I am happy and sad. Arrival and Sicario are precisely the kind of complex, thoughtful directing that SF needs after years of Marvel movies.
On the other hand, why reboot Dune yet again? Nobody has given Asimov's Foundation a try!
On the other hand, why reboot Dune yet again? Nobody has given Asimov's Foundation a try!
In reality I have little confidence in either Hollywood to pull that off, nor the stories to carry movies. Personally I think both Bicentennial Man and I, Robot were both quite accurate, loving adaptations of his work (almost everyone seems to miss that I, Robot was a pitch-perfect Zeroth Law story and fits in quite well to at least the tone, if not the literal timeline), and what they showed is, yeah, don't try to adapt Asimov to the screen. There is an immense wealth of other great science fiction from that era that would do better in adaptation.
It's also an awful, awful movie. (also see: the obnoxious product placement, with Will Smith selling you sneakers at a random point in the movie).
Again, as everyone seems to miss, it is a pitch-perfect Zeroth Law story, and to my mind fits in squarely into his Robot stories about the perils and limitations of the entire idea of the Three Laws. It is definitely an alternate timeline from the other ones, but that's not hard to believe. I find myself wondering if everybody read the same Asimov as I did. Or have only I read the later Asimov stories? If it was so accurate by accident, then they did a good job being so accidentally accurate.
Yes, Susan Calvin is wrong, but by adaptation standards that's nothing, and Asimov's characterizations were always paper-thin anyhow. I guess I find it less horrifying that Susan Calvin is wrong than some fans because "old, ugly, cerebral, and misanthropic" is pretty much her entire character. It's not like she's some fully-fleshed out character masterpiece with a multi-story arc, reasons for her characteristics, relationships with other characters in the universe, stories of her own, foibles and weaknesses to match her quirks and strengths... she just... likes robots, hates people. Asimov doesn't do characters.
I really feel like for both movies I mentioned, that's it. That's what an Asimov adaptation is going to look like. Those are the best you can possibly hope for. To the extent you still don't like them, a perfectly viable opinion as I do not deny my tastes can be a bit quirky even by HN standards (I like both the Tron movies and Star Trek: The Motion Picture too), then I would therefore not suggest agitating for Hollywood to dip into Asimov's works any more, because it's not going to get any better than that.
I must have read everything by Asimov and it doesn't match the tone of any of his stories, and also it's a terrible movie with generic action and obnoxious product placement. It's really an indefensible piece of trash.
So in your view they replaced an allegedly paper-thin (but pretty unique by SF standards) characterization of Susan Calvin as "old, ugly, cerebral, misanthropic" with the far thinner and less unique "young, pretty and in distress" and that's somehow a good thing? It would have been acceptable if they adapted the character into young, perky and interesting, but they did "damsel in distress" instead. The anti-Susan Calvin.
That's not an accurate characterization of what I said, which you can see if you read what I actually wrote instead of what you expected me to write. If you wish to carry on debating with the things you expect me to say rather than what I'm actually saying, I don't see how you need me to help you with that.
I guess I disagree this is unimportant. Susan Calvin was a pretty cool and unique character when I read the stories. A woman of cold logic who out-thinks men instead of being a piece of decoration? Cool! Instead, they butchered her in the movie, along with inserting Will Smith's character which doesn't match with anything in Asimov's robot stories -- not even with characters such as Mike Donovan and Greg Powell -- and is completely out of tone with everything Asimov wrote.
Also, buy my vintage all-star converse sneakers, and drive my powerful futuristic Audi. Yuck!
100% agree. It also mostly follows the Three Laws, with one egregious failure (but it was a set up so he could snipe the robots using uzis after jumping the motorcycle so.....?)
It actually makes a good example of the sort dangers of AI that people like Eliezer Yudkowsky like to point out.
I would agree with you that by adaptation standards, it's in-tone with the bulk of the Asimov robot novels, although there are some definite parts where the Hollywood breaks out of the basement.
Yes... I'm not saying it was a great movie or anything. I'm just saying A: it was a Zeroth-Law story and B: It is probably about all we can hope for from an Asimov adaptation from Hollywood.
The inference you can draw from the combination of "it was not a great movie" and "it is about all we can hope for from an Asimov adaptation" is fully intentional.
I, Robot is not an Asimov adaptation. It's, being somewhat generous, something that has some thematic fit with some of his works, and assumes a couple character an organization names from some other of his works.
It also suffers from trying to layer that and its original mystery-story origins with a big-budget star-driven action movie, losing focus badly.
Bicentennial Man is closer to some of his stories though I feel like it got a bit of the sappy Hollywood treatment in some places. The sort of mashup between AI robots and the Ship of Theseus paradox is definitely closer to his writing.
They are old stories, warrior epics, with modern fantasy furnishings.