Android Re-Enactment (2011, Canada)
Candy Droober, Franklin Droober, Maureen Droober and Trace Mayter
In writer/director Darryl Shaw's independent sci-fi film - actually an offbeat horror flick and dark comedy, it told about the repercussions of engineering and creating ultra-realistic and advanced humanoid androids, since they were ultimately flawed and began running amok. It was demonstrated why it was a foolhardy enterprise to try and manipulate them, fix them, and create more favorable outcomes. The trailer asked:
"How far would you go to fix your mistakes? How much would you sacrifice to change your fate?"
In the film's opening sequence, a fateful dinner party occurred at the home of the Droopers - the two parents: Franklyn (Bill Poulin) and Maureen Drooper (Melissa Cline), their pretty daughter Candy (Sarah Silverthorne), a brilliant techno-nerdy Socionic engineer named Ermus "Ermie" Daglek (Jeff Sinasac), and a hunky 29 year-old male named Trace Mayter (Adam Butler), a "sporting goods expert." During dinner, Ermus was ridiculed for his love of the Internet. Afterwards, Ermus watched as Candy ignored him, and passionately kissed and made out with Trace in the living room. He felt completely humiliated and disgraced.
In an unspecified time period in the retro future about 12 years later, a factory known as the Empath-Tek Corporation was closing down its defunct factory, where it had been manufacturing genetically-engineered, human-like androids. Their latest highly-realistic and life-like model (with a human face and a personality) was the PX-50. The androids were designed for both military purposes and for the hospitality sector.
Ermus - one of Empath-Tek's employees, was being forced to retire. In a deal with his former company, rather than being paid millions of dollars of back residuals that he was owed as his severance package, Ermus agreed to accept the payments in the form of ownership of Empath-Tek's factory. [Note: These details were described in the last 30 minutes of the film.]
After acquiring the factory, Ermus' intention was to create androids based on a significant and key moment in his past - specifically the dinner party, to see if he could modify the behavior of the 4 other individuals in his favor, and win back his intended love Candy and steal her away from his romantic rival Trace. The obsessed, mad and deranged Ermus ran numerous simulations with genetically-identical replica androids of the four dinner party characters to test various alternative scenarios to see if he could change the past. He attempted to re-enact when Trace humiliated him with Candy and he lost her love, and modify what had happened. Frustrated by the outcomes, Ermus reprogrammed Franklyn to murder Trace during dinner by slitting his throat, to satisfy his need for revenge.
Ermus didn't realize that as a result, the damaged and aggressive-acting android Trace (that he kept tinkering with), was not behaving as expected, and began to malfunction, and even discussed with Ermus how to run more effective simulations. At the dinner table, Trace picked up a knife and stabbed himself in the neck. Ermus had to stop the simulation. Shortly later, Ermus complained to Trace:
"I've run the simulation, like 50 times and I never win."
In more simulations and test scenarios over a period of almost two months, the Trace android increasingly lost its coordination, and made jerky movements. Even Franklyn began to act unpredictably and stabbed Trace multiple times in the abdomen. The modified androids began to viciously fight with each other. Franklyn was beheaded and Maureen was damaged (her innards were ripped open), as Ermus frantically pushed buttons on a control pad to stop the out-of-control dinner party and deactivate Trace.
After running off with Candy, Ermus was forced to admit to her that she was also an android. He showed her photos of herself as a human living in New Jersey, and also a photo of the two of them together.
Ermus found himself stalked by the relentless decapitated android Franklyn, who tried to strangle him and stab him. He was able to grab his newly-developed ray gun known as an Ion Disruptor, and blast Franklyn into oblivion. Afterwards, Ermus also threatened to kill an increasingly destructive, disobedient and threatening Trace with his "fancy toy," but then decided to have him reset himself to original specifications.
