The Iron Yuppie

Thought[ful|less] coverage of news, politics, technology and anything else that catches my fancy.

Monday, July 11, 2005

I, Robot

I almost finished watching I, Robot last night. Movie? Not so good. But I'll tell you, it really made me want to read the books. Anyone have any recommendations for the first book to start with in the series?

One thing that I realized about the formulaic Hollywood action movie is there are basically three characters. There's the street-smart/common sense always do the right thing guy. There's the brainy, local source of wisdom and absolutely no sense of humor who probably starts out somewhere in between good and evil and ends up being good (and developing a sense of humor). And then there's the evil incarnate thatalways does evil. I remember people talking about Ocean's 11 as having very quick dialog reminiscent of 50's movies where there were great back and forth conversations. It almost reminded one of a sword duel. Today, we have dialog that resembles a shotgun blast where there is a clear winner, and the contest is over in about 2 seconds.

Example good dialog:
Danny: Tess, you're doing a great job curating the museum, the Vermeer is quite good, simple, vibrant, but his work definitely fell off as he got older.
Tess: Remind you of anyone?
Danny: And I always confuse Monet and Manet. Now which one married his mistress?
Tess: Monet.
Danny: Right, and then Manet had syphilis.
Tess: They also painted occasionally.

Nice. Good back and forth. Nobody's a moron.

Example bad dialog:
Detective Del Spooner: How long is this going to take?
Susan Calvin: Six minutes.
Detective Del Spooner: What if we didn't have six minutes?
Susan Calvin: Then we'd have to find a way to climb down thirty stories and inject the nannites into VIKI. Why?
Detective Del Spooner: Because I seriously doubt we have six minutes.

A little bit of context. Susan Calvin is working very hard staring at a computer... Spooner is looking up at the atrium seeing thousands of robots scaling the walls. No sense of humor, no quick back and forth. It's like playing tennis against a solid wall... sure the ball comes back, but it doesn't really do anything interesting.

I think a lot of this derives from having a powerful actor playing opposite a weak actor. The powerful actor wants all the zingers and totally tilts the script out of control. It's very depressing.

Oh, I saw the Station Agent over the weekend as well. I can see why everyone liked it. The character of Fin is especially good. I'm constantly amazed at how actors (and people for that matter) do not realize the value of not talking. It adds so much to the perceived complexity of a character (or person). This comes, of course, from the guy who can't go two minutes without spilling his entire stream of consciousness into a monologue with strangers.

posted by Iron Yuppie # 7/11/2005 09:51:00 AM

Comments:

"I, Robot" is actually a collection of short stories Asimov wrote on the theme of robots. There's a second collection called "Rest of the Robots" and a series of "Mystery" novels that incorporate the same ideas and set in the "future" of the short stories. "Caves of Steel", "The Naked Sun", and "Robots of Dawn". The short stories and the first novels were written in the 50's and really show it, but that's ok. The last one (and the series interlock with other Asimov fiction) shows a more 1980's sensibility and was really my favorite of the bunch.

# posted by

Sherri : July 18, 2005 10:09 PM

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