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The Raggedy Man dishes the stitches on I, ROBOT!
Hey folks, Harry here with the Raggedy Man and his spying button eyes snapping down upon I, ROBOT. I'm not sure if any of this sounds good. I have to have a bit of faith in Proyas... CROW and DARK CITY demand that... let us pray....
Hi Harry,
I'm not a big fan of spoilers, so I'll do my best to
leave them out.
So "I, Robot" may not be true to the book, and it may
not be the adaptation that hardcore sci-fi fans were
hoping for... but I must say, upon closer inspection
it looks like it may not be total crap.
Alex Proyas is directing it and it looks like he's
going for a very stylish, very heavily CGI laden,
action thriller. And while it's not the
psychological-philosophical story that Asimov wrote,
it may just be a good movie in its own right. But
then, that's my faith in Proyas.
The digital storyboards reveal a very action packed
finale with Will Smith being hunted by hordes of
robots. And of course the Fresh Prince is armed with
the standard BFG (Big Friggin Gun) and an attractive
scientist woman at his side. Also joining forces with
the hero from Bel Air, is Alan Tudyk (You know, Wash,
from Firefly)(And if not, do the words "I will FONG
you!" ring a bell?) He's playing one of the lead good
guy robots named Sonny. And he marches around set in
green body tights, so that only his face is showing.
Robotic effects are to be added in post.
And thats the way with most of the robots. There are
the Background Robots, also dressed in green from top
to toe, who had to go to a special "Robot School", to
learn how to properly act like Proyas' vision of what
a robot should be. And there are prop robots, purely
cgi robots... robots, robots, robots...
And CGI is the name of the game. While some things
are shot on location throughout Vancouver, most of it
is being done in 80% green-screen studios. And
mumblings and rumblings around the various
departments, is that the film is quickly approaching
the $200 million mark.
One of the things that worries me is, Will Smith, and
the way his character is being portrayed as, "cool".
He's got the long brown "Carlitos Way" leather jacket,
the baggy cargo pants, the circa 1985 Converse shoes,
and in some scenes he wears a tight little beanie on
his head (slightly askew to give him the air of
non-conformity).
But we shall see. It's definitely no small
production, and will likely be pushed as a
Blockbuster... but will the script and story be
worthy of such a high price tag? Or will it simply be
vacuous, high budget, eye candy?
Smith doesn't need another "Wild Wild West". And
neither do we...
Soon to come, more about Riddick, Catwoman... and the
newly started, Blade 3.
Regards,
Raggedy Man
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+ Expand All
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Hey I loved The Crow and I loved Dark City... it even had Kieffer Sutherland on it ^_^
Go Alex Go!
:P -
Always wanted to say that!
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Damn.
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Shiot.
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The Foundation Trilogy starring LL Cool J, where people in the distant future use impossible mathematical equations to blow each others fucking heads up like water melons dropped from a ten story buildings. Rated PG13.
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Sep 05, 2003 9:24:00 AM CDT
Expect P Diddy Puff Dooby Doo to do the soundtrack to this one.
by kid ab
Tracks include, 'Robot Shines with Bullet holes in em' by 50 Cent and 'Robots don't age(Thank God)' by R Kelly.
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-- it ends with a wicked chase scene through math.
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Brownstone's a genius...allusion to the best-educational-cartoon-ever.
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Smith proved so in Ali, and even everybody's favorite band maker, P. Diddy did ok in Made and Monster's Ball. Any recent star could've done this I, Robot stint, they just chose to cast Smith instead of, say, Damon, Pitt, Affleck, or what have you.
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Sep 05, 2003 10:17:18 AM CDT
Maybe they should make "Kilroy: The Movie with Hulk Hogan as the
by mbaker
"Domo Arigoto Mr. Robot, Brother!"
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This movie was originally gonna be released next Fourth of July weekend, which the Fresh Prince has often referred to as "Big Willy Weekend." As soon as Fox saw Spidey 2 bumped to July 2, "Big Willy" turned tail and ran to July 16th! Big Willy Weekend, my ass!
