Blog #18 I, Robot Book and Movie Comparison

I don’t want to review big blockbuster movies (because many people have already seen them). However, I want to discuss I, Robot, because it discouraged me. The movie wasn’t what I remembered of the original stories.

The film plot deals with a detective who investigates the death of the foremost designer of robots, Dr. Alfred Lanning, in the future, circa 2035. The detective has an innate distrust of robots and zeros in on one robot as the murderer. The other characters don’t feel this is possible except as a defective product that must be destroyed. How could any robot circumvent the 3 Laws? Of course, the robot in question, Sonny, is the one who killed Lanning, and that becomes quite clear. At this point, the detective must save the world.

This movie’s average approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes was 56%. Roger Ebert said the plot was simple-minded and disappointing, and the action was routine. What happened to make it so flat? You can blame it on the no-plot, all-action complaint of big scifi movies. This film certainly falls into that category.

The original movie script, Hardwired, was by Jeff Vintar. It wasn’t meant to be based on or just inspired by the original I, Robot short stories of Isaac Asimov. As often happens in Hollywood, the script went in and out of production and was handled by different studios.

Years later, the script, still close to the original Hardwired, was used, but Fox Studios wanted the title to be I, Robot (to capture an audience?), much to the dismay of Mr. Vintar as his script was not taken from those stories. Even Isaac Asimov didn’t want his stories to be titled I, Robot as anothor had that title.

Isaac Asimov’s ideas from the short stories have been used in many places. Some make fun of it, like Cory Doctorow’s I, Robot, or the positronic brain in Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a song by The Alan Parsons Project called I Robot 1977. In the movie The Bicentennial Man 1999, the plot is taken directly from a book Isacc wrote with Robert Silverberg in 1992, which expanded from the original short stories. The movie was considered a box office bomb, but I found it excellent. I don’t always go along with widespread belief. In this case, it was because it followed much of the original material. It could be considered too gushy.

Both The Bicentennial Man and I, Robot, deal with a robot whose design is ahead of its time. Both robots are trying to understand what they are. This idea aligns with what Mr. Asimov wrote and is even closer to the original story by Eando Binder that inspired Isaac’s writings.

Eando Binder wrote a short story called I, Robot, which Amazing Stories published in January 1939. Eando is a combination of the names of two brothers, Otto and Earl Binder. The story concerns a robot named Adam Link, indistinguishable from humans in behavior but not appearance, which draws a hostile human reaction.

The robot’s designer in Binder’s story dies before Adam has developed his worldview, leaving him to look for a new master—not realizing he will be blamed for the master’s murder. In the robot’s journeys, he helps a young girl from drowning but hurts her hand as he pulls her out of the water, which, again, Adam is blamed for. The overall impression I got is that the story is a retelling of Frankenstein, only the robot doesn’t kill anyone.

The movie I, Robot is very close to the original Binder I Robot narrative, in which a robot, Adam Link, has abilities (like choosing not to obey the 3 Laws) and human compassion. Adam wonders what he is and goes out looking for answers. It also is like the original Asimov stories of a series of detective mysteries where the roboticist (an 80-year-old woman, Susan Calvin) tells a journalist about her investigations where robots appeared to have violated the 3 Laws. I found the discoveries intriguing. The robots did obey the 3 Laws. In various circumstances, the robots got into trouble trying to follow the 3 Laws, a logic loop. Dr. Calvin, in Isaac’s stories, always figures it out. She knows the robots wouldn’t violate the 3 Laws and determines how it could appear that they did violate them. In the film, Susan Calvin is clueless about Sonny until the detective pulls her into the mystery. She is pretty passive, especially in the beginning.

The movie spent too much time on the action. The detective assumed the robot was a flawed product. He thought Sonny was an expanded flaw of the original robots (the older models in the movie). An original robot had made the logical calculation to save the detective, not a child, as they sunk in their cars after going off a bridge. This was wrong in the detective’s view. He believed Sonny, the superior robot in the film, made an error in logical reasoning and killed Lanning due to that ‘flaw .’In actuality, the movie had the supervisor of all the robots, V.I.K.I., a computer herself, deciding that by following the laws, there was justification to rule over the humans and get them in a better place. If humans died during this adjustment, that was unavoidable. V. I. K. I. was following along the path that the detective thought robots would go and was surprised that Sonny did not think that way and had more similarities to a human.

Part of the reason for this plot direction is the need for a villain. In a murder mystery, there are suspects. First, Sonny, then Robertson (the top man in U.S. Robotics), and then V.I.K.I. This final villain is not the murderer of Lanning but is part of the scheme to take over human lives. The original stories dealt with the mystery of the robot’s behavior and how it can fit into the 3 Laws. Maybe that lacks enough action for a movie?

Sonny did kill because his ‘father,’ Lanning, begged him to. Lanning needed a way to get the detective interested in investigating because he hated robots, and this was a breadcrumb that would lead to the answers and V. I.K. I.. Throwing Lanning out of the office window caused Sonny great pain, but the detective had a hard time seeing the truth of that. I think it is pretty close to the versions of I, Robot, and with additional plot development, it could be a satisfying story.

Film

I, Robot 2004

Where to Stream the movie

Apple TV from $3.99

YouTube from $3.99

Vudu from $3.99

Google Play Movies from $3.99

Microsoft Store from $3.99

Books

Isaac Asimov’s stories Originally in Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction magizines between 1940 and 1950

Titles of Isaac Asimov’s in robot series books
I, Robot 1950
The Caves of Steel 1953

The Naked Sun 1958