[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]I, Robot, the movie, will be out July 31 in Taiwan. I have a very bad feeling about this after having just read
I, Robot
[quote=“Wookiee”]Though I am definitely not a fan of the guy, Will Smith for all his lack of acting talents is perfect for that part. He represents "the other"in American culture–existing to play a part, but not to be heard from or seen. He and the rest of the robots are “humaniform” in everyway, but forbidden from touching the humanoids, the “white fruit.” And though he is an expert in the field of investigation, he’s treated as a second-class citizen. He exists to play the role that the powers that be set out for him and has to circumvent their rules in order to suceed/survive.
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Ooo-kay - but isn’t Will playing the ‘Elijah Bailey’ role? I read a summary somewhere describing him as the ‘robotophobic’ detective in charge of the case, although his name is Spooner. That strongly suggests Elijah to me, who of course is 100% human. My bet is that ‘Daneel’, if he appears in this or future movies, will be white.
To Daasgrrl,
You’re right! 
From the trailer, it looks like they stole the robot army from Star Wars.
The Will Smith sidekick (if that is what it is) will be an actor that “acts” with Smith but will be CGIed out in every scene to look like a robot (and their will be no humaniform robots, I imagine. They are indistiguishable from humans by earth people, although Spaceers can tell the difference.)
Interesting to have a credit, but never actually appear in person, if you know what I mean.
What are the “tuts” for?
Great recommendation: a lousy actor is the perfect person for the part… 
As far as the analogy of robots to Blacks…you don’t get it. Read the books. It has nothing to do with that at all.
What are the “tuts” for?
Great recommendation: a lousy actor is the perfect person for the part…
As far as the analogy of robots to Blacks…you don’t get it. Read the books. It has nothing to do with that at all.[/quote]
Actually I had mistakenly thought that Smith would be playing the role of Daneel, the robot, not Elijah Baley, 
hence the comment about his acting skills fitting the part.
For the “tut, tut.” I do apologize. I do not know you and therefore had no right to speak about your reading habits. Was very inappropriate.
As for the analogy. Hmmmmm!
It’s quite interesting that in the genre very few attempts are made with the exception of the “Mars” series–Red, Green and Blue Mars–at “writing in” a representative diaspora of the humanoid population of the earth.
I really love science fiction. But if the future is going to be anything similar to what is portrayed in the genre–especially by Asimov–it will be one of White/Caucasian descendants of the Earth (to a large extent) battling each other, or battling aliens whose descriptions generally match popular stereotypes of the “others” in our society. We can actually see the same thing, also in a general sense, in Hollywood movies.
So, in I Robot, we have two classes of people–the spacers that live on Aurora and the other humans who live on earth–underground. We also have humaniform robots–virtually indistinguishable from humans–and other robots who are easily recognized as robots, per se, and to who(m) specific tasks are assigned. These robots, though they posess names, are referred to as “boy” and are obviously second-class robotic “beings.”
My comments, therefore were aimed at stimulating some form of dialogue vis-a-vis the projection of our world with its ideological, biological prejudices on the future. Will we have gotten rid of our biological determinism by the time we are technologically advanced enough to inhabit other planets? Or, will we continue to project our differences to the extent where we even create aritificial beings in our own prejudiced images?
Wookiee:
I don’t care if you blast my choices of books – remember who I am – but if you want to know, I had not read any of the robot books by Asimov and when, at the end of a DVD I rented I saw a tease for I, Robot, I decided to pick them up here and have a look at what they were about.
As a kid I used to read about 45 sci-fi books a year (I kept a list), but Asimov was not featured.
Spacers live on 50 different worlds, except later when Solaria is left to the robots. Aurora is just the oldest, being the first colonized.
Up until the last novel, Robots and Empire, there were only two humaniform robots in existence, and one of them was “murdered.” Subsequently, humaniform robots were produced on Aurora but were deemed “failures.” A humaniform robot (at least one) turns up on Solaria (abandoned apparently by humans)
Hence a class struggle, but we can go on and on about that until time runs out.
I haven’t read Robots and Empire, so I’m not familiar with the final chapter in the saga. In The Robots of Dawn, however, the term “boy” is still used by Baley who begins to see Daneel as not just “functioning,” but alive in the way a “squirrel or a leaf, is alive.”
All of that being said, I still find it remarkable that the lenses through which people are viewed/were viewed back at the time Asimov was writing these novels continues to be perpetuated, though in different forms. And it is not just a trait particular to Sci-Fi novels, either. In the world–literary, and of course, not–of Dickens and Conrad, for example, we see dichotomies based on not only race–a quite acceptable difference in their day–but more importantly on breeding (bloodlines) and class. So, for example, Oliver Twist, though raised in an orphanage and without education was portrayed as “better” than the other street urchins who came from similar circumstances because of who his parents were–a daughter of a naval officer and a well of gentleman.
I know I’m babbling on, but bear with me…
We see that dichotomy in Asimov’s stories as well–spacers and settlers–though we were not explicitly told which one is the better race/class of people.
Which brings me to my point. 
I am going to enjoy the movie immensely, I hope. But at the same time I’m going to be aware of the other elements–explicit or not–that seek to advance certain notions of the type I already discussed. And quite possible we will each emerge from the movie with radically different opinions of what the movie is about, but we can always talk about it, if you wish.
