I just went and saw this movie tonight. It had alot of hype, so i went into it expecting it to be a crappy action flick, but it actually wasnt half bad. Talk about the movie if you like, but what i was wondering was…
How does the movie “iRobot” differ from the asimov book with the same title? Is the movie just a straight port of the book?
I have not seen the movie yet, but it is vastly different from the book, which contained no action sequences, no armies of robots, and no fighting them, since with Asimov, robots can not harm a human at all. Only 2 exceptions existed, and they had the zeroth law, which drove one of em insane.
I still intend to see the movie, since i like action movies, but I am not going to be rereading my copy of I, Robot anytime soon, since I don’t want to go crazy when I see the movie.
Meh, it’s an ok movie. The action sequences are pretty boring :\
There’s an iPod joke in here somewhere.
I still wanna go see this fillm. I haven’t actually read I, Robot yet, so I have nothing to compare it to luckily.
There was also an old Outer Limits episode based on I Robot. They put the robot on trial and the entire episode was spent on defining what exactly it meant to be human.
Starring Leonard Nemoy?
They did the same thing on Star Trek Generation with Data.
The first one was with Leonard Nimoy asa reporter. They did a remake in the 90’s or something with Nimoy as an attorny
I read “I, Robot”. I didnt watch the movie though. Basically, the book consists of several chapters with seperate stories about humanoid robots if they were used in real life. One of the stories is about a babysitter robot called Robbie, the other one about some weirdo robot who thinks he’s a prophet and should help other robots take over the world and so on.
Well, the major difference is that the book is a collection of short stories, and the movie is not. As such, I imagine it would be rather difficult for it to be a “straight port”. Susan Calvin and Alfred Lanning are prominent characters in the stories, but since I’ve not yet seen the movie, I can’t really compare them. The short stories are presented as research for a report or essay or something that the narrator is told by Susan Calvin, and they progress from near future (in which robots such as “Robby” are rather large and incapable of speech) to the distant future (in which massive super-computer type robots help keep the four sectors of earth regulated in peaceful order). There’s even a story about one robot that creates an Islam-like religion. It’s a fun book.
Well, I don’t have to see the movie to know its not going to be very faithful the plots of the books.
BTW, from what I see from the previews the movie is actually based on the Asimov book ‘Caves of Steel’ and possibly the sequels to that book, and not on the collection of short stories called ‘I Robot’. I guess they just thought the one title sounded cooler.
I read ‘I, Robot’ as well. My two favorite stories were the one where the robot worships the spaceship engine as a god, and the one at the end where the supercomputers take over the world but fool humans from thinking that they’ve taken over the world. See, robots have to prevent human beings from experiencing harm. So, considering themselves to be more competent, they think that the best way to save humans from harm is to rule humans. However, if humans knew they were being ruled by machines, it would be emotionally harmful. So the computers try to do it secretly. At least, that’s how I remember the story.