Movies

Topic(s): me
2004-07-19 00:58:58 PDT

I, Robot came out on Friday. You may know it as the new movie that stars Will Smith. It's also the first quality science fiction movie to come out in the last four years (sorry, Star Wars I and Star Wars II didn't cut it). I think the last quality sci-fi in the theatres was Stanley Kubrick's and Steven Spielberg's A.I. back in 2001.

Knowing the bay area is geek land, I knew I, Robot would sell out all the showings on Friday. As such, I arrived at the theatre thirty minutes early for the 9:15pm showing. That is, I arrived to find a completely full parking lot. For those of you in the bay area, this is AMC Mercado's parking lot I'm talking about. It was completely full - the front, the sides, and the back. I circled for twenty minutes without finding a parking space.

I left the theatre and found a parking space at a nearby hotel, where I was able to meet up with the remainder of my party. We agreed the 9:15pm was a lost cause. The next showing was 9:55pm. We took one car back to the theatre, and were lucky to find a parking spot almost immediately. 9:20pm purchased tickets. 9:25pm we were inside the film room only to find the room nearly full. Thirty minutes early! There weren't two adjacent available seats in the whole room!

Suffice to say we did find seating.

As for the movie, it's definitely the best movie I've seen in many years. I would put it somewhere slightly above 12 Monkeys or Gattaca. Not quite a classic like Bladerunner however.

The plot is based around the three rules of robotic artifical intelligence:

1. No robot can ever harm a human,
2. No robot can allow, through inaction, the harming of a human, except when overruled by the first law, and,
3. A robot must preserve its own existence except when overruled by the first or second law.

The subplot is about artifical intelligence, and the complexities encountered when rebots develop human qualities like common sense, and fear.

I highly recommend that you see it! I'm definitely going to see it a second time.

I should add, I, Robot is set in Chicago year 2035. Having lived in Chicago, I found it interesting that Evanston has a sky line, and that What You See Here #202 is Lake Michigan. (Keep that in mind if you see the movie!)

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