I think you seem to be confused. You seem to believe that this movie actually has some sort of connection to the book of the same name. I think it’s been pretty roundly acknowledged that the movie has little to nothing in common besides robots and the name.
Wookiee:
No. Niet.
You are making a critical error in assessment here. Spacers, Settlers and the oppressed classes – Blacks? – (to whom you have referred to before i gathered) are all humans.
None of the robots are. They are machines with positronic brains. There is no “class struggle” here in the same way that there is no class struggle between humans and blenders (or supercomputers, if you like).
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”] No. Niet.
You are making a critical error in assessment here. Spacers, Settlers and the oppressed classes – Blacks? – (to whom you have referred to before i gathered) are all humans.
None of the robots are. They are machines with positronic brains. There is no “class struggle” here in the same way that there is no class struggle between humans and blenders (or supercomputers, if you like).[/quote]
As is usually the case in discussions such as these, I find that, “the one whom has never lived ‘it,’ denies ‘its’ existence.” Kind of like, in the country of the sighted the blind man “sees” all that’s unseen by those who have the “power” of vision.
Geez! the phrase “oppressed classes” your coinage, does not even skim the surface of what I’m talking about. My argument/opinions goes much deeper than mere “oppression of Blacks.” The black/white dichotomy exists only in America and a few European nations. Please! The world is much more complex than that.
At the same time you may be surprised to discover that the intricacies of race, class, gender and age were a part of Asimov’s thinking–as evidenced in a speech he gave entitled The Future of Humanity in 1974–see the link below.
asimovonline.com/oldsite/fut … anity.html
Here are a few excerpts from the above link:
…But when it comes to human beings, when we’re going to change ourselves, we have to ask what pleases us!..
…Supposing you could arrange everybody so that they all have certain characteristics. What would you want them to have?..
…And one more thing: If we have a world without racism, ageism, sexism, war…it’s gonna be a pretty dull world. Here we have lived all through history with a certain amount of excitement and risk in the world, and it’s sort of a shame to sort of sit around this careful cold world of the 21st century and thereafter, in which not only is everybody happy, but everyone’s very cautious… Because, you know, we live by slogans. Immediately after World War II, our entire foreign policy was based on the slogan “No more Munich’s”. Until we got into the Vietnam war by shouting that, and now it’s “No more Vietnams”. And well, in the 21st century, I’ll tell you the slogan right now. Those of you who will live into the 21st century, come put a wreath on my grave, because this will be the slogan: “No more 20th centuries”…
Therefore I think my question was a valid one–
I think Asimov–in his final quote above–is arguing for the latter.
Then again, Tetsuo could be right. The book may not equal the movie, or vice-versa.
OK, I promise not to swear at my computer when it freezes or kick the tire of my Vespa when it doesn’t pass the pollution inspection…
Next time I want to hire a new translator, I will give equal opportunity to an electric can opener, or babelfish.com.
Men, women and potato-peelers that do the same work will from now on get the same pay.
You are talking about people! A robot is a machine!
Why is this so difficult for you?
You cannot oppress a machine.
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]You are talking about people! A robot is a machine!
Why is this so difficult for you?
You cannot oppress a machine.[/quote]
No Sir, I think you were talking about machines while I was trying to steer the discussion into the genre as a whole, its influences, its strengths and of course, its shortcomings.
Hence, since we are talking away from each other, perhaps we could agree to disagree???
Along this same tangent, look into seeing “The Second Renaissance Part I, and Part II” if you have any curiousity on how this might be so. It is the genesis of the Matrix movies and describes exactly this and how it sparks a conflict between man and machine that would of course last for a long, long time.
I tried to link some film clips but they didn’t work…strange…they show many robots trying to kill Will Smith. That can’t be right under any circumstances according to the laws of robotics.
I’d rather go and see the movie and make up my own mind. I like Sci Fi and an old movie you should all see is Silent Running…
SAY IT AIN’T SO!
"I, Robot factory made
All the Gears are Visible in This Predictable Movie Machine
The truth is that Asimov, a Mensa member who died 12 years ago, probably would have been “appalled by” this cartoonish creation, which was a decade in development yet invokes only the most simplified elements of Asimov’s written universe."
See the linnk below
[quote]In defense of Proyas, the I, Robot director is not the first to misinterpret Asimov, nor by far the worst. Some Asimov fans would likely select the director Chris Columbus for his mawkish Bicentennial Man, based on an Asimov novella, but they are aiming their sights too low. The prize goes to Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth, which became famous after it killed 12 people in a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. “Aum was using the Foundation series as the blueprint for the cult’s long-term plans,” write David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall in The Cult at the End of the World. In Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, a scientist named Hari Seldon leads a small band, called the Foundation, that tries to rebuild civilization after the collapse of a galactic empire. In the cult’s view, their leader was Seldon, and Aum was the Foundation.
Granted, it’s not unusual for sociopaths to glom onto works of fiction and use them to defend their aims. But Asimov may be the rare writer who has been adopted by two WMD-seeking terrorist leaders. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, some began speculating that al-Qaida, too, was inspired by Asimov. Why? Foundation, when it was published in Arabic in 1952, was translated as Al-Qaida. The evidence seems thin, but if it’s true, it’s as if Jodie Foster had inspired Hinckley and Oswald.
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What I want to know is did the two people who have already rated this film in the poll actually see it?
I gave it an A. It’s going to be awesome.