"These robots are the realization of a dream."

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2014)

When I was reading 'Magnus, Robot Fighter' comics back in the Sixties, I could never understand how robots might ever get to a place where they were more intelligent than humans. Or how, through some process of mechanical evolution they could wind up as creatures of free will. Well, that future is rapidly approaching, and with all it's inherent dangers, it looks like robots will be a part of every day life not too long from now. Will humanity be ready for a 'lesser of two evils' outcome in situations where robots are the principals? Let's say two 'intelligent' vehicles are about to collide in an unavoidable crash. You're riding in one and the other contains a family of five. With infinitesimal speed and calculation, the two robotic vehicles must decide an outcome with the least possible harm, similar to Del Spooner's accident scenario. Guess what, you're a goner.
I guess I'm a spooner too. Fuddy duddy might be another name for it. I'm all for advances in science that make life more productive and enjoyable, but concepts like cloning, selective reproduction and drones of all kinds lead to all sorts of ethical and moral questions that humanity will have to deal with, usually after the fact and after grave harm has already been done. "I, Robot" does a pretty good job of drawing out some of those considerations, and does it in a creative way. I haven't read enough Azimov to offer a critique from that perspective, but I found Spooner's dilemma of ferreting out a robot killer to be creatively done. As one would expect, the special effects are grand, and downright scary when you think about robots produced on the kind of scale needed to proportion one to every five humans. So overall I enjoyed the film while pausing the action every now and then to consider the thought provoking issues being presented.
However there was one element in the story that just didn't make sense to me, and it was mentioned specifically twice. The service areas of the U.S. Robotics building were not installed with surveillance equipment!?!? That just seemed like too much of a plot hole to me, because after all, one could do a lot of damage by infiltrating those areas to get close to VIKI, which Spooner and Dr. Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) eventually did. Seems to me an intelligence like VIKI should have figured that out. Then when VIKI was destroyed placing all the rogue robots off line, there was no explanation of what would happen to all the properly functioning NS-5's now that the uplink was gone. Maybe we weren't supposed to think about that.