The movie is hilariously different and the fact that Susan Calvin is played by the blazingly attractive Bridget Moynahan is just a cherry on top. There’s no reason that Asimov’s Calvin couldn’t be attractive - I would just be thinking about Allison Janney
Hijack: out of my old Asimov first editions, I still have I, Robot (The Foundation Trilogy went to fund some work on the house. Sigh.) Such a fun, 50’s drawing of a robot: I, ROBOT by Asimov, Isaac - [1950]
Mine isn’t in quite as good a shape, and I paid a small fraction of that $4,500 sales price. Actually, IIRC, I found a copy of Terry McMillan’s first book, Mama, right when her popularity took a big leap blowing up because of Waiting to Exhale. I think I got Mama for maybe $50 and used it to trade to get I, Robot, which was then going for ~$250 or so. I think I had to add a few bucks to the deal. Sweet.
Both I, Robot and Starship Troopers (the films) share the fact that the original versions of the screenplays had nothing whatsoever to do with the books from which they took their names. In both cases, the studios also had the rights to the books, and bolted the recognizeable-to-scifi-fans names onto unrelated projects, and added some minor elements from the books.
Personally, I have to wonder why studios do the grafting-on-a-different-name thing. It’s not going to draw in non-fans, because they won’t know or care what I, Robot or Starship Troopers is. And it’s not going to draw in fans, because most of them are going to be upset that the movie is nothing at all like the book, and if anything more of them will stay away because of that. Obviously, they think that it’s going to put more butts in the seats, but just whose butts do they think that’ll be?
Do you have a cite for the Starship Troopers case? Because the plot of the film matched the book quite closely. It was the tone that was utterly different - whereas Heinlein had a very positive view of the military, Verhoeven most emphatically did not.
Right, but Verhoeven didn’t write the screenplay, Edward Neumeier did. I’d say plotwise, the movie matched the book at least as well as most other book based movies, like Harry Potter or LOTR,.
Really? I figured the movie had a few references to the book, rather than being an adaptation of it. I actually found watching the movie, in all its silliness, to be a more entertaining experience than reading the novel, which tended to get sloggy and was dated by its pointless sexism.
The redlettermedia guys (in an episode of their Re:View series) had an interesting analysis of the film. Mike called it the exact opposite of the Star Trek: TOS episode “Arena.”
In terms of just “this character did this, then this battle happened, and this guy died, etc. etc.” , it’s really close to the book. Certainly as close as any other book adapted to a movie that you’ll find, and closer than most, IMHO. Sure it did things like combine few characters into one (DuBois & Rasczak), add a pointless romance (Johnny & Dizzy), and cut out large sections (Johnny going to OCS). But in terms of overall arc, it matches the book very well:
Johnny, Carmen & Carl join the military.
Carmen gets sent to pilot training, Carl is a genius, Johnny gets to be infantry.
Boot camp under Sgt. Zim is horrible & sadistic.
First big battle is invasion of the Bug home planet, total disaster.
Johnny joins the Roughnecks.
One or two battles with the Roughnecks.
Johnny becomes an officer.
Invasion of Planet P to capture a brain bug.
Like I said, the tone completely changed under the director - he saw the govt as fascistic, the sadism of training was unecessary, which was all very different than Heinlein’s vision. But that’s nothing like the I Robot case, where they basically wrote a robot murder mystery out of nowhere, then tacked on a few characters & scenes from various Asimov stories.
Well, I strongly disagree with the Wikipedia article then, at least the 2nd quote, about “significant differences”, and “superficial details”. As I said before, the characters, plot, events, match the novel quite significantly. The tone is very different, sure, which was a conscious decision by the director, but the elements from the novel weren’t a bolt-on the way I Robot was.
The similarities you’re referring to are just “there were some battles”. To go beyond that, you have to ask things like “who were the battles fought against”, and even on something that basic, the movie differs from the book (the opening scene of the book, with the famous Twenty-Second Bomb, was against the Skinnies). Or maybe “how were the battles fought”: The book is famous for its powered armor suits, which were absent from the movie.
You’ve mentioned all this before, Exapno. I’ve read a fair amount of Asimov’s work, so I only knew the story as he relates it in his introductions and essays, which, IIRC, do not give Campbell any credit for helping him develop the Three Laws. (Correct me if I’m wrong about that.)
Can you tell me where I can read more about Campbell’s and Greenberg’s roles in shaping Asimov’s robot universe?
In fairness, reading the plotline in the Wiki article, the movie’s storyline is certainly more closely matched to the book than you would expect from simply taking an unrelated story and naming some characters appropriately (the “I, Robot” treatment). Not only are characters and their genesis taken from the story, but the general sequence of the movie’s events tracks (more or less) the sequence of the story in the book. So, while the assertion by muldoonthief upthread that the movie followed the book as closely as Harry Potter or LotR is clearly wrong (indeed, the first two HP movies have been chastised for following the book TOO closely), there was at least an attempt to shoehorn the square peg into the round hole.
I’d have to go through Asimov’s many retellings of history, which mostly are told to the greater glory of Isaac Asimov who invented all robots all by himself. (I, Robot doesn’t have an introduction but The Rest of the Robots does and in his history of robots Asimov fails to mention any other science fiction robot stories or writers at all.) I’m not saying that Campbell wrote the three laws (although I have read others saying that). My understanding is that Campbell pointed out to Asimov that that statements he made in his early stories implied a series of laws and that it would be a good idea to make that explicit. Asimov introduced his First Law in “Reason,” Astounding Science-Fiction April 1941 and codified his Three Laws in “Runaround,” Astounding Science-Fiction March 1942, so there would be plenty of time for that discussion.
I’ve suggested that either one of them may have wanted to stake a claim on the issue because of William McGivern’s story in June 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures, “Sidney, the Screwloose Robot." In it McGivern writes “You must be industrious, you must be efficient, you must be useful. Those are the three laws that are to govern your behavior.” Given lead times for publication, it’s doubtful that McGivern could have seen “Reason” in time to write a story and publish that story, although it’s just within possibility. Most people in the field read the handful of magazines published, so they - especially Asimov - would presumably have seen it. At this point, of course, nobody can say for sure.
Greenberg’s role was simply to slap a famous title on Asimov’s collection. Or else Fred Pohl’s role as Asimov’s agent was to slap a famous title on Asimov’s collection and Greenberg went along with it. Asimov certainly didn’t want somebody else’s famous title on his book. The book was put together really fast in publishing terms. It appeared just a few months after the last story in it was in magazine form and none of Greenberg’s earlier titles that year mentioned it as an upcoming book, though all the surrounding books were. Whether they had a big battle over the title or Greenberg made it a fait accompli with no time to argue is also not known.
For references, I can steer you to me on McGivern and me on I, Robot.
