I, Robot

[The Mad Monk]

Oh look! Spoilers don't work for quotes!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well you can nest spoiler tags, I'm sure.

[Asher]

I've heard the movie was only very loosely based on the book, which is good, seeing as the book sucked ass and the movie was entertaining for a summer action movie.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Bah! The book is a masterpiece of sci-fi! Out heathen!

[Asher]

It's not very hard to be a masterpiece in sci-fi.

[Arrian]

BURN HIM!

I will probably catch I, Robot on HBO sometime next year, but I'd have to be pretty bored. It looks awful.

Changing things when adapting a book to a movie is one thing. Making a movie that bears no resemblence whatsoever to the book is another. What's even WORSE is that the "Robot as menace" theme is one that Asimov specifically despised.

-Arrian

[Asher]

If the movie has no resemblence whatsoever to the book, why don't you look at it as a different story, then, and quit whining?

[Imran Siddiqui]

BURN HIM!

BURN HIM!

Changing things when adapting a book to a movie is one thing. Making a movie that bears no resemblence whatsoever to the book is another. What's even WORSE is that the "Robot as menace" theme is one that Asimov specifically despised.

Indeed! It's just going to piss the fans off, not bring them in. I wonder why Hollywood doesn't realize this. With the internet, all the Asimov fans know what kind of movie it'll be. HELL, with the trailers, they turned fans of the books off (like you said "Robot as Menace". My only hope is that they don't **** up the "Foundation" movie (if it every really gets made). That would be cause to go to Hollywood and kill of the sonofa***** who did it!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk

Spoiler:

If you're refering to that, you could say there are shades of it in the Foundation series.

Rather obvious, with daneel.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If the movie has no resemblence whatsoever to the book, why don't you look at it as a different story, then, and quit whining?

Because then we CAN'T have a movie which does resemble the book until the option on the title runs out! And because it is a disgrace .

[DinoDoc]

An I, Robot movie faithful to the book would have been rather boring for the most part. Only a few of the chapters would have been interesting on screen. Evidence being cheap among them but that is hardly enough to sustain a picture.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You could always expand a few of those stories to create a movie surrounding Susan Calvin or done a movie on 'Caves of Steel' or something instead.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Indeed! It's just going to piss the fans off, not bring them in. I wonder why Hollywood doesn't realize this. With the internet, all the Asimov fans know what kind of movie it'll be.

Has it occured to you that maybe there are more people interested in fun sci-fi action movies than "faithful Asimov reproductions"?

[Arrian]

To be honest, I don't think the Robot stories or the Foundation stories are good material for movies. Especially the Foundation. Tough to follow characters over time in that one... centuries pass between important things happening.

I just don't think I, Robot should have been made into a movie at all. As Dino says, a movie faithful to the book would probably be quite boring. So they jazzed it up, changed the plot, and stuck Will Smith in it. *sigh*

Asher - because they called it I, Robot and because it so directly contradicts the author's take on things (robot as menace).

-Arrian

[Natalinasmpf]

What is the book generally about?

The movie, from the commercials surrounding its display on my TV channel, it sounds like yes, pointless killing of mass robots just for the big splash screen effect. Are these robots self-aware?

Because then, "defective" is subjective, and we only call them subjective because they have declared independence. Its like saying, "Jews are defective and dirty. Therefore, we shall ethnically cleanse them".

Or self-preservation as one's higher virtue above all else, is defective, it is doubleplusbad and therefore the thinkpol will take these robots to the minilov, to impose some doublethink and crimestop algorithms.

Yeah, I'm writing a piece to submit for Language Arts, where robots are self-aware, but to prevent them from proclaiming independence, Orwellian and neo-Pavlovian conditioning is imposed on them. Hardwired to serving humanity as the highest good and virtue (Eudaimonia, anyone?) yet be very effective in commanding battles and science. (To find the underlying reason, to adapt) and is very much self-conscious. The mechanisms are called "Antivirus software". Its obviously a euphemism for "thought police software", but the robots do not know that.

But you see, in a immature form of sentience, the dominant thought is the thought that is followed (forming emotions, flood repitition of thought, also giving rise to irrationality) and since the feedback loop will call for a different higher virtue at times, which will inevitably override the preconfigured mechanisms, namely by overwhelming all the antivirus and checking mechanisms all at once.

"No its not thought control, thats a antivirus mechanism to prevent viral and bad thought processes. The antivirus itself is pre-sentient, and can adapt to the mechanical organism it was designed to check, and to check itself, to adapt to check itself. It is called the Norton Antivirus Faction Edition 2257: Hunter-Seeker Algorithm"

I actually thought about this on my own (but inspired by Alpha Centauri) but my own writing isn't too similar in any way to any existing piece, I hope?

Yes, I also know I'm going very off topic.