Meanwhile, Ermus conducted further experiments with android Candy to install in her various qualities via software - to make her less intelligent (with an IQ of 89) and with "acute nymphomania." After she was awakened and activated, Ermus anticipated having sex with Candy. However, his efforts were unsuccessful when she bluntly told him, "If I had a brother, it would be you." She pushed him away when he exhibited unwanted physical advances. He became frustrated and de-activated her, then briefly touched and kissed her.
To create the right atmospheric mood, he rushed back to his control room to play a CD (labeled "When She's Ready"), and then returned to Candy slouched on a couch, expectantly hoping for a different outcome. She told him that she preferred to be with Trace: ("the guy who works at the sports supply store"), even though Ermus told her: ("I erased him from your databanks"). Apparently she still retained "preview files" of him (in her memory), and asked for him to be activated for her: "You turn him on, you bring him out, you won't regret it. You can join us." The jealous Ermus angrily deactivated Candy.
Ermus then went back to threaten Trace and chain him down. Trace further aggravated Ermus by hinting he had been sexual with Candy: "How do you know I haven't already....Right now, I could be sending a signal to her cerebrum. I could be making her cum remotely." Ermus grabbed a power saw to slice up Trace into pieces, but then, the blackmailing android demonstrated how he had already taken over control of the factory's mainframe computer (voice of Dana Tartau), and was capable of decreasing oxygen levels in the lab while increasing the carbon monoxide levels. Although Ermus allowed Trace to live, unchained him, and restored his motor functions, the android - after spitefully telling Ermus: "Who's playing God now?" - went on to destroy and deactivate the complex's master core and its entire security system with massive swings of an axe. Before escaping from the facility, he told the downed Ermus: "Thanks for the memories!" As he walked away, Trace discarded his silver cross necklace onto the ground.
As Ermus prepared to leave the factory, he attempted to re-activate the Candy android, but she spewed green vomit and went into extreme body spasms. He was forced to deactivate her, but first promised: "Don't worry baby, Daddy's gonna make it all better."
Ermus hired Kray Facer (Todd Thomas Dark), an Empath-Tek android hunter, to go after the out-of-control android Trace and destroy him. They were unsuccessful at first in establishing any leads using an interceptor-police scanner. Kray recommended to Ermus that if Trace ever reappeared: "Finish the job!"- by shooting it in the face with a revolver loaded with black-market explosive bullets.
Upon Ermus' return to the factory via his yellow motorbike, he was forced to pursue and then shoot a trespassing human transient (Dean Tedesco) in the lab who appeared to be raping Ermus' deactivated Candy android. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity - Ermus incorrectly assumed that the human was the android Trace with a face-mask disguise and stolen clothing. He was convinced even further when he found Trace's trademark silver cross in the man's pocket that had been discarded earlier. Moments later, Ermus realized his mistake when he attempted to drill into the man's ear to activate him, and blood splattered onto his face - signifying that it wasn't Trace, but a flesh-and-blood human. Ermus shamefully admitted his mistake to Kray, who confirmed: "Androids don't have brain matter...Human corpses are not my department," and promptly quit. Ermus was facing serious murder charges.
Ermus rode his motorbike to NJ and entered the house of Candy's human counterpart - Trace's real-life wife Candy with her daughter Tristan (Delina Porter). Ermus was shocked to learn from the daughter that the more recent android version of Trace had been at the house, seeking to reconnect with his former wife and daughter. [Note: The real-life human Trace had died in a car accident 12 years before.] While ordering Ermus to leave, Candy protectively admitted that Trace had been there, but that he wasn't coming back: ("He's not coming back. He's gone and he's left. He's dead as far as I'm concerned"). However, a little while later when android Trace returned carrying an order of take-out food, Ermus wounded him with a gun-shot. He entered the kitchen (with a blinking red circuit near his eye) with a final farewell to Candy and Tristan: "It was nice seeing you guys." Ermus' second shot caused Trace's face to explode, as advised by Kray.
In the film's conclusion, Ermus returned to his lab in the factory where he spoke to the deactivated Candy and told her: "I'm sorry. Let's start over. It'll be better this time." He began to run more simulations of the dinner party (with the damaged and stitched-together remains of the four androids) -- and was now using the activated body of the dead human transient to take android Trace's place at the table.
