So is it a movie about slavery, which is a subject we should all be concerned about, given the possibility that it's making a big comeback in the deep south (Asia, America, and Bronx)? Or is it a movie about the dangers of technology? Or is it about what perfect tools firearms are for ridding us of troublesome elements who insist on thinking their own thoughts?

I can only hope that Isaac Asimov, the author of I, Robot needed the monet very badly...another science fiction writtren classic ruined by the bruce willis?will smith/keanu reeves bad actor syndrome, although I preer keanu rreves because at least he doesn't yap constantly...here's a dynamite scenario for the next hollywood "scifi" blockbuster: aliens invade and bruce and will talk them to death...oh, I left out ahnuld, although in becoming guv of kalifornia, he's already far surpassed most sf scenarios, what we need is someone to terminate these actors and send the remains, preincinerated at 451 degrees fahrenheit, on a space odyssey for 2001 years, along with the screen writers that think intelligent science fiction has something to do with unending bullets and car chases....

I'm actually a big fan of both well done cartoons and sci-fi; even fantasy, Trilogy of the Ring. (Though I agree with those who say, the movie versions of his stories were actually an improvement.)

I'm not sure why. Maybe because I've spent so much time through my adult life reading "factual" stuff; newspapers especially, as well as books and other material on politics, economics and science, again "stuff", that I need that "escape" route into more "fanciful" realms. Though, good sci-fi and fantasy especially, less so cartoons, I think, often speak very much to the real world and its issues. Tolkien, for example, breathes with the the feelings and concerns surrounding the rise of fascism, and the lead up to the Second Great War.

And so, while I'm always looking for good sci-fi movie material to attend, the wife and I being major movie buffs since our "courting" days, even the previews to I, Robot left me cold. Even though, having been a "wage slave" myself, all my life, I'm aware that slavery in modern times takes a more subtle form than the starker beginnings of it, even pre-Greek and through Roman, or the even later, hanging on into capitalism U.S. variant. And how many "workers" out there, male and female, cannot seriously and almost immediately identify with Robotic slaves, and understand their issues and "feelings"?

Will Smith, though I enjoyed the first Man In Black, is to me the first clue of a movie I probably don't want to see: a lingering effect of Independance Day; a totally gross out, Yankee chest thumper film. And excessive indication of "special effects" over story in the previews is another "indicator" to me. (He says, who even liked the last Spiderman flick.)

The critique here at least makes me feel I made the right decision not to see it. Though it does sound, unfortunately, like a potentially really good opportunity to make some "meaningful" current time relevant points was lost, along with just a good movie and a good story.

