I, Robot

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 7.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 8.0 / 10 4.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

There are no sexual scenes but we get two completely useless and gratuitous shower scenes. More cussing than is necessary and non-helpful to the story. There is a "christian" woman portrayed as fairly respectable although naive (of course).

Story

The story is based on a novel by Isaac Asimov that I have not read so I have no idea how well it transferred. The movie comes across as a fairly typical Hollywood-style cop show (cop on the edge who bucks authority, car chases, etc.). This typical plot is tweaked by the fact that a robot is the murder suspect rather than a human. The cop is tormented by memories of a father who lost his job to robots and of a robot rescue that he thinks went awry. Thus, he hates robots and suspects them all - especially when their creator is (he suspects) murdered. It's a decent story and . . .

[SPOILER WARNING]

. . . I appreciated the fact that for once the "typical capitalist" ends up NOT being the ultimate villain.

Suppositions

Suspension of disbelief is an interesting question in this movie. How much of this movie is unbelievable??? Given certain assumptions, perhaps not much! We have robots that are as common as television sets which only a few years ago might have seemed ridiculous. But considering the rate of technological advancement it is not out of the question at all. The assumption of the possibility of AI is troubling, however, as it promotes a materialist view of nature and an emergent mind/brain relationship - both of which are false views of nature and humanity.

Significance

There is an overt sense of "this is what will happen if we rely too much on technology" that I always like. The technological utopia that so many today think is just around the corner is shown once again to be a farce. Moreover questions of morality are explored without recourse to lame-o relativism (even in Hollywood murder is still mostly wrong!). There is a quasi-prejudice discussion going on as well although it relies on robot rights for its premises. This was dealt with in the supposition section so I won't fault it here - it is a good discussion of the morality of technology regardless of its actual possibility in this particular case. There is an unfortunate use of "heart over head" that is presented as the difference between humans and robots that makes emotion the deciding factor in personhood. This is highly problematic both with respect to nature and to the relation of reason and passion.