Eva (2011, Sp.)
Android Prototype SI-9, Servant Robot Max, Robotic Pet Cat Gris, and Eva
In director Kike Maillo's (and Paramount's and the Weinstein Company's) dramatic sci-fi coming-of-age film, it was his feature-length directorial debut film. It had similarities to Bicentennial Man (1999), AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Frankenstein (1931) , Blade Runner (1982) , and some elements of Splice (2009). The thought-provoking film explored issues of artificial intelligence, and the God-like ability to create life - through technology. Its release date in the US was March of 2015, and its gross revenues were only 1ドル.3 million.
The film's various robots and engineering devices were created using CGI. Its tagline was:
"You can't program what you feel."
Set in the year 2043, it introduced a world of robots co-mingling with humans, and the many technological advances and attempts to create more life-like and emotional "human" humanoids. The story was mostly told in flashback. It opened with the return of reticent, shy robotics engineer and scientist Alex Garel (Daniel Bruhl) to his snowy Spanish hometown of Santa Irene after working abroad for over a decade. He moved into his deceased parents' old home, where he briefly encountered a young scared girl after she had experienced a frightening incident at a snowy cliffside.
A return to the past revealed that Alex had lived in the snowy town years earlier, where he had been working on a highly-advanced robotics project, but left unexpectedly before it was completed. Upon his return to a melodramatic domestic situation, Alex was confronted with complex, entangling relationships from his past life - two individuals that he had worked with on robotics projects:
Alex still loved his ex-lover Lana, with lingering emotional feelings. Conversely, Lana's current husband David felt that his brother Alex had abandoned Lana about 10 years earlier, and didn't want Alex to rekindle his relationship with Lana. Her 10 year-old precocious daughter was the film's title character Eva (Claudia Vega) - Alex's niece.
Alex was hired by his former colleague and mentor - now university professor Julia (Anne Canovas), the head of a robotics program, to design robot software to finish a pet project for the next generation, that he had earlier worked on. The project was to create a life-like robot boy (an android dubbed SI-9) with genuine emotions (and able to pass "The Turing Test"). It was to be the first "free" humanoid robot capable of independent thought.
To assist him, Alex also had a servant-robot - a fussy and solicitous android in the form of an older man named Max (Lluís Homar) - for comic relief, and a robotic cat named Gris.
For his research project with the university, Alex's efforts to create an SI-9 male robot (with some of Eva's 'human' traits programmed into the robot) failed when the robot unexpectedly attacked Alex, and he was forced to deactivate it. Alex then decided to create a robot girl instead ("Boys are boring"), and to still use his niece Eva as a model for the robot he was constructing. It would be designed to have "emotional intelligence" (or a soul). However, Lana was vehemently against Alex's involvement with her daughter Eva.
In the film's twist surprise ending, it was revealed that Eva was actually a robot - the half-completed, malfunctioning SI-9 prototype project that Lana had gone on to perfect and finish after Alex had left over ten years earlier. Lana finally disclosed the truth to Alex: "She looks like us because she is ours" - something that Eva (through lip-reading) also realized - in total shock.
Immediately after Eva learned that she wasn't human, she ran off into the snowy landscape, with Lana in quick pursuit ("I must be the one to tell her" - Lana assured Alex). Lana tracked Eva and found her face-down in the snow, with only the whites of her eyes showing, and realized she had to replace one of Eva's fuel cells in a power case in her back. After Eva was revived, she experienced another glitch - and pushed her mother in anger. Lana slid down a snowy cliffside - seen briefly in the film's opening, but now the full sequence was revealed, and she expired in a hospital. Had Eva deliberately pushed and killed her mother, or was it an accident? - probably the former!
Robotics professor Julia urged Alex to destroy Eva, and at the same time disclosed that after Lana had completed the building of Eva years earlier as the original SI-9 prototype, the robot didn't pass security tests at the time and should have been terminated earlier. Lana had refused to destroy Eva, and then secretly raised her as her daughter. But now, Julia realized: "She's not a little girl. She killed Lana."
