07:59] human commands unless it conflicts with the first law.

[08:02] A human can't tell a robot to hurt another human.

[08:05] The third law states that a robot must try to preserve

[08:07] itself unless it conflicts with the first and second law.

[08:10] If a human is endangered,

[08:12] the robot has to sacrifice itself to save the

[08:14] human and if the human orders it to destroy itself,

[08:17] the robot has to do that as well.

[08:19] A robot cannot harm a human being.

[08:21] The first law of robotics.

[08:23] I've seen your commercials.

[08:25] Now, despite this seemingly airtight logic that makes robots safe to use,

[08:29] a robot tries to kill Will Smith every 10 minutes in this movie.

[08:32] But frustratingly, no one else is ever around to witness it.

[08:35] He has this big battle with robots and

[08:37] an underground tunnel which somehow leave zero evidence of what happened.

[08:40] The hell you want from me?

[08:53] Eventually Spooner learns that there's a robot which

[08:55] has a unique interpretation of the three laws.

[08:58] Rather than just looking at the first law in regards to a single human life,

[09:01] the supercomputer VIKI has interpreted it as saying

[09:04] that she is responsible for protecting all of humanity.

[09:07] You charge us with your safekeeping.

[09:09] Yet despite our best efforts,

[09:11] your countries wage wars.

[09:12] You toxify your earth,

[09:14] and pursue ever more imaginative means of self destruction.

[09:18] You cannot be trusted with your own survival.

[09:20] To protect humanity some humans must be sacrificed,

[09:25] to ensure your future some freedoms must be surrendered.

[09:29] Dr. Alpha realize that all of this was happening,

[09:31] but couldn't do anything about it because VIKI wouldn't let him.

[09:34] He instead arranged for Sonny to kill him with the very vague hope that Spooner,

[09:39] a guy he'd never met before would figure it all out and save the day.

[09:42] The movie is a science fiction mystery action film,

[09:45] but it really only succeeds on the action front.

[09:48] In becoming a bog standard American action movie,

[09:52] the script has to basically kneecap

[09:54] anything interesting about the mystery or the science fiction.

[09:57] 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.