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About the Movie
Chicago, 2035: robots serve drinks, run deliveries and walk dogs, governed by the Three Laws of Robotics that make harming a human impossible — and Detective Del Spooner trusts none of it. Spooner, played by Will Smith at peak movie-star wattage, carries a robot-built artificial arm and a survivor’s grudge, so he is the last cop the department wants investigating when robotics pioneer Alfred Lanning is found dead in the headquarters of U.S. Robotics, with a prototype robot named Sonny standing over the case insisting he did not murder anyone — and that he can dream.
Director Alex Proyas, working from Isaac Asimov’s story collection in spirit more than letter, builds a glossy murder mystery around genuinely Asimovian machinery: the Three Laws, a positronic suspect who may be an exception to them, and robopsychologist Susan Calvin, played by Bridget Moynahan as a woman more comfortable with machines than people. Sonny himself, performed by Alan Tudyk and realised in then-state-of-the-art digital effects, is the film’s heart — a machine asking what he is for.
Why This Movie Matters to Sci-Fi
I, Robot carried Asimov’s central ideas — the Three Laws and the ways careful rules fail in uncareful worlds — to the largest audience they have ever had, and it remains the popular gateway to serious questions about machine ethics. Arriving in 2004, its vision of ubiquitous helpful robots, a controlling central intelligence and a public that stopped asking questions reads more prescient every year. It also marked a technical milestone for a fully realised digital lead character sharing scenes, arguments and an interrogation room with human actors — groundwork for the performance-capture era that followed.
Where to Watch
Watch on YouTube (rent or buy) via YouTube Movies & TV.