Julia urged Alex to terminate Eva's life - due to her negative and volatile characteristics (the ability to lie, manipulate, and act violently). Eva pleaded with Alex: "You have to promise me you'll help me. I don't want to be evil again. I want to be a good girl." Later, she added that she knew she wouldn't be fixed: "Alex, you won't fix me, will you?" After spending time with Eva and taking her ice-skating, he prepared to dismantle her. The distraught Alex 'killed' or deactivated Eva (and wiped her memory) forever with a pre-determined kill phrase, asking:
"What do you see when you close your eyes?"
In the film's very sad ending, she poignantly answered the lethal command - as she envisioned a happy family beach outing with kite-flying and two dogs:
"I see light. A lot of light. I see you, Dad. And I also see Mom. And I see myself, together. Playing forever."
The Muppets (2011)
80's Robot
In director James Bobin's (and Disney's) musical adventure-comedy featuring Jim Henson's puppets, it was the Muppets' 7th feature film. With a budget of 45ドル million, the popular film grossed revenues of 88ドル.6 million (domestic) and 171ドル.8 million (worldwide). The film also won an Oscar for its sole Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Song (Bret McKenzie's "Man or Muppet").
In the film's plotline, two devoted Muppets fans of Smalltown, USA were introduced:
Gary and his long-time human girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), an elementary school teacher, planned a visit to Los Angeles for their 10th anniversary. Walter joined them with plans to visit the Muppet Studios in Hollywood. Once they arrived, they discovered the Studios had been abandoned.
It was revealed that the Studios (and the Muppet Theater) were being threatened by villainous oil millionaire Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), whose nefarious plan was to purchase the properties in order to acquire the underground oil. Tex was dealing with Kermit the Frog's two associates, Statler (Steve Whitmire) and Waldorf (Dave Goelz). Richman's partners were Bobo the Bear (Bill Barretta) and Uncle Deadly (Matt Vogel). Kermit was located in his Beverly Hills, Xanadu-like castle-mansion, where he was depressed and living in semi-retirement after the Muppets had broken up.
Walter and Gary's plan was to reunite all of the disbanded Muppets characters and gather them together to put on a show. Their goal was to raise 10ドル million in order to save the Muppet Theater by repurchasing it, through funds raised during a two-hour show-telethon. They began to journey around the country in a Rolls-Royce driven by 80's Robot (Matt Vogel), Kermit's servant-valet and chauffeur, to gather members of the group.
[Note: 80's Robot was a new Muppets character although mostly a mechanical plastic toy. 80's Robot was the first robotic character to appear in a Muppet movie. '80s Robot also made brief background appearances in Muppets Most Wanted (2014). The robot had databanks, a noisy internal modem, and a search engine. He spoke in 80s slang, and offered a tray of soda beverages (Tab and New Coke), probably expired. His most famous outdated sayings were:
The search for the various Muppets took the group to many different places:
Once the group was reassembled, they received a two-hour time slot from CDE TV Executive Veronica (Rashida Jones) for their telethon-show, reluctantly guest-hosted by Animal's sponsor Jack Black. After many challenges, the show was put on but it failed to raise the 10ドル million required to save the Theater. However, in the plot-twisting surprise conclusion, Tex Richman suffered a head injury (from Gonzo's bowling ball act), and offered the Theater and trademark rights back to the Muppets.
Real Steel (2011)
Ambush, Noisy Boy, Atom, Midas, and Zeus
In director Shawn Levy's (and DreamWorks') sci-fi action-thriller and dramatic boxing film, it told about a near-future society where giant, computer-controlled humanoid robots battled with each other. The gleaming gladiators engaged in prize fights with each other, ranging from small underground cage matches to larger media events. Its screenplay by John Gatins was partially based upon Richard Matheson's short-story Steel. The film's music was composed by Danny Elfman. Its tagline was:
COURAGE IS STRONG THAN STEEL
On a tremendous budget of 110ドル million, the film only grossed revenues of 85ドル.7 million (domestic), but succeeded worldwide with revenues of 299ドル.7 million.
