I Robot - Not Asimov, But Not Bad At All

Rating: 9/10 (10 April 2011)

Fans of the late great Dr Asimov already know that beyond the construction of the three laws of robotics, there's not much of his hand present in "I Robot," the movie.
Asimov's greatest body of work, the Foundation series, and many of his most memorable stories, are ignored by Hollywood, and what we get is an altered "Fantastic Voyage," or this, "I Robot." Hollywood is uncomfortable with and afraid of, those projects which strive for a faithful rendering of revered intellectual works; they must picture in their mind some version of a nightmare where they've spent their money on the best movie about a chess game ever made, only to have it sell 900 tickets nationally.
As one who has read and enjoyed Asimov, I suspect he'd have found things to like about the film even while hating the use of his title on someone else's script, and he would have at least understood Hollywood's need to do what they did with it, while loathing what was done.
But I won't claim to channel his ghost or anything.
This movie has three levels of meaning for me, in the tradition of such films, and I enjoyed the film greatly.
On one level, it's a well executed example of a film where much of the story is a distillation of elements of many other similar SFX blockbusters. The evil master computer, the corporate red herrings, the 'loose cannon' lone cop, the brainy amoral technocrat who slowly understands the evil they've caused. We've seen it, but here it's done in a very enjoyable way, in my opinion. See it for this reason if nothing else.
On another level, I continue to feel that this movie's message, if you want to find one, is an intellectual reaction to the large-scale civil liberty question of the last decade, i.e. the passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress after the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks on the U.S. As a political independent and an enjoyer of civil liberties and freedom, I find the message is open and blatant when the NS5's "go red" and take over the urban areas so they can destroy the human-loving NS4's, and the Shia LeBouf character says, "this is my civilian liberty, when did YOU make the rules, robot?"
A third level becomes apparent to a political independent like me when you stack this movie along with a series of films over the last few decades of the 20th Century. That century gave us communist and progressive collectivism like the world had not known previously, and true alarm about a threat to individual liberty is evident in movies ranging from the Star Wars series to Lord of the Rings to the original Prisoner series of the 60's to The Matrix, and you could name others.
There's a lot of indication by the very existence of these films, and in their narrative power, that a story of intentional collectivism is known and discussed in Hollywood very frequently, and the horror of it has leaked into many scripts.
This film too sends a subtle s-o-s about collectivism in general as we see robots rolled out, union-style, to assert might over right to achieve their aims. Star Wars sent that message too in the rise of Palpatine and the clones, as well as the Harry Potter series in the story of the Death Eaters and Voldemort. Yet the creators of these two beloved series are loudly and overtly shilling for their nations' Democrat and Liberal political structures, where unionism and collectivism have incubated into the dangerous political force they are today.
From Star Wars, to Harry Potter, to even I Robot, these creators are brilliant to the point where the real truth is plain for all to see; they have created better than they know or will ever admit. I'm thankful for that.
I'm sorry to go political here, but nothing happens by accident especially in the movies. I'm independent and like being prodded to think.