A movie 13 years in the making!

Rating: 4/10 (10 February 2005)

A movie 13 years in the making because Asimov would never have approved of this piece of twaddle were he still alive.
I made the mistake of paying to rent this movie instead of reading the book again for free. The 2004 film "I, Robot" has as much to do with Asimov's work as my words do with Roger Ebert's. They should have shortened the title to "I, Rot".
From the website, http://www.asimovonline.com/:
"There was an earlier attempt at a movie version of I, Robot, but it never made it to the screen. In 1969 the rights were optioned to Hollywood, but no progress was made toward making a movie until 1977, when Harlan Ellison, an award-winning author and friend of Asimov, was hired to write a screenplay. Ellison worked on it for a year, and created a screenplay that Asimov thought would make a truly marvelous film. But Hollywood did not have the nerve to make a movie from that screenplay, and the project was shelved. Ellison regained control of his work, and it was published in 1987 as I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay."
I wonder why Ellison's screenplay was never made. Could it be that Ellison and Asimov were both atheists and that Asimov's book "I, Robot" contained strong criticisms of the folly of religion? No, that couldn't be the reason....
The piece of junk being fobbed off in Asimov's name most certainly does not represent his vision nor his personal views:
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." - Isaac Asimov
At least Carl Sagan (another well known atheist) was alive and had artistic control to prevent religious themes from being portrayed differently than he intended. Then again, it took Sagan the better part of a decade to have his film made.
If you feel the addition of religion to the film is unimportant, imagine making a film about the bible without mentioning "god". (For the record, I am not an atheist.)
Now, onto the merits of the film. Or should I say, the few merits.
The book was not an action thriller, it was a cerebral exercise in what makes us human, so the "action scenes" were unnecessary. The special effects were humdrum CGI that we've seen before, the plot holes the size of the hypothesized trucks in the film, and the identity of the real "villain" as transparent as glass.
If you don't mind standard Hollywood wallet-busting thrills and have two hours to kill, you might enjoy it. Personally, I'll go and once again rent "The Andromeda Strain", "The Day Of The Triffids", or better still, "Blade Runner". At least they were worth watching and said films had a point.