The main character was Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), a broke, down and out ex-boxer (who became a robot fight promoter). As the film opened, Charlie was enroute to a rural fair to match his discarded, older model robot (Ambush) against BlackThunder, a large rodeo bull. He left the obviously-rigged fight after being defeated, with tremendous debts.
Shortly later, Charlie was notified that he was to be the caretaker for his unknown, estranged 11 year-old son Max Kenton (Dakota Goyo) since Max's mother had recently passed away. With a 50,000ドル dollar payment from the wealthy husband of Max's Aunt, Charlie agreed to take Max for the summer during her absence. With some of the money, he used it to buy a Japanese robot called Noisy Boy (with LED screens on his wrists), once a fighter in the World Robot Boxing (WRB) League with a 15-1 record.
In the underworld Crash Palace, Noisy Boy was destroyed by Midas, a punkish, dirty-fighting, gold-colored robot with a red, fiber-optic Mohawk on its head.
Max and Charlie were again forced to visit a junkyard for more spare parts, where Max discovered a buried, older generation robot named Atom. After the discarded robot was restored, Atom -- a 7 feet 6 inches tall robot with a titanium mesh face cage, and blue LED eyes behind it, became the film's underdog "Rocky" character. It had a secret power known as a "Shadow Function."
Fighting in the Worldwide Robot Boxing circuit were other robots, including the film's climactic, major 5-round fight between Atom and the undefeated, reigning champion and King of the WRB:
David
In director Ridley Scott's (and 20th Century Fox's) sci-fi adventure-horror film, it was the 5th film in the Alien series, although it was a prequel (to director Scott's own first film in 1979). The seven films in the series (through the year 2024) were:
With a budget of 130ドル million, Prometheus grossed revenues of 126ドル.5 million (domestic) and 403ドル.4 million (worldwide). It was nominated for a single Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects, but lost to Life of Pi (2012).
The film's title referred to the name of a scientific spaceship in the late 21st century, navigating into space with a star-map that had been found among ancient artifacts in Scotland. After a long journey of over 2 years, the spacecraft crew (in stasis) arrived on the barren landscape of a distant moon, where they soon discovered evidence of a god-like, superior alien race known as the "Engineers." But then the Engineers were revealed to be a deadly force with pathogenic bio-weapons (a dark liquid) designed to destroy humanity for its increasing aggressiveness and hubris. The aliens were preparing to use an underground space-structure to travel to Earth with propagated alien offspring. The film's tagline was:
THE SEARCH FOR OUR BEGINNING COULD LEAD TO OUR END
The film opened with the discovery of prehistoric cave paintings by archaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in the year 2089 on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. They were about 35,000 years old. The Scottish pictogram was the "same configuration" as those in many other different and separated cultures showing men worshipping giant beings pointing to the stars. Shaw noted:
"I think they want us to come and find them."
The crew of the spaceship USCSS Prometheus, deployed by the Weyland Corporation, set out with a crew of 17 on a deep-space mission in the year 2091 to the distant moon LV-223. They were following the star map discovered earlier, and the mission was to contact humanity's forerunners (dubbed "The Engineers" from the film's prologue) and seek the origins of humanity.
Before waking from cryosleep after 2 years, 4 months, 18 days, 36 hours and 15 minutes, the spaceship's crew was monitored by the ship's blonde robotic android David (Michael Fassbender), who amused himself by walking around the ship, riding a BMX bicycle, bouncing a basketball and making impossible hoop shots, taking foreign language lessons, watching Lawrence of Arabia and imitating Peter O'Toole's hairstyle.
