{"id":290,"date":"2014-11-22T10:46:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T18:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=290"},"modified":"2014-11-22T10:46:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T18:46:30","slug":"robotics-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"ROBOTICS 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"interstellar3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always loved movie robots.<\/p>\n

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Why?<\/p>\n

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Because they invariably have more character, more color, more interest than the hero of the story in which they play a supporting role.<\/p>\n

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My favorite, probably because he was my first, is Robbie\u2014the real star of that fifties sci-fi classic, Forbidden Planet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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With a clear glass dome of a head that reveals the complex machinery of his mind, he moves in a metallic waddle and speaks in the voice of a butler, an old retainer with a special affection for the family he serves. Protective, accommodating, a master chef, he can replicate virtually anything, including the gallons of whiskey he produces in a wonderfully comic scene between him and one of the human actors.<\/p>\n

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He is also powerful, capable of lifting immense weights, and he is, at the same time, defensive weapon, constantly scanning for threats to family and friend and eliminating those threats with a dazzling ray that vaporizes its targets.<\/p>\n

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Best of all, Robbie is programmed against the killing of human beings. When ordered to kill, he freezes, a lightning storm erupting in his transparent head, a storm that will destroy him if the order is not rescinded.<\/p>\n

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And that makes Robbie superior to the human beings around him, all of whom have \u201cmonsters from the id\u201d buried deep in their psyches, murderous impulses that can boil up to the surface and threaten the race itself.<\/p>\n

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Robbie is charming, colorful, complex\u2014a wonderful character who takes us to the heart of Forbidden Planet<\/em> and its insights into the human animal.<\/p>\n

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Then, of course, there\u2019s HAL\u2014by far the most interesting and fully developed character in Kubrick\u2019s 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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There are, I\u2019m sure, those among you who will object\u2014insisting that HAL is a computer, not a robot. I would argue that the ship sent to explore the origins of the metal monolith that seems to hold the key to the mystery of human life is a massive robot, that HAL is its brain and the ship is his body.<\/p>\n

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He manifests himself in his disturbing red light of an eye, in his resonate, reassuring voice, in his profound intelligence\u2014the intelligence that makes the mission possible.<\/p>\n

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Respectful, formal but with just a hint of warmth, he addresses the crew members by their first names and seems almost eager to solve any problems that may develop.<\/p>\n

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But HAL is also proud, deceitful, manipulative, homicidal. When the crew catches this perfect machine in a serious error and decides it must decommission him, HAL sets out to destroy them.<\/p>\n

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Man has built his own irrational, destructive impulses into this machine, impulses that inform everything man creates\u2014everything from the thigh bone he turned into his first tool, an instrument of death, to the nuclear satellite that it becomes in the greatest cut in the history of cinema.<\/p>\n

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The irony is that HAL is more human than those who created him, more moving certainly (\u201cDaisy, Daisy\u2026\u201d) than astronaut Dave Bowman who seems almost machine-like in his lack of emotion.<\/p>\n

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Like Robbie, HAL is the most colorful, complex individual in the story, and his character takes us to the heart of the themes with which Kubrick is struggling.<\/p>\n

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This is the pattern of most sci-fi films involving robots.<\/p>\n

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Whether it\u2019s Grot\u2014the guardian of the heart machine in Metropolis<\/em>, or Gort\u2014who possesses the power to destroy the human race and the planet that begot it in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em>, or the fuss-budget C3PO and the impetuous R2D2 in Star Wars<\/em>, or the renegade Sonny who breaks the three laws in I, Robot<\/em>…whether they are antagonists, confederates, or comic relief\u2026robots have invariably been more interesting than the human characters of the stories in which they appear.<\/p>\n

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Until now.<\/p>\n

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Until the advent of that bloated, ridiculously over-praised, pretentious botch of a sci-fi film, Interstellar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Nolan gives us two robots\u2014TARS and CASE\u2014to support the human crew of the movie\u2019s mission to find a new home for the race of man. The one is indistinguishable from the other, so let\u2019s concentrate on TARS, who plays the larger role in the story.<\/p>\n

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Imagine a gray metal slab not unlike the monolith in 2001<\/em>. (I suggest imagining it to save yourself the ten or fifteen dollars and the three wasted hours it would require to see the film.)<\/p>\n

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Smaller.<\/p>\n

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More animated\u2014in the sense that it moves and it talks.<\/p>\n

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In fact, it \u201cwalks\u201d in a way that defies common sense if not the laws of physics, and it speaks in a voice so ordinary, so undistinguished, it could be the voice of any of us\u2026except for the fact that I\u2019ve never met anyone quite as boring as TARS.<\/p>\n

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It (I can\u2019t bring myself to call it \u201chim\u201d even though it sounds male) is utterly without personality.<\/p>\n

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So then\u2026<\/p>\n

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Is TARS, unlike its cinematic forebears, less<\/em> interesting than the human characters in the story?<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, no.<\/p>\n

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They, like him, are cyphers\u2014generic figures at worst, simplistic types at best, defined only by the screen presence of the talented actors who play them.<\/p>\n

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And the other elements of the film?<\/p>\n

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The dialogue is endlessly expository, designed not to reveal character but to explain what\u2019s going on, and failing abysmally in that task.<\/p>\n

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The science?<\/p>\n

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I suppose only the physicists and rocket scientists among us can judge it with any authority, but it strikes me as the worst kind of nonsense.<\/p>\n

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Solid<\/em> clouds?<\/p>\n

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Space vehicles so indestructible that they can survive high-speed collision with these \u201cclouds\u201d?<\/p>\n

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Space stations large enough to accommodate the earth\u2019s populace and lifted into orbit through gravity?<\/p>\n

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I could go on.<\/p>\n

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But instead, let me ask you this.<\/p>\n

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If you were looking for a new home for the human race, would you choose a planet in orbit around a black hole?<\/p>\n

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Then there\u2019s the mawkishly developed theme of family\u2014\u201clove [that] transcends time and space.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hmmm.<\/p>\n

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The astronaut hero deserts the daughter who loves him to seize the opportunity to return to space. (Saving the human race seems a secondary consideration.)<\/p>\n

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She, in turn, spends most of the rest of her life hating him for leaving.<\/p>\n

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The final third of the story becomes his attempt to return to her, and\u2026<\/p>\n

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SPOILER ALERT!<\/p>\n

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SPOILER ALERT!<\/p>\n

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\u2026and when he does, he spends no more than two minutes with her before flying off to rejoin the female member of his crew!<\/p>\n

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All of this is so inept that I find myself reconsidering my initial judgment.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s possible that I misjudged TARS.<\/p>\n

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It may be that he, for all his emptiness, is<\/em>, after all, more interesting than the human characters in the story and that he, in fact, provides profound insight into the vacuum at the heart of Interstellar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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