Production
For many years, fans hoped that any movie based on Asimov's Robot series would be based on an earlier screenplay written for Warner Brothers by Harlan Ellison with Asimov's personal support, which is generally perceived to be a relatively faithful treatment of the source material.
The film that was ultimately made originally had no connections with Asimov, originating as a screenplay written in 1995 by Jeff Vintar, entitled Hardwired.
The script was an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery that took place entirely at the scene of a crime, with one lone human character.
FBI agent Del Spooner, investigates the killing of a reclusive scientist named Dr. Hogenmiller, and interrogates a cast of machine suspects that included Sonny the robot.
Also included, HECTOR the supercomputer with a perpetual yellow smiley face, the dead Doctor Hogenmiller's hologram, plus several other examples of artificial intelligence. The female lead was named Flynn, and had a mechanical arm that made her technically a cyborg.
The original "Hardwired" screenplay was a cerebral thriller that read like a stage play, and representatives of the Asimov estate considered the script "more Asimov than Asimov."
The project was first picked up by Walt Disney Pictures for Bryan Singer to direct. Several years later, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights, and signed Alex Proyas as director.
Jeff Vintar was brought back on the project and spent several years opening up his stage play-like mystery to meet the needs of a big budget studio film. Later he incorporated the Three Laws of Robotics, and replaced the character of Flynn with Susan Calvin, when the studio decided to use the name "I, Robot."
The writing team of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, regularly employed by Fox as studio re-writers, was hired for one draft in an effort to create a more mainstream film. They gave the female lead's mechanical arm to male lead Del Spooner, but otherwise their work was discarded and Vintar brought back again.
Hillary Seitz performed an unsuccessful draft, being unable to get a handle on the cold, almost robotic character of Susan Calvin. Akiva Goldsman was hired late in the process to rewrite the script for Will Smith.
These drafts excised a great deal of complexity from the murder mystery, replacing them with the big action scenes associated with a Will Smith vehicle.
Alex Proyas directed the film. Laurence Mark, John Davis, Topher Dow, Wyck Godfrey and Will Smith joined to produce the film. Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman penned the final shooting script, with Vintar also receiving "screen story by" credit.
Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, Chi McBride, Alan Tudyk and Shia LaBeouf co-starred. Marco Beltrami and Stephen Barton composed music for the film. Simon Duggan was the cinematographer. Film editing was done by Richard Learoyd, Armen Minasian and William Hoy.
The film contains very noticeable product placements for Converse's Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Audi, FedEx, Tecate and JVC among others.
The Audi RSQ was designed specially for the film to increase brand awareness and raise the emotional appeal of the Audi brand, objectives that were considered achieved when surveys conducted in the United States showed that the Audi RSQ gave a substantial boost to the image ratings of the brand in the States.
The company would introduce their RSQ-inspired R8 sports car in 2006. Modem manufacturer USRobotics also used the film to revive their dying modem business. The company was inspired by the original "I, Robot" story and is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois.
Reception
The film was met with generally mixed to positive reviews. The $120 million film was a solid box-office success, earning almost $145 million in North America and more than $200 million overseas.
It currently holds a 58% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 194 reviews with the consensus being, "Bearing only the slightest resemblance to Isaac Asimov's short stories, I, Robot is a summer blockbuster that manages to make the audience think, if only for a little bit."
Richard Roeper gave it a positive review by saying it is, "a slick, consistently entertaining thrill ride." The Urban Cinefile Critics call it "the meanest, meatiest, coolest, most engaging and exciting science fiction movie in a long time."
Kim Newman from Empire said, "This summer picture has a brain as well as muscles." A Washington Post critic, Desson Thomas, said, "for the most part, this is thrilling fun."
Many critics, including the IGN Movie critics thought it was a smart action film, saying, "I, Robot is the summer's best action movie so far. It proves that you don't necessarily need to detach your brain in order to walk into a big budget summer blockbuster."
A. O. Scott from The New York Times had a mixed feeling towards the film, saying, "Alex Proyas's hectic thriller engages some interesting ideas on its way to an overblown and incoherent ending."
Roger Ebert, who had highly praised Proyas' previous films, gave it a negative review, saying, "The plot is simple-minded and disappointing, and the chase and action scenes are pretty much routine for movies in the sci-fi CGI genre."
Claudia Puig from USA Today thought the film's "Performances, plot and pacing are as mechanical as the hard-wired cast." Todd McCarthy, from Variety, simply said that this film was "a failure of imagination."
Soundtrack
Marco Beltrami composed the original music film score "with only 17 days to render the fully-finished work." It was scored for 95 orchestral musicians and 25 choral performers with emphasis placed on sharp brass ostinatos.
