What would Asimov have thought?

Rating: 6/10 (16 February 2005)

It seems the latest trend in Hollywood is to slaughter the works of classic Science Fiction-authors. Not a trend i necessarily disapprove of as long as it's done with some respect for the subject matter, and with some quality. I can't help wondering though what Asimov would have thought of this...
Del Spooner (Will Smith) is the low-tech policeman investigating a suicide at the company which makes all the household robots in tomorrows society. The man who committed suicide was chief engineer at the company and it seems his death has something to do with the launch of a new generation of robots.
The basic philosophical discussion prominent in Asimovs novel is not entirely removed here. The discussion of what intelligence and "life" is can still be seen. But soon enough it more or less evaporates and this becomes a modern action movie. The special effects do, not surprisingly, look amazing and the action scenes are very well made. I felt Will Smith was a bit miscast here. He doesn't handle the jaded cop routine very well, most of the time it just looks like he's flirting instead of being world-weary. But i guess this is a minor complaint.
So, what is this? Well this is a slaughtered Asimov-novel turned into a pompous action movie. Is it bad? Not at all. Rather i enjoyed this movie quite a lot. And i think it proves that it's not necessary to follow the original work perfectly as long as you make something good with the idea. An example of a slaughtered novel that went wrong is "Paycheck" which was simply terrible because they deviated from the original story without having any good ideas of their own.
So watch this expecting not philosophy or Asimov-like discussions, rather a well made and entertaining action movie. I rate it 6/10.