Tonight, I watched I, Robot. I had been avoiding seeing it because I feared it would be bad, but a coworker convinced me to rent it after she compared it favorably to Gattaca, one of her (and my) favorite sci-fi movies.
It wasn’t bad although it wasn’t as bleak in its setting or conclusion as I like my sci-fi. Favorites of that ilk, in addition to Gattaca, include Minority Report, Blade Runner, Brazil and Dark City, which, like I, Robot, was directed by music video director-turned-film director Alex Proyas.
The movie takes place in a futuristic Chicago that seems perpetually aluminum shiny and lit by 1,000 suns. Even the bright new robots in the film look as if they were designed by Apple during its Curved Milky White Plastic and Softly Pulsing Light phase, or merely ripped off from Björk and Chris Cunningham’s video for “All Is Full Of Love.” The amount of detail put into rendering Sonny, the film’s lead robot, is impressive, keeping his movements and facial expressions fluid. (Reportedly, the filmmakers used the same sort of live actor-to-computer generated character-conversion that was used to create the equally effective Gollum for The Lord Of The Rings films.)
I see why the Gattaca comparisons were made, in that, like the Asimov stories that inspired I, Robot, there’s some bandying about of what defines life, the degree to which robots can become self-aware and cease following the biddings of their creators, etc. But when you boil it down, the film’s more a Will Smith action-adventure vehicle than it is a moralistic sci-fi potboiler, which could be good or bad, depending on what you were expecting of the film and how big of a Willie fan you are. It certainly allows for some of his patented self-deprecating humor and “now you’ve done made me mad” style ass-whuppings and action sequences brimming with impressively smooth computer FX.