Hollywood in general, and--in this case--Alex Proyas in particular, have NO IDEA what makes a science fiction story work. His last film, Dark City, is a case in point. In that film, he establishes a premise, namely, that people are only the sum of their memories. If one replaces a poor man's memories and environment with that of a rich man, there is nothing intrinsic to that person which would let them know that anything had changed. Fine, interesting premise. Then, he ends the film by COMPLETELY undermining that premise for NO REASON. The hero turns out to have special powers. He's got a "soul" after all, and he uses it to vanquish his enemies. Once again, it's the "triumph of the human spirit." Bleah. Just another "man who refuses to play the hand he's dealt" story (like the DREADFUL Gattaca, another film where one waits in vain for the film to actually confront the issues it has raised--instead we realize that the whole set-up is a straw man, and they were never serious about their premise in the first place). A real science fiction story would actually follow through on its premise, but there's VERY LITTLE of that to be found in the history of film (TV is barely better, The Twilight Zone and the like have some actual sci-fi content, as well as a handful of Star Trek episodes, and some others). A recent exception is The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a REAL science fiction film, and a good one. Without giving anything away, that film hardly undermines its premise at all, except for a teensy weensy (entirely acceptable, in my books) bit for the purposes of serving the romance. I, Robot has a few interesting features. You might like the robot design, for example. The robots are light and made of some kind of strong plastic, and when they fight each other, they move very fast and acrobatically. This is a welcome change from the lumbering Terminator style robots, or from the years of suffering through Star Trek's commander Data, whose designer apparently had the brilliance to make a functioning self aware computer brain, but not the intelligence to make a body that can move like a normal person. Unfortunately, the movie undermines itself yet again when despite the fact that the robots are exceedingly agile, humans (Will Smith, at least) are able to beat them up even while being swarmed by dozens of them. After the show I overheard one kid complaining to his mom, "There's NO WAY the humans could have beat those robots!" And he's right (One might ask the director--or the writer--if a ten year old kid is upset by this obvious flaw, why aren't you?). There are some other nice production elements, some sort of interesting bits of violence, an interesting idea here and there, but nothing to justify paying full price, like I did (well, matinee price, but that's a different rant altogether). Vancouver is surpringly well camoflaged, so you won't get those moments like in Paycheck or The Sixth Day where you get to laugh at the silliness of it all (the library blowing up in The Sixth Day, for example); they DO use that same goddamned alleyway you see in EVERY movie shot in Vancouver, and yes, they press those grey geodesic dome things out by that bridge into Surrey into service. This time they're a robot storage facility (in Paycheck they were a laboratory of some sort, and in the sixth day I can't remember what they were). Oh, and there's some good local talent involved. The drawing of the bridge is by a Vancouver artist, who also designed the positronic brains, and some other items. And yes, that woman is a TERRIBLE actor. I have no idea why she was cast. One audition should have been enough to know that she simply cannot act. Will Smith's one liners fall very flat. Much like Dark City was saturated with film noir stereotypes, this film feels like a crappy old cop show, with some glitter. Every cliche in the book is here, from the lone wolf cop getting stripped of his badge, to... well, I've gone on long enough. If you see it you'll know what I mean. If you want science fiction, go rent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Or heck, go see Spiderman 2, which despite the cliches at least doesn't break its own rules. Gah, this is one of my pet peeves, and I could go on and on...

Whoa, how come my paragraph breaks aren't there? Here's a test. And here.

Damn, I don't know how to work this... Sorry about that, I know it's harder to read without the breaks.

There seems to be a problem with this page. I'll try again to post. Travis: "Space" after the last period end of your sentence, then two a double sets of "lesser than" and "greater than" brackets, thus <><>, each with a capital P within them. That should give you a paragraph break. If that doesn't work, there is a problemo with the page.

As a fan of both written and filmed science fiction and fantasy (or speculative fiction as it's known in the trade) I found all the comments above, as well as the review, interesting and thought provoking. The trouble with speculative fiction movies -and the problem with hollywood treatments in general- usually stems from a failure to respect the vision of the writer. There is, in fact, that old hollywood joke about the actress who was so dumb she slept with the writer -a jape symptomatic of the tinseltown's general disrespect towards both women and writers. And of course the tales of writers ruined by hollywood are legion, as in the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink.

The Peter Jackson version of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is a excellent example of an instance where the writer's vision was respected, both by remaining reasonably faithful to it, and by taking the expense of hiring good, not just well known actors. The rings trilogy indeed manifests elements of Tolkein's concerns about incipient fascism, coyote, and although I am not sure the books writing and publishing dates support the theory, I have also heard that the ring, ("one ring to bind them all...") was a metaphor for tolkein's abhorence of nuclear weapons: ie, a weapon so powerful and unselective that its weilders as well as its victims risked anihilation...The tv black and white television series, if that's the twilight zone series you referred to, travis, achieved its impact and style by hiring actual science fiction writers, as opposed to the director's brother in law. Here we run into one of the main problems with hollywood sci-fi: the conceit that anyone can do it.

The other main problem with filmed science fiction is the general refusal to respect the science in science fiction, and the insistence on elevating special effects above plot and character, twin pitfalls only rarely evaded in such film gems, as the alien movies, kubrick's 2001, ridley scott's director's cut of blade runner, coppala's dracula and a relatively few other examples of filmed fantasy and science fiction. This general disrespect arises from confusion about the differences between science fiction and fantasy as a literary genre, where consistent rationales are very neccesary for the suspension of disbelief, and the cinematic genre, where, unfortuneately for the lowest common denominator of audience, seeing is often believing. As a fan of science fiction and fantasy from childhood and as an unpublished writer of two gothic science fiction novels I find this sloppiness of tinseltown both offensive and disrespectful. Those wishing to experince real fantasy and science fiction, written with adults as well as children in mind, might want to check out the classic science fiction writers; asimov, clarke, heinlein, kornbluth, kuttner and others, as well as the moderns; delaney, zelazny, ellison, early robert sheckley and, artful contemporary speculative writers of the ilk of william gibson, lucius shepherd, michael swanwick and john ford where imagination and intelligence, and not just a box of popcorn and a twelve dollar ticket, are required for admission...

