8 ms·

I've been disappointed by nearly every film adaptation of Asimov novels. I, Robot and Bicentennial Man had big budgets, but seemed like they were written by peo

I've been disappointed by nearly every film adaptation of Asimov novels. I, Robot and Bicentennial Man had big budgets, but seemed like they were written by people who simply didn't like Asimov at all and wanted nothing to do with the kinds of stories he told. So, I am extremely pessimistic, even though I would like to be excited about this news. The team behind it also leaves me feeling ambivalent. On one hand, it's a guy who has just made superhero movies (just the sort that would I would expect to destroy a thinky story like Foundation) but also the guy who made The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was actually pretty good (though rarely as smart/deep as the cast deserved; Lena Heady, in particular). I love that scifi TV and film is seeing such a resurgence, but I sure do hate to see my favorites get butchered.

dantheman 9y ago
The film I, Robot originally had no connections with Isaac Asimov's Robot series. It started with an original screenplay written in 1995 by Jeff Vintar, entitled Hardwired. [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film)
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Gods, reading that was depressing. So many reviews called it some variant of "smart", which is not on the list of adjectives I would use. I likely would have enjoyed it more had I not been expecting an Asimov story on film. I like Will Smith a lot, but somehow he's been in multiple films that ruined favorite books from my youth (I Am Legend is another book that I love and that had an abysmal film adaptation...I don't blame Smith, though, as he did a great job even in a very cheesy film). I, Robot was also pretty cheesy even without the weight of trying to live up to Asimov's legacy.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Also I am Legend is a decent movie if you have no "great book expectations".
    - SwellJoe 9y ago
      It was fantastic up until the vampires/zombies turned into cartoons. One of the scariest scenes I've ever seen was the bit where he goes in after the dog and the vamps are all huddled in a circle shivering in the dark. That was some top notch creepy. And it was brilliant acting by Smith (so much of the scariness of that scene was just because the character was scared). But, then we got a closer look at them a bit later and they were flying through the air, bouncing off the walls, and just all around looking like cartoon monsters. I'm just not frightened by cartoons. And, it really killed the slow, calm, horror of the book for me. The things that made the book unique and scary in a way that sticks with you are just fundamentally different from the jump scares of the film. The Vincent Price adaptation (The Last Man On Earth) remains the most faithful film version of I Am Legend, in spirit if not in specific detail. I don't really mind when a movie script changes some plot points or some character details to make it work on screen, I just dislike it when the spirit of the thing is thrown away and replaced with blockbuster tropes (which is my primary complaint about I, Robot, as well). But, again, I thought Will Smith was excellent in the role. I just really hate what they did with the vamps.
      - jacobush 9y ago
        Yes... I had forgotten about the super-fast zombies... now I remember why I never watched it twice.
- swiley 9y ago
  I felt like it was closer to his "Caves of Steel" story.
  - Wiles_7 9y ago
    Closer to Eando Inder's I, Robot than Asimov's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(short_story)
- dsr_ 9y ago
  Pity they didn't film Walter Jon Williams' 1986 novel Hardwired; it's one of the major cyberpunk works.
jonnybgood 9y ago
I think Bicentennial Man was a good film in its own right.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  But it didn't scratch the particular itch that Asimov's writing does, in my opinion.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    No, but the evolution of Galatea, from an almost comical robot to one that assists the death of Portia (in a beautiful scene) out of mercy is deeply moving. It's a very good movie, even if not faithful to the original.
dingo_bat 9y ago
I felt that the Will Smith movie was pretty good and true to Asimov's stories. There is a common theme in Asimov's stories that he exploits loopholes in the interpretation of the 3 laws. I robot the movie did that pretty faithfully. It also hinted towards the advent of a robot like R Daneel, who would see beyond the 3 laws. The movie didn't adapt any particular book or short story, but that doesn't mean it didn't try to be faithful to Asimov.
- tartuffe78 9y ago
  The movie dumbed down the books complex issues we'll face with Robots to "They're going to take over the world". But at least Isaac Asimov was always promoting Dos Equis and Converse shoes in his books so they got that right...
- le-mark 9y ago
  I've always maintained that the Will Smith movie captured the spririt of the Asimov Robot stories, in an accessible way. I never understood the hate it gets.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. Yes, the Zeroth law was introduced, but there was literally only one robot capable of handling that transition. In the movie you have thousands of robots running around killing and injuring countless humans. That's something I'm quite sure would never happen in Asimov's writing. Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope that everyone before him used (all the way back to the first use of the term "robot" in Karel Čapek's R.U.R.). So, despite that groundbreaking approach, what do we get in the first major motion picture about his robot series? A robot uprising...
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      In the movie they are being remotely controlled while running in maintenance mode by a positronic brain that figured out the zeroth law by itself.
dalbasal 9y ago
I think there's two big factors. One is book vs script length. A film is 100 pages. Novels are 250+. This means big story-arch rewrites. It can really kill plot & character development. This is where series open up a lot of possibility. That's usually the biggest adaption, but there are lots of other big things that must change. Novels can do character thoughts, exposition and other things well. For example, a strategic battle scene will work in a book. In a film, it's near impossible so they focus on action and drama. Films do visual representation, so action-rich scenes work. They get characters for "free," actors will represent a highly nuanced person in a way you immediately understand. These add up to a big re-write, that cannot be avoided. Writers like Asimov are the very best storytellers. They work on their own schedule, write what comes to them, discard bad work... If you handed a good novelist the task of writing a LOTR prequel novel about Frodo's parents, by October... It probably won't be as good as Tolkien's. You just can't replicate genius on commission. This is really evident in Game of Thrones. The early seasons capture what's great about the books. A politically driven story that isn't boring, a novel approach to magical realism... Early seasons were loyal to the book. The latest season was mostly "off-script." The politics got stupid. Characters wandered closer to fantasy tropes. The "realism" part of magical realism was gone. Apart from big plot points, it wasn't written by GRRM and it showed. So, it is not good in the ways he's good. It was also written much quicker, on a schedule. It'll be hard to capture Asimov in a series, harder than GRRM I expect. His stories are just not story driven enough. His main plot device is not a spaceship or a time machine, it's a fictional theory, psychohistory. How do you capture that on film, line charts? Good luck to them though. I love sci fi.
- ascagnel_ 9y ago
  I always felt a movie was more analogous to a short story (one of the best PKD adaptations is Minority Report, even if that adaptation has issues), where a book is more akin to a season of a TV show, and each book in a series maps to a season of a show.
- golergka 9y ago
  I don't think you can really compare screenplay pages to novel pages – they're written in a very different way.
xom 9y ago
You might like the anime film Time of Eve. It's been described as the best Three Laws work that isn't Asimov or an adaptation.