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Sep 05, 2003 10:48:45 AM CDT
Can't you see Will Smith sampling Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" for
by lance rock
or something equally vapid
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Fuck first posters, fuck them up their stupid asses...
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Sep 05, 2003 11:08:35 AM CDT
Hold on a minute... This is based on a book by Isaac Asimov, and
by happiwerld111
Am I missing something here? Something along the lines of "A robot cannot harm a human being, nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm"?
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Sep 05, 2003 11:36:34 AM CDT
Remember that scene in Schindler's List where the cast walks by
by buggery buddha
This movie will have a similar scene, where the cast, the director and the studio executives walk past Asimov's grave while PISSING ALL OVER IT, splashing urine over the headstone and flower arrangement while sniggering when they make eye-contact with each other. Then, they solumnly march away.
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If I recall correctly, I read somewhere a while ago that this movie's script as written had nothing to do with the Azimov-I Robot universe. When it was greenlighted, the studio changed the name to "I Robot" and tweaked the characters a little bit so that it would act as a starting point to an "I Robot " franchise, the later installments actually being adaptations of Azimov's novels.
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"and it looks like he's going for a very stylish, very heavily CGI laden, action thriller."
Just, ouch. -
...this ain't got shit to do with I, Robot!
I'll see it 'cuz I love the Fresh Prince! I hope he shoots a bunch a cats like he did in Bad Boys II: the second kingdom of Ass kicking (behind Matrix, of course) -
Be fair, he doesn't actually say the robots are planning to *harm* the big willie. Perhaps they have some Hors D
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For fuck's sake... if someone were going to take, say, "Catcher in the Rye," and give Holden Caulfield a trendy hip outfit, and "sex up" the action with some car chases and a few explosions, and give him a sexy girlfriend, there would be a national outcry. Why, then, is it somehow acceptable to do the same thing to serious science fiction novels? As much as I love Dark City.... I'm beginning to lose my faith in Proyas based on these reports. Why bother calling it "I, Robot" at all? Isn't that just going to confuse people who haven't read it and infuriate people who have?
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....I think we can throw out Asimov's Law of Robotics out the window with this film.
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Started makin trouble in the neighborhood!
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...it looks like it may not be total crap." That's precious. I would give anything to see a movie studio honest enough to use a left handed compliment like that in the newspaper ads. Any truth to the rumour Smith will have a "sidekick" robot (ala R2D2) that will be played by DJ Jazzy Jeff ?
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jesus, did no one here read "I, Robot"? it's obvious the reviewer is just assuming the book is a "psychological-philosophical story" without actually reading it, because -- surprise -- it's not a "story" at all, but "stories", a series of vignettes (with no singular main character) about what might happen if robots in the future were programmed with asimov's famous "3 laws", the basic guidelines he assumed robots would be programmed with to keep them in line. but, in response to HappiWerld111 and others, (one of) the point(s) of the book is to show how these laws might be problematic in a number of instances; that in trying to obey one or more laws, something else bad may happen (think HAL's conflicting mission directives in 2001), so having robots chase will smith isn't inconceivable.
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This may just be unnecessary prejudgmental worrying. I've been keeping tabs on this and the chat generated and I think people may be jumping to conclusions.
First of all, the stories in "I, Robot" are all about the robotic laws coming into conflict and robots going haywire. So it could be only a small stretch that Will Smith would be chased down by a group of robots (can't explain the BFG). In fact, I remember one of the stories having to do with mentally/psychically joined robots meant to work as a team, whose laws 2 and 3 (following orders and self-preservation) were coming into play, so the chase scene described may have something to do with that.
I wouldn't mind a movie with flash, speed, and eye-candy as long as it remained faithful to the general story premise - robots, their three laws, the situations and conflicts that can make the robots go awry and a couple of cool investigators who get to the bottom of the problems. And those two guys were pretty cool, action-type guys.