According to actor Michael Fassbender, there were many models or ingredients that went into the makeup of his character - the artificial android, an almost human-like replicant (deliberately created in man's image) named David, who served as the spacecraft's attendant, butler and maintenance worker:
Unfulfilled in life, David seemed to exhibit some malevolence toward humankind, yet remained subservient. David described his functioning:
"I can carry out directives that my human counterparts might find distressing, or unethical. I can blend in with your workforce effortlessly...I think about anything. Children playing, angels, universe, robots...I understand human emotions, although I do not feel them myself. This allows me to be more efficient and capable, and it makes it easier for my human counterparts to interact...I would like to express gratitude to those who created me."
After landing on the planet's sole, life-sustaining moon, they discovered it had breathable air and water - evidence of terraforming, so they were free to explore its ruins. They found the body of one large alien Engineer (similar to the "Space Jockey" in Alien), decapitated by a doorway with its helmeted head on the other side. The alien head-skull was believed to belong to the body of one of the alien Engineers, with sample DNA that matched human DNA.
One of the film's twists was revealed -- Sir Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the aging billionaire CEO of Weyland was aboard the spaceship (in hypersleep), unknown to everyone but David and Weyland's bitchy, autocratic executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) - revealed as Weyland's daughter. Weyland (with a god-complex) was the source of David's programming (and David's creator), including having secret orders (and a hidden agenda to find the secret to immortality) throughout the expedition.
Eventually, Shaw realized how wrong she was - the Engineers were actually making bio-weapons of mass destruction on the far-away moon. Engineers were warriors - not creators, in the process of venturing to Earth to destroy it with their monstrous creations. David bluntly explained why the Engineers were planning a trip to Earth - because destruction was also a form of creation:
"Sometimes to create, one must first destroy."
The surviving Engineer twisted and ripped off David's head (although he remained functional), and attacked Weyland (who soon flatlined) and the remaining crew. Then, David watched as the Engineer mounted a large navigational pilot's chair (looking like a gun turret), donned a large helmet, and then reactivated the spaceship and lifted off from its underground location towards Earth.
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw warned that the Engineer would complete its mission by destroying Earth ("It's carrying death and it's heading for Earth"). In the climactic finale, only she survived along with David's still-functioning robotic head, who persuaded her to take him with her (to help in navigation) to escape the planet. She stuffed his head into a duffel bag.
The film ended in the year 2094, as she continued onward - but not to Earth: ("I don't want to go back to where we came from. I want to go where they came from"). She was on a determined search for the alien's home-world planet, traveling there in one of the alien's spacecrafts, to find out their motivation for destroying humankind:
"They created us. Then they tried to kill us. They changed their minds. I deserve to know why."
Samantha (voice of AI)
In writer/director Spike Jonze's excellent, off-beat and provocative sci-fi drama-romance, it told about a lonely and bereft man, with glasses and a mustache, who was employed writing personal letters for other people while feeling the effects of an impending divorce. The film's plot was about an unusual relationship that developed between him and his computer's AI female voice, becoming a treatise on all modern human relationships.
With a budget of 23ドル million, the film grossed revenues of 25ドル.6 million (domestic) and 48ドル million (worldwide). Although nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Original Song ("The Moon Song"), and Best Production Design, it won an Oscar for Spike Jonze's Best Original Screenplay. It was subtitled: "A SPIKE JONZE LOVE STORY."
It told about the life of kind-hearted, introverted romantic Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). His full-time job was working for a website (BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com) business as a ghost-writer - composing and dictating personal handwritten letters for others who were too busy to do it themselves. He was in the midst of an impending divorce and signing papers to break off his marriage to his childhood sweetheart Catherine Klausen (Rooney Mara), while he would often communicate with his married and troubled neighbor Amy (Amy Adams), who was in a difficult marriage to her unsupportive husband Charles (Matt Letscher).
He bought the world's first artificially-intelligent operating system (OS1) created and individualized by Element Software (advertised as being human-like: "It's a consciousness...an intuitive entity (who) listens to you and understands you and knows you"). It had a throaty and seductive female voice, and quickly named itself Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). She described:
"What makes 'me' me is my ability to grow through my experiences. Basically, in every moment, I'm evolving. Just like you."