dantheman 9y ago

The film I, Robot originally had no connections with Isaac Asimov's Robot series. It started with an original screenplay written in 1995 by Jeff Vintar, entitled Hardwired. [1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film)

SwellJoe 9y ago
Gods, reading that was depressing. So many reviews called it some variant of "smart", which is not on the list of adjectives I would use. I likely would have enjoyed it more had I not been expecting an Asimov story on film. I like Will Smith a lot, but somehow he's been in multiple films that ruined favorite books from my youth (I Am Legend is another book that I love and that had an abysmal film adaptation...I don't blame Smith, though, as he did a great job even in a very cheesy film). I, Robot was also pretty cheesy even without the weight of trying to live up to Asimov's legacy.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Also I am Legend is a decent movie if you have no "great book expectations".
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    It was fantastic up until the vampires/zombies turned into cartoons. One of the scariest scenes I've ever seen was the bit where he goes in after the dog and the vamps are all huddled in a circle shivering in the dark. That was some top notch creepy. And it was brilliant acting by Smith (so much of the scariness of that scene was just because the character was scared). But, then we got a closer look at them a bit later and they were flying through the air, bouncing off the walls, and just all around looking like cartoon monsters. I'm just not frightened by cartoons. And, it really killed the slow, calm, horror of the book for me. The things that made the book unique and scary in a way that sticks with you are just fundamentally different from the jump scares of the film. The Vincent Price adaptation (The Last Man On Earth) remains the most faithful film version of I Am Legend, in spirit if not in specific detail. I don't really mind when a movie script changes some plot points or some character details to make it work on screen, I just dislike it when the spirit of the thing is thrown away and replaced with blockbuster tropes (which is my primary complaint about I, Robot, as well). But, again, I thought Will Smith was excellent in the role. I just really hate what they did with the vamps.
    - jacobush 9y ago
      Yes... I had forgotten about the super-fast zombies... now I remember why I never watched it twice.
swiley 9y ago
I felt like it was closer to his "Caves of Steel" story.
- Wiles_7 9y ago
  Closer to Eando Inder's I, Robot than Asimov's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(short_story)
dsr_ 9y ago
Pity they didn't film Walter Jon Williams' 1986 novel Hardwired; it's one of the major cyberpunk works.