Right?
Furthermore, I think "The Matrix" and "LOTR" may be responsible for an overall "smartening-up" of action flicks. I mean, let's look at some of the fare recently - well-crafted comic book adaptations, and then there's "The Core" which went way too far the other way, and, hell, I've got to give credit where credit is due - "Pirates of the Caribbean" was not a bad action flick at all. Maybe the studio is banking big on another deep, intelligent, action franchise.
Or am I dreaming of electric sheep?
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Sep 05, 2003 3:22:14 PM CDT
Cargo Pants, Converse Trainers and a long Leather Coat....
by eduinbrutus
...sounds remarkably like the hero in a little known robot flick from 1984...
Regards,
Eduin -
This guy tried to act "cool", but god damn I want to see him beat w/ a bat. He always has the same acting style. Usless dumb pile of shit
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This ia a book by Asimov you know. The minute I heard Will Shit was attached..oh God..what a shame. Expect a rehashed hip hop song as the sound track.
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about that article is Raggedy Man's mentioning of Carlito's Way.
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...But then again, can it really be called 'Acting' when all someone is doing is being themselves? Maybe he'll grow a real moustache someone and become a real boy...Until then he'll have to wish on the star on Jada Pinkett's ass and hope Matix 3 doesn't blow more than Reloaded.
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puke
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Sep 05, 2003 6:36:22 PM CDT
Nothing personal Alex Proyas, but you should have stuck Dark Cit
by smeg for brains
It is so obvious that with Dark City Proyas made a very interesting film, with a good concept, and mystery surprise ending, and then some FUCKING IDIOTS IN SUITS came in and wrote a big introduction scroll that GIVES AWAY THE ENTIRE MOVIE IN THE FIRST TWO MINUTES OF THE FILM. Dark City is a boring movie because you know everything the entire way through. There is no mystery about what is going on, so you sit there looking at nice visuals with no interest in what happens next. And this is all obviously not Proyas fault because of the way he reveals the spaceship at the end. This was suposed to be the big surprise revelation of "oh my god they are not in a city, but in a spaceship, and those guys are aliens!", but this is not a surprise because the literate people have read this before they even see the first shot of the film (and for the illiterates or dullards too lazy to read, nice Mr. Keefer has read it for you out loud). This is the type of film ruining decision that any director should fight all the way, even up to the point of having his name taken off the film. That would have been the right thing to do. It would be like actually seeing Bruce Willis die at the begining of The Sixth Sense, or having hitcock preceed Psyco with an explaination of how Norman Bates lives with his dead mother, and dresses like her. Those movies would have been ruined (well not Sixth Sense as much because it's surprise wasn't totally vital to the plot, but without that surprise the movie loses a huge amount of impact).
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Sep 05, 2003 6:45:51 PM CDT
I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this, but...
by wungolioth
It's Asimov, thus it's as boring as watching paint dry. Any changes will probably keep you awake, be thankful for them.
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I'd rather eat my own intestines than watch anything with willy in it....
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This is unnecessary to say if you are in the know, but for those others, go to your local bookstore and find a new or used copy of "I Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay" by Harlan Ellison, who was a friend of Asimov, sent a copy to Asimov, got a heartfelt seal of approval from Asimov, and then had a movie studio honcho pee all over the deal, in effect killing what would have been one of the most intelligent sci-fi adaptations ever. Read the movie, don't watch some idiotic ripoff.
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Sep 06, 2003 12:39:15 AM CDT
I'll see this movie only because Will Smith is the biz-omb.
by sith lord sauron
But before I do, I will take out my copy of "I Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay" by Harlan Ellison, read it once again and weep softly for what might have been. . .
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I wonder why no one has mentioned that it was his negligence that killed Brandon Lee?