The very first science fiction story I ever read was "Donovan's Brain". I was hooked. Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov intrigued me. I still think "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is as fine a piece of writing, regardless of genre, that I've had the pleasure to read. I've tried to write S/F. Cannot do it. Sometimes I tell myself I'm too rooted to this earth, too tied to the here and now. Other times I tell myself I'm simply incapable. One of the big problems I have with film adaptations is inherent in the genre... film just doesn't leave you to do enough of the work, it "shows" it doesn't "tell" and what it shows is the limits of the imaginations of all the various trades...limited by the director (all of whom are fekkin dogmeat!!)... and the limits of the audience (most of whom seem to WANT the eye candy). And when you watch Tony Parson's evening news... what type of fear, what type of horror, what type of unmentionable terror could any of us think of to top what's happening in the here and now..? What could we do filmically to convey the desperate fear of a gentle people threatened simply for one slight difference, as in "The Others" (they could levitate and fly)... Stephen King does some excellent science fiction (and has done some not-so-excellent!!), but so far none of the film adaptations has been worth the money invested..."Firestarter" almost began to make it and then it got silly and the sequel was idiotic from the get-go...I haven't been reading much SF lately, the techno-crap bores me and the sword-and-sorcery fantasy is silly...but "Waldo" still holds my interest and if you enjoy playing with conundrum and mind teasers, "Of Time And Space And Other Things" can fill an evening; it's Isaac Asimov, of course, and I highly recommend it. Hey, Lewis, don't give up, keep writing..maybe we need a site where the "unpublished" can post their work, chapter by chapter...your posts here often give me a feeling of absolute satisfaction... aah, a sane voice in a wilderness which seems much less lonely now!!

Well, thank you, anne, that's high praise indeed, especially considering the source. I too regard heinlein's waldo as a classic, and one of the best things he wrote. I must read Donovan's Brain, by Curt Siodmak, I believe, as it is an oft praised classic I seem to have somehow missed. I reccomend Egdar Pangborn's Davy (sp Davey ?) as a science fiction classic that definitely transcended any limitations of the genre. Philip K. Dick is someone I left out among the moderns who is very much worth reading as well, one of the cleverest and most psychedelic of science fiction writers, (especially Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, Eye in the Sky, many others) of whose work, tiny story or novel fragments, have been rendered into whole movies -Blade Runner, Minority Report, and less fortuitously several ahnuld potboilers -during his life, despite multiple publication he often lived from hand to mouth, a fate of all too many speculative fiction writers...Yes, stephen king at his best is well worth reading, unfortunately, his worst is all too frequent, especially since his accident. Ironically, I found Carrie, King's classic of outsider adolescent angst, done by the always lurid Brain de Palma, to be one of the best screen treatments of his work, followed by kubrick's The Shining, followed by...pretty much nothing. Perhaps its the ten book contract effect, and king also had a cocaine addiction as he stated himself in an Arts and Entertainment special, a pity because king is capable of some fine work, his last work being at all worth reading, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Most of his work, since his accident, has been atrocious...pity. I have thought about a site such as you mention, anne, which sounds a bit like creative sharing, in which authors post their work, but not the rights to it on the net. I also think handing out free samples, and then charging for additional downloads has some potential merit, and would really like to see an evolution where authors could bypass publishers and agents all together, it being my contention that much work of real merit never gets published. I saw you by the way, on that mystic fire video, available at the public library -most interesting. I am working towards an aggressive remarketing of my work if I can ever get my hands on a reliable printer -are second hand printers and printers in general as notoriously unreliable as they seem to be? Any opinions on this from anyone? Or can anyone reccomend a moderately priced, reliable new printer? Thanks for the encouragement anne, always enjoy your posts....left out stanislaw lem and bruce sterling for technophiles as worthwhile sf, and no doubt others as well...oh and anne, a very valuable and interesting resource, in case you don;t know it is the burryman writer's site out of scotland, containing links to hundreds of other writing sites....