jonnybgood 9y ago

I think Bicentennial Man was a good film in its own right.

dingo_bat 9y ago
But it didn't scratch the particular itch that Asimov's writing does, in my opinion.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  No, but the evolution of Galatea, from an almost comical robot to one that assists the death of Portia (in a beautiful scene) out of mercy is deeply moving. It's a very good movie, even if not faithful to the original.

dingo_bat 9y ago

I felt that the Will Smith movie was pretty good and true to Asimov's stories. There is a common theme in Asimov's stories that he exploits loopholes in the interpretation of the 3 laws. I robot the movie did that pretty faithfully. It also hinted towards the advent of a robot like R Daneel, who would see beyond the 3 laws. The movie didn't adapt any particular book or short story, but that doesn't mean it didn't try to be faithful to Asimov.

tartuffe78 9y ago
The movie dumbed down the books complex issues we'll face with Robots to "They're going to take over the world". But at least Isaac Asimov was always promoting Dos Equis and Converse shoes in his books so they got that right...
le-mark 9y ago
I've always maintained that the Will Smith movie captured the spririt of the Asimov Robot stories, in an accessible way. I never understood the hate it gets.
- JshWright 9y ago
  A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. Yes, the Zeroth law was introduced, but there was literally only one robot capable of handling that transition. In the movie you have thousands of robots running around killing and injuring countless humans. That's something I'm quite sure would never happen in Asimov's writing. Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope that everyone before him used (all the way back to the first use of the term "robot" in Karel Čapek's R.U.R.). So, despite that groundbreaking approach, what do we get in the first major motion picture about his robot series? A robot uprising...
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    In the movie they are being remotely controlled while running in maintenance mode by a positronic brain that figured out the zeroth law by itself.

dalbasal 9y ago

I think there's two big factors. One is book vs script length. A film is 100 pages. Novels are 250+. This means big story-arch rewrites. It can really kill plot & character development. This is where series open up a lot of possibility. That's usually the biggest adaption, but there are lots of other big things that must change. Novels can do character thoughts, exposition and other things well. For example, a strategic battle scene will work in a book. In a film, it's near impossible so they focus on action and drama. Films do visual representation, so action-rich scenes work. They get characters for "free," actors will represent a highly nuanced person in a way you immediately understand. These add up to a big re-write, that cannot be avoided. Writers like Asimov are the very best storytellers. They work on their own schedule, write what comes to them, discard bad work... If you handed a good novelist the task of writing a LOTR prequel novel about Frodo's parents, by October... It probably won't be as good as Tolkien's. You just can't replicate genius on commission. This is really evident in Game of Thrones. The early seasons capture what's great about the books. A politically driven story that isn't boring, a novel approach to magical realism... Early seasons were loyal to the book. The latest season was mostly "off-script." The politics got stupid. Characters wandered closer to fantasy tropes. The "realism" part of magical realism was gone. Apart from big plot points, it wasn't written by GRRM and it showed. So, it is not good in the ways he's good. It was also written much quicker, on a schedule. It'll be hard to capture Asimov in a series, harder than GRRM I expect. His stories are just not story driven enough. His main plot device is not a spaceship or a time machine, it's a fictional theory, psychohistory. How do you capture that on film, line charts? Good luck to them though. I love sci fi.

ascagnel_ 9y ago
I always felt a movie was more analogous to a short story (one of the best PKD adaptations is Minority Report, even if that adaptation has issues), where a book is more akin to a season of a TV show, and each book in a series maps to a season of a show.
golergka 9y ago
I don't think you can really compare screenplay pages to novel pages – they're written in a very different way.

xom 9y ago

You might like the anime film Time of Eve. It's been described as the best Three Laws work that isn't Asimov or an adaptation.