Will Smith's I, Robot... looking back, was it great or what?

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Monday, April 7, 2025 14:47
VIEWED: 9063
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CHRISISALL

Monday, June 8, 2009 6:51 PM

I believe the themes explored in I, Robot are much more extensive than you seem to indicate.

The laughing Chrisisall

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 6:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Malachite:
I thought the Matrix was awesome and I Robot was quite good.

I'm interested in your point about why the robots harvested humans when they could have picked something more efficient. How do Matrix buffs answer the question? I'm wondering if it has to do with the fact that humans created the robots to be slaves, so, now that the robots are in power, they "feel" that enslaving the humans in return is proper justice. It allows them to always be able to remind themselves of their mastery over that which dominated them. I also wonder if the robots consider humans their "father" in some ways, and can't bring themselves to totally annihilate their creators.

You might consider humans to be a non-efficient source of energy, but the huge population provides such a huge resource. Why do we feed rabbits, if they are not an efficient source of energy? becuase they are fairly effortless, just feed them and you have more suddenly, then you can eat them. They consume resources which are already abundant, which result from solar energy, and are low maintenance.
All the machines had to do was harness this energy, they don't care if the humans expire, they seem to keep reproducing. And the machines are not able to harness the solar power fully, so confiscating energy from living beings which do convert solar power in various forms to energy is beneficial.
Plus, keeping humans may be sort of a backup plan - humans created the machines, and if a problem comes up, maybe some humans will be abel to find a solution.
The Matrix may seem like a big deal to the human batteries, but it's not so much for the machines - they likely hardly notice.

SIGNO060

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 7:01 AM

They are the same themes explored in the Matrix movies. Namely the animatrix the second resistance. But they are also explored in all Matrix movies, on top of many other themes and philosophical debates which are also woven into the Matrix movies. Also, you might want to check out Ghost in a Shell. It influenced the Matrix movies alot. I,Robot seems to take alot of cues from that movie as well. In the end the Matrix is a truly innovative piece of work. While I,Robot is an entertaining adaptation of the book, its themes seem to have been scaled back and only explored to a certain extent, to allow for a Will Smith charged summer blockbuster.

SIGNO060

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 7:20 AM

Well it's not only humans that are the source of energy. The harvested energy from humans is then combined with a form of fusion, to give the machines all the power they need. Also, the sun has been blocked out and all life on the planet has died, except humans. Also the machines take over a couple centuries in the future natural resources would be alot lower. Then a war rages for at least 100 years. So we are talking a good 400 years in the future on an earth with the enviroment of a nuclear winter. Also, in a good Wachowski fashion nothing is what it seems. Are the humans enslaved? Humans in the Matrix live way more comfort filled enjoyable lives. Where as humans in the real world live in a miserable existance eating syntheized protein mush. They live in a underground city with no sunlight. So to a certain extent humans were enslaved in the sense that they were not given the choice of living in the real world or the Matrix. However, given the choice how many people would choose the Matrix over the real world? That's up in the air. And Humans may have created AI in the world of the Matrix movies, but the machines of the Machine city the ones that run the Matrix are much more advanced then the ones created by humans.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 7:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by signo060:
Well it's not only humans that are the source of energy. The harvested energy from humans is then combined with a form of fusion, to give the machines all the power they need. Also, the sun has been blocked out and all life on the planet has died, except humans. Also the machines take over a couple centuries in the future natural resources would be alot lower. Then a war rages for at least 100 years. So we are talking a good 400 years in the future on an earth with the enviroment of a nuclear winter. Also, in a good Wachowski fashion nothing is what it seems. Are the humans enslaved? Humans in the Matrix live way more comfort filled enjoyable lives. Where as humans in the real world live in a miserable existance eating syntheized protein mush. They live in a underground city with no sunlight. So to a certain extent humans were enslaved in the sense that they were not given the choice of living in the real world or the Matrix. However, given the choice how many people would choose the Matrix over the real world? That's up in the air. And Humans may have created AI in the world of the Matrix movies, but the machines of the Machine city the ones that run the Matrix are much more advanced then the ones created by humans.

Light energy is not the only solar power produced or provided by the Sun.

SIGNO060

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 5:14 PM

Yes well its a SCIENCE FICTION movie, not a science movie. The human body heat + fusion combo is not around today so we can never know how much energy it produces, which is why its a good story device for a SCIENCE FICTION movie.

IMNOTHERE

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 7:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I believe the themes explored in I, Robot are much more extensive than you seem to indicate.

Of course, they are easier to spot if you've read the books - and not just "I, Robot" but the other robot collections and the Elija Bailey books (...up until the point when Asimov decided to retcon all his novels into the same universe).

IMNOTHERE

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 8:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by signo060:
Yes well its a SCIENCE FICTION movie, not a science movie.

Yes, but good Science Fiction doesn't needlessly flout known science.

Quote:

The human body heat + fusion combo is not around today so we can never know how much energy it produces

ANS: less energy than the "new type of fusion" plus whatever you'd get from burning the food instead of feeding it to humans.

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 8:16 PM

The science in "I, Robot" was much better grounded in reality than in "The Matrix."

The laughing Chrisisall

IMNOTHERE

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 9:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
The science in "I, Robot" was much better grounded in reality than in "The Matrix."

Yes, because if you could make enough positrons and stop them annihilating any electrons they encountered then "positronic brains" would be so almost as good as electronic brains...

Of course, picking holes in the technobabble is part of the entertainment value.

The problem with the Matrix as SciFi (as opposed to seriously cool eyecandy) is that the entire premise hinges on the machines needing to keep the human race alive, conscious and just sufficiently unhappy not to go mad.

In neither case is the "moral of the story" about science, really: "I, Robot" is about how easily simplistic morality can be turned around to justify evil (quite topical in our insanely risk-averse modern society) while "The Matrix" is about, er, something really deep and meaningless about "choice" (sorry, I was busy enjoying the coolness).

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