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And then realize that it will actually be worse. And then think about something even worse than THAT, and you have what I imagine the "I AM LEGEND" production will look like....I'm sorry, I have to apologize to Hollywood. Sci-fi fans whine and whine and whine about how some novels, stories, or concepts would be great movies. We do this even though we should know by now that the process of transforming the story into a movie will almost [almost] inevitably make it suck. Maybe it is because you can make an intelligent literary novel into an intelligent movie using a reasonable budget that you can reasonably assume you will make back - but to make an intelligent sci-fi work into a movie you need a gigantic budget, which you can't risk losing, so you force the story into a conventional plot line and add Will Smith wearing cool clothes. The exceptions seem to be stories with powerful constituencies. LOTR and Potter are fantasy and not sci-fi, of course, but the danger of the same pattern might have been there, if you hadn't had hordes of crazed Tolkien freaks to appease or an author with total script control. Of course, the OTHER lesson of LOTR and Potter should be that if you do the books properly, you will make money, even if something about the story seems "wrong", but no one remembers that lesson longer than it takes to say it out loud at the first production meeting....A movie like A New Hope was perfect, I think, largely because it started out as a movie. The concept was scaled to the script from the get-go. If a great science fiction author had taken the concept and made a novel out of it FIRST, the whole hero-quest Joseph Campbell element probably becomes dominant and you end up with some kind of immensely detailed psychological epic like "Dune" or a one-man "Hyperion". Once that novel is out there for thirty years or so, that story would be what we expect from the concept. Then, if someone comes along and makes A New Hope complete with dorky Mark Hamill and wisecracking Han Solo, and Greedo shooting first, those people who came to the story through print first would think that the movie sucked. And this is the OT we are talking about! No, maybe we should STOP ASKING for adaptations of known science fiction and just ask for original high concepts that we will be able to embrace precisely because they can't disappoint us by comparison to a different medium.
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it sounds bloody awful.
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Sep 06, 2003 11:49:57 AM CDT
Lets's get Alex Proyas to direct a solo Xmen villain film: "The
by freddukesrules
Fred J. Dukes as a major Villain in X3 for 2005! (Mike D. and Dan H. are you listening)?
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1. I hate it when Hollywood streamlines a potential work of genius into standard popcorn fare, but w/ Proyas at the helm I'll wait and see.
2. If Will Smith continues to drag on his usual action/comedy shtick I think he might suffocate himself as a capable actor, and will dillute the credibility he gained w/ "Six Degrees of Separation", and "Ali".
3. People on this site can bring up some pretty good points when it comes to lambasting films, but "it was stoopid" is a reasonable critique to 13 year olds, and sad 20ish fanboys.
4. I won't waste my time defending my love for "The Crow" or my respect for "Dark City", but I will say that the original Crow comic book is superior to the film, and is actually less of a comic book than the movie was.
"Dark City" is a close but no cigar situation, the actor's were a little to muted for my tastes. I understand that that was kind of the point, but if you strengthen the intensity in the flim's quiter moments it would have come off better.
Also the threat of "the strangers" was not illustrated to it's full potential, tweak that and you'll come up with a far more engrossing picture. -
Without wild wild west, we wouldn't have had Cartman rapping about him and Artemis Clyde Frog rescuing Salma Hayek from the giant spider.
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Its the same reaction I felt when I learned the story of "Starship Troopers", why even pay to use the name. Not enough in common to make it necessary to spend the bucks besides charater and place names.
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Sep 08, 2003 8:16:34 AM CDT
Well SHIT, that sounds like every Asimov fan's WORST NIGHTMARE o
by drath
An action movie? With a BFG toting action star with a hot babe running from killer CG robots? Son of a fucking bitch, Goddamn you Hollywood!!! Like the one guy said, why call this I, Robot when it's NOT I, Robt at all? Why not go The Omega Man route and call it something else? I know I'd have a MUCH better time watching this potential fun action summer movie knowing that it isn't costing me a REAL adaptation of I, Robot in the near the future.
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