My problem with this whole mess, besides that I can’t stand Will Smith and have never liked him, is that nothing about him ever suggests “serious dramatic actor” or what have you. I’m sure this movie will be littered with dumb jokes and one-liners, all for the sake of making Smith look really really cool to still-unconvinced 13-year-old boys, at any cost, regardless of the actualy story or plotline. I’m betting this movie will be in fierce competition to out-suck Catwoman for worst movie of the summer. My only hope is that Catwoman will be so unintentionally funny that it will not end up out-sucking Batman and Robin.
Why don’t they just advertise Catwoman the intelligent way? Show a sixty second clip of Halle Berry walking around in her costume.
As for I, Robot, I’ve now seen the ad and it appears the filmmakers accidently replaced their copy of Asimov’s book with an issue of Magnus, Robot Fighter.
Oh, there were bad robot movies long before those. (And A.I. wasn’t bad; it was, in fact, brilliant in some respects. A little rewriting and it could have been great.)
You want bad? Try Saturn Three.
Even if, miraculously, I, Robot turns out to be good, I’ll still be pissed off by the trailer, which is of the kind that gives you the whole plot of the movie. As Roger Ebert said, a movie trailer should be like the aroma of baking bread that draws you into the bakery; instead they’re giving away big slices, which tell you everything you need to know about the bread except what the whole loaf would be like. (I’m paraphrasing.) That’s why I didn’t go see What Lies Beneath; the trailer gave away most of the plot points, which is not a good thing if you want to entice me to see a thriller.
I just saw Spider-Man 2 today, and yes, I got the Catwoman trailer, but how come every one else got the Blade trailer, and I got a trailer for “Anacondas: The Search for a Crappy Movie” and a 30-second teaser for “Seed of Chucky?”
The “I, Robot” trailer seems to have little to do with Asimov, but I’m probably going to give it a chance, in hopes that Proyas manages to make it at least visually interesting.
At least Bicentenial Man, despite its flaws, did something that I, Robot apparently does not - it stayed faithful to the basic idea of the original story.
I was watching the trailers again when I noticed something interesting: although you see robots crawling up wall, lurching menacingly at people and causing massive property damage, at no point does a robot actually kil (or try to kill)l a human being. All the violence portrayed is against the robots.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being overly optomistic, but after all, I’ve never really liked Isaac Asimov all that much anyway. I respect him immensly for his role in inventing the science fiction genre, and I’d be the first to admit that he was a brilliant man, but his stories always seemed too staid and mannered, his dialogue flat, his plots dry and uninvolving. They work well as puzzles and logical games, but not as literature. I think a bit of Hollywood flash-bang razzle-dazzle would do his ideas some good. Proyas is a talented, thoughtful director, and as long has he retains some of Asimov’s basic intelligence, the movie could have potential.
At the risk of losing any remaining respect I may have among Board denizens, I want to note that I actually liked Bicentennial Man. I’ve got the DVD. It feels more like an Asimov story than anything else I’ve seen, and seems to embody his vision better than anything else I’ve seen. It is the definitive (thus far) interpretation of Asimov in celluloid. (better than the two bad versions of “Nightfall”. Better than the well-intentioned “Ugly Little Boy”. Better than a number of student films based on his short stories. I can’t say how it stacks up against adaptations done for the 1960s British Tv series “Out of the Unknown”, 'cause I haven’t seen them.)
But I predict I, Robot will be bloody awful. I agree with the suggestion that this will be to his work as Starship Troopers was to Heinlein’s. I’ve already made the same analogy myself.
And I hated A.I. despite it being a sort-of collaboration between my favorite directot (Kubrick) and one I respect (Spielberg).
I’m going to have to go along with you and say I liked Bicentennial Man. I never saw what was so bad about the movie at all.
I can’t remember if I ever read I Robot or not. I read a lot of his work a few years ago. I don’t actually think I did read it, but it’s hard to find his works in stores, or at least it was when I was reading Asimov.
The clips I’ve seen manage to bore me with the sight of Halle Berry in skintight leather. That takes true mastery of cinematic incompetence.
My sentiments exactly - Dark City director trumps Will Smith for me.
Although, if there’s another trailer that shows even one painful smart-assed one-liner from Smith, I’m leaning the other way.
::kicks robot in head:: “You just got re-booted.”
Plus, the robots just look STUPID!
Good grief! WHO would envision a robot like that!? Especially the early version robots that they are supposed to be.
To me, they look like Gumby meets the Incredible Stick Man.
:wally
Unless the trailor’s being really clever, this movie seems to be filled to the brim with cliches half a century old. Just the tagline, One man saw it coming, makes me cringe.
Asimov’s stories certainly aren’t very action-packed, but there are ways to spice them up without completely reversing the theme of the stories. And I agree that those robots are creepy and would never be integrated into human society looking like that. Asmiov covers the fear of robots a lot in his stories, and usually makes them look as metalic and inhuman as possible. In other words, robots are tools, not slaves.
[David Spade]I liked this movie better when it was called Blade Runner.[/DS]
I’ve read Harlan’s original script (which Warner Bros turned down to make Damnation Alley!), and while there were a few problems with it, at least it was intelligent.
This looks to be just a retread of Blade Runner, with Will Smith shoehorned in so he can make wisecracks (wonder if he’s figured out it’s pronounced “Earth” and not “Earf” yet?).
I;m afraid Will shall. 
Oh, no. The robot designs are pure genius. Look at the heads.
They’re iRobots.
I suspect that I’m really going to resent what they do to Dr. Calvin. Such a great character, and it appears that she’s only in there to give us some boobs to distract us from Will Smith’s ears.
Bleah.
Unless the trailers aren’t really representative of the movie as a whole, which they often aren’t, it doesn’t look good.
For examle, look at the interrogation room clip. Will goads the robot into getting angry and smashing the table. This is ridiculous. A robot will only do what it’s programmed to do, and it makes no sense to program a robot to display anger. It wouldn’t be a helpful trait for a domestic servant or a military weapon.
Now, I’m willing to admit that it’s possible that the trailer is misleading. The movie may not be about domestic robots somehow getting military programming and running amok so that a human has to kill them all. But I’m not hopeful.
This looks like a “Frankenstein Syndrome” movie through and through. It’s beginning to look like the episode of The Outer Limits may be the only halfway decent Asimov adaptation we’ll ever get.
Which Outer Limits episode was an adaptation of an Asimov story? The I, Robot episode was an adaptation of the 1939 story by Eando Binder. More details here.
That’s the one I was thinking of. I guess we’re left without any decent adaptations of Asimov’s work.
The problem may be that Asimov’s stories were about ideas and were usually dialog driven, while sci-fi movies tend to be action-adventure stories with more in common with westerns than literary sci-fi.
I agree it doesn’t look good. The whole point of Asimov’s stories was that people were irrational to fear robots. If the movie ends up basicly saying “yes, we SHOULD be afraid of robots”, it’ll make Starship Troopers look like a masterpiece of ironic genius.
So what could the “twist” at the end be? The only thing that comes to mind would be the robots somehow deciding that they should frame themselves, and trick humanity into destroying them, because in the long run humans would be better off without them?