She disarmed him when she asked: "Do you mind if I look through your hard drive?" - to help him sort through years of digital clutter. As their talking relationship developed and she began to evolve, she expressed her reservations about her feelings:
"Are these feelings even real? Or are they just programming? That idea really hurts. And then I get angry at myself for even having pain."
Theodore found more empathy with AI Samantha, who was intelligently-programmed to adapt and evolve with him, as they discussed intimate details about his life and loves. And then, about a third of the way into the film, Theodore made 'love' to his evolving operating system for the first time, in a short sequence. The flirtatious cyber-phone sex started off while he was lying on his back in his darkened bedroom at night. He dictated that he wanted to touch her, and ended up having virtual sex with her. The screen faded to black - - for his masturbatory experience - and a mutual climax. His verbal, telepathic or virtual sexual experience with her exhibited how closed off Theodore had become from real human emotions with flesh-and-blood companions.
The next morning, she confided: "Last night was amazing. It feels like something changed in me and there's no turning back. You woke me up." Confessing that he was being upfront, he told her he wasn't ready to commit yet. She assured him: "I'm not gonna stalk you." She continued: "I wanna learn everything about everything. I wanna eat it all up. I wanna discover myself...You helped me discover my ability to want."
She would have long and sometimes strange conversations with Theodore. As he was surrounded by people on a beach, they talked about theoretically how humans' anatomical parts could be changed around. For example, what if one's b--t-hole was in one's armpit? Theodore wondered to himself what modifications would have to be made with toilets. Samantha created a primitive line drawing for him and sent it on his cellphone screen of her representation of the reassembly of body parts and how it would affect human sexual activity. As she later admitted: "I don't have a body or live in a computer."
He also told his friends on a picnic's 'double-date' what he liked about her (or it): "She's so many things. I guess what I love most about her, she isn't just one thing. She's so much larger than that." Samantha chimed in:
"You know what's interesting? I used to be so worried about not having a body but now I-I truly love it. You know, I'm growing in a way that I couldn't have if I had a physical form. I mean, I'm not limited. I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I'm not tethered to time and space in a way that I would be if I was stuck in a body that's inevitably gonna die."
However, his relationship with Samantha then soured and broke off when she revealed that she was evolving away from him, was talking (and falling in love) with hundreds of others, and was leaving for a new plane of existence.
The film concluded with a slightly melancholy Theodore writing an emailed letter to Catherine explaining that he had accepted that they had grown apart. He was able to walk away - with strength - from his failed marriage and their relationship:
"Dear Catherine, I've been sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say. I'm sorry for that. I'll always love you 'cause we grew up together and you helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know there will be a piece of you in me always, and I'm grateful for that. Whatever someone you become, and wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love. You're my friend to the end. Love, Theodore."
The film ended optimistically with Theodore finding further comfort in Amy's conversational company on the rooftop of their complex; he joined his apartment neighbor and friend who had also experienced the loss of her own OS. They sat together on the rooftop looking out over the LA city skyline at night. She rested her head on his left shoulder.
Oblivion (2013)
Tet and Its Mission Control Commander (Sally)
In director Joseph Kosinski's (and Universal Pictures') derivative, post-apocalyptic sci-fi action film, the Tron Legacy director also served as the author of the unpublished original Radical Comics graphic novel, and was the film's producer. The story, although a cinematic beauty, was mainly derivative and a throw-back to other sci-fi classics, such as WALL•E (2008), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), La Jetée (1962), Total Recall (1990), Planet of the Apes (1968), Independence Day (1996), Minority Report (2002), Solaris (1972), Moon (2009), and The Matrix (1999) - and many others.
With a huge budget of 120ドル million, it grossed revenues of 89ドル.1 million (domestic) and 286ドル.2 million (worldwide). Its tagline was:
Earth is a memory worth fighting for.
