I, Robot (UK)

Introduction
I grew up with Isaac Asimov. Not literally obviously, but Literal-ly. I stumbled across the first of his books at an early age, and I liked what I read. Luckily, he liked to write so there was plenty more where that came from. I think he wrote over 500 books.

I liked it so much I scoured the local librarys, which had a dearth of his work. I then started investing in a collection as pocket money would allow - a collection I still have to this day.

The robot stories are very good. For the most part they are short stories, and a vaguely chronological sequence of these were collected together into the book "I, Robot".

When I first heard of the film, I couldnt think how they had adapted the book, it might lend itself to a series of episodes, but not to a film. Anyway, this is the case. They took the title, the odd bit of storyline from some of the "I, robot" short stories, some of the characters, and some of the infrastructure.

The plot is all their own work for the most part.

The Plot
The chief scientist at US Robots has been killed, and a police officer (Will Smith) is called to try and track down the killer. A robot hating police officer at that.
Dr Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) (of USR) is assigned to help him with information (incidentally Dr. Susan Calvin features in many of the robot stories, as the first robo-psychologist, but she was never described as a babe!).



The Cast
Will Smith plays his roll well. I felt the character was slightly contrived, but only slightly.
Bridget Moynahan is also fine, but doesn`t match up at all to my image of Susan Calvin.

The Visuals/Audio
Visuals are good, and the Audio fine too. I think we used the DTS track and it came over fine.
Nothing too memorable though.

The Extras
A lot of extras on this two disk version. Almost too many in some cases.
I still haven`t watched all of them.
There is a making of on the first disk, which is more or less standard stuff.
There are also commentaries which I haven`t had the energy to listen to yet.

On the second disk there is a whole load of stuff, divided up into about 4 categories
[list]
[*] Extended and deleted scenes.
Just a few of these and an alternate ending. Sort of interesting.
[*] `Day Out Of Days - The I, Robot Production Diaries` featurette
This is a large collection of film taken on the set. Its all as it happens an without
commentary. I found this interesting at first, but by the time you`ve sat through the 5th or 6th
of these, the novelty begins to fade. There are some interesting bits here and there, but I found it
difficult to keep enthused.
[*] `Post-Production` featurette
[*] `Sentient Machines: Robotic Behaviour` featurette
This was one of the more interesting bits for me, where real robot makers and researchers
talk about whats happening in the real world. However I was slightly disappointed with it as
although they had lots of eminent people talking about stuff, I found on a couple of them they would
talk in glowing terms about a given robot, and there would be only a brief picture of it, leaving you
with a sense of anti-climax.
[*] `The Filmmakers` Toolbox & Visual Effects` featurette
Lots of before/after stuff about digital effects, green screen (whatever happened to blue
screen - did it get too expensive!) and so on. Again, maybe a bit too much of this, as
after you`ve seen 7 or 8 scenes disolve from raw footage into finished without commentary it begins
to pale.
[*] Three Laws Safe, four featurettes on the legacy of Isaac Asimov
This is interesting, as it goes in the Asimov history, the evolution of robots in
science fiction from Frakensteins monster, to the less scary.
Includes comments from Isaacs daughter and his publisher.
I`m not sure, but I think they reflect by views on the film. A good enough film, but not really much to do with the books.
[/list]

Summary
Its a pretty good film. Its not the film of the book, and they admit this upfront.
In some ways I don`t think it follows the Asimov heritage very well, their are echoes of his story, but some of the basic premises are distorted. It entertains though.

i am just typing this so that people know that this film rocks
i give it 10/10
beats lotr (mabye)0