Remember I, robot? , wasn’t how I expected it from reading the book.
The problem with the movie version of I, Robot is that it was not originally intended to be that - it started life as a screenplay called Hardwired, entirely unrelated to Asimov’s brilliant short story collection, and then somewhere along the way, some movie executive got the bright idea of licensing the IP and renaming some of the characters to match the short stories, more or less. Wikipedia has (a summary of) the details.
The result is interesting if taken as a random SciFi movie, but it’s awful if taken as an adaptation of Asimov’s stories, and, maddeningly, it has now ”used up” the name, in the public’s mind, so it would be extra difficult to make a movie actually based on the Asimov stories (which would make a lovely series of vignettes, or could be done episodically in the Twilight Zone / Amazing Stories format - not theme, just the “weekly showcase of unrelated stories” format - heck, I’d love to see Apple do this as a series, with a completely retro-future look, don’t try to update it to modern times).
A similar thing happened to the Starship Troopers movie, by the way - the director did not read the book, did not like the book, said, “oh, this is about Nazis, I know about Nazis”, and made a movie that uses the names of the characters and some of the trappings of the book, but goes out of its way to
not do the story justice, because he wants to show that Nazis are bad by going completely over the top (yes, I wholeheartedly agree that Nazis are bad, but that isn’t what the story was about). Maybe if you don’t like the book and haven’t read the book… maybe you shouldn’t be doing the movie? Let someone who cares do it.
It’s another case of a moderately entertaining SciFi movie that has very little to do with the book whose name it essentially steals (all legal-like), and creates a large roadblock for any attempt to make an actual movie out of the original book.
Both of these movies bug the heck out of me, for damaging the chances of getting proper movies for two well-regarded works of science fiction. Thankfully, I get the strong impression Apple is not taking this tact with Foundation (crosses fingers).
Lord of the Rings was fabulous because it was both well-executed, and stayed close to the source material. David Lynch’s Dune looked and sounded very good, except for precisely the parts where he decided he knew better than Frank Herbert and “improved” things (weirding modules, heart plugs, etc.) - those bits were all awful. It’s really annoying when directors take books that are beloved precisely because of the way the characters are depicted, and story plays out, and then start changing those things for a film - not because they can’t fit it all in, but because “they have a better idea” - especially when you sell it as, say, “I, Robot”, and not, “Hardwired, inspired by I, Robot”.