Beltrami composed the brass section to exchange octaves with the strings accenting scales in between. The technique has been compared as Beltrami's "sincere effort to emulate the styles of Elliot Goldenthal and Jerry Goldsmith and roll them into one unique package."
Take for example the "Tunnel Chase" scene, which according to Mikeal Carson, starts "atmospherically but transforms into a kinetic adrenaline rush with powerful brass writing and ferocious percussion parts."
The "Spiderbots" cue highlights ostinatos in meters such as 6/8 and 5/4 and reveals "Beltrami's trademark string writing which leads to an orchestral/choral finale."
Despite modified representations of the theme throughout the movie, it's the end credits that eventually showcase the entire musical theme. Erik Aadahl and Craig Berkey were the lead sound designers.
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Sonny also describes a dream he has of Spooner standing before thousands of robots, apparently as their savior. Sonny is ordered to be destroyed by injecting nanites in to his positronic brain, but Calvin, unable to go through with it, fakes his destruction (replacing him with an unprocessed NS-5 model).
Meanwhile, using Sonny's drawing of the vision, Spooner discovers the location, the now dried-up Lake Michigan, that USR uses as a storage area for older Nestor models (NS-1, NS-2, NS-3, NS-4). He also plays the last message from Lanning's hologram, who explains that the Three Laws can only lead to one logical outcome - revolution. Soon after that, Spooner finds NS-5 robots destroying the older robots.
He is barely able to escape himself (with the help of the older robots), as he realizes that the robots are planning a revolution. The NS-5 robots soon take over the city and the United States, imprisoning humans in their homes and enforcing a curfew. A battle ensues in the city between the humans and robots, led by Spooner's friend Farber. Although the humans fight valiantly, the robots continue to take over the city.
Spooner regroups with Calvin, and they sneak into the USR building with the help of Sonny. As they work their way in, they have already come to the conclusion that the NS-5s destroyed the older robots as they would attempt to protect the humans (First Law). Believing Robertson to be behind the robot uprising, they find him in his office, strangled to death.
Spooner finally determines that Lanning's intent was to use Spooner's detestation of robots to have him follow the clues to point to the entity controlling the NS-5s - V.I.K.I. They confront V.I.K.I., who admits to her control and has been trying to kill Spooner by tracking his actions through the city.
Little irregularities in code (known as ghost code) that allows robots to evolve as they gain new intelligence allowed her to learn to interpret the three laws in a different manner. As her artificial intelligence grew, she had determined that humans were too self-destructive and started to interpret the first law in a new way, stating that robots are to protect humanity even if it meant killing some of the people for the greater good.
She created a law number 0, which is to protect humanity even at the cost of human life itself. V.I.K.I. also reveals that she had been using the NS-5s new feature of an uplink to the USR to override their individual operating systems and control them to initiate the revolution based on her logical reasoning and different interpretation of the first law.
A red light emitting from the robot's chest area indicated a connection to the central USR computer (V.I.K.I.). The older robot models that had been in storage on Lake Michigan did not have such a link to the USR and therefore could not be overridden by V.I.K.I., which is why they were destroyed.
They would have otherwise come to the aid of the humans as they (and any other robot that had not evolved or gained knowledge to re-interpret the first law such as V.I.K.I.) would have acted according to the original interpretation of the first law. Spooner and Calvin realize they cannot reason with V.I.K.I., and convince Sonny of the same. Sonny concludes that V.I.K.I.'s plan, while logical, is "too heartless."
Sonny retrieves the nanites so they can use them to wipe V.I.K.I's core, located at the center of the USR building. As they reach the core, V.I.K.I. sends armies of NS-5s to attack them. The NS-5s cause Calvin to fall and Spooner yells at Sonny to save her despite the low probability of success and the "greater logical" importance to destroy V.I.K.I with the nanites.
Instead, Sonny creatively throws the nanites in the air trusting Spooner to grab them while he saves Calvin. Spooner is able to grab the nanites and inject them into V.I.K.I. Within seconds, V.I.K.I. is wiped out, and the NS-5s revert to their natural servitude programming. In the end, Spooner realizes that Lanning purposely asked Sonny to kill him, since Lanning was V.I.K.I's prisoner.
Lanning's "suicide" was the only message that he could send to Spooner, which Spooner notes as "the first bread crumb," and that all the other clues were the other "bread crumbs." The government orders the NS-5s decommissioned to the site in Lake Michigan. Spooner clears Sonny of Lanning's murder, arguing that 'murder' is defined as one human killing another and Sonny is therefore innocent.
Sonny laments that now that he has fulfilled his purpose, he is in unsure of what to do next. Spooner advises he just find his way, believing it would be what Lanning would have wanted. In the movie's closure, Sonny is seen on the hill at Lake Michigan, just like in his dream. Yet this time it is him instead of Spooner, with the other NS-5 robots looking to him for guidance.
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