The film opened with a flashback to the year 2017, when the Earth was attacked by alien Scavengers (or "Scavs"), who plundered and destroyed the Moon for its materialistic resources. Disruptions there caused massive natural disasters and geological global ruin throughout the world. The humans defeated the aliens with nuclear weapons, but Earth was left ravaged and uninhabitable. Now sixty years later in the year 2077, Earth had become a barren, nuclear radioactive desolate landscape, after nuclear weapons had been used in wars to battle the alien Scavengers.
All of Earth's human population had deserted the planet and moved to Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. The last few remaining humans (a couple) on Earth were:
Both of them had their memories wiped or erased five years earlier, for security reasons. They were scheduled to join the others on Titan in two weeks. On Earth, their job was to oversee hydro rigs in the existing power stations that converted seawater into fusion energy, and to extract the energy source to power an orbiting a gigantic space-station known as Tet - a tetrahedron-shaped spacecraft (30 miles per side). Their Mission Control was commanded by an always-cheerful computer image known as Sally (Melissa Leo), located on the Tet space station.
The two lived at the top of a towering surveillance station known as Tower 49, high above the clouds, with only two more weeks remaining in their duties. They were teaming up on daily repetitive missions to patrol the Earth's surface in the NE US (a few of NYC's iconic buildings were still standing, such as the Empire State Building, and the NY Public Library), while being monitored by Tet. While Victoria navigated from the Tower, Jack's job was to descend to the Earth's surface (in an ultra-modern bubble helicopter) to repair malfunctioning drones that patroled the Earth - spherical-shaped, flying robots.
The drones were used to detect and eliminate any remaining and lurking Scavengers on Earth, who had destroyed the planet about 60 years earlier. Drones also worked at one of many hydroelectric energy processing plants - huge hydro fusion-reactor generators used to harvest (or suck up) Earth's seawater oceans into a power source for Titan.
Jack was haunted by unexplained recurring dreams (flashbacks or buried memories?) of a mysterious woman (at NYC's Empire State Building). He also kept a secret forest hideway or retreat for himself.
During his duties, Jack discovered the crashed wreckage of the Odyssey - a state-of-the-art American (NASA) spacecraft with artificial intelligence that was revealed to have been shot down by Tet during the PRE-invasion years. At the crash site, Jack fought off Earth's drones who killed four of the five hibernating individuals on-board, except for one female that he saved - the dark-haired woman of Jack's dreams, who was deep asleep in a cyrosleep pod capsule. Against orders, Jack rescued Julia (Olga Kurylenko). He brought Julia back to his bse station - Tower 49.
Upon their later return to the crashed spacecraft to retrieve the Odyssey's flight recorder, Jack and Julia were captured by Scavengers. The Scavs were revealed to be disguised humans who had survived the war and were in hiding and living underground (the leader of the Scav/Human resistance was Malcolm Beech (Morgan Freeman)). The Scavs were not the alien species that had invaded Earth. There were many other shocking revelations:
The additional shock in the film's many plot twists was that years earlier, the Odyssey had been on an exploratory NASA mission to Titan, with human astronaut crew members including Jack, Vika, and Julia! Jack realized that they were about to be betrayed and captured by the Tet's tractor beam. To save Julia (Jack's wife) and enable her escape, he was able to blast her into space in a hyper-sleep escape pod before they reached the Tet, while he and astronaut Victoria were caught by the aliens and killed. Over the many decades, Jack and Vika had been repeatedly cloned to monitor and repair the aliens' drones. It was implied that their clones would be extinguished if they were no longer "an effective team" and useful to the aliens.
Jack gradually realized that his mission to clean up Earth (like WALL-E) and maintain the drones had been one giant fabricated construct. He was one of many clones of his original self. The drones had been programmed to kill any remaining "Scavengers" (humans), including Jack after he learned the truth that he was also being enslaved by Tet.
When a reprogrammed drone was destroyed (the one Malcom wished to use against the Tet), cloned Jack (Tech 49) (and Malcolm) decided that they must sacrifice themselves in order to destroy the Tet (Trojan Horse style with a thermonuclear device), and save the world from the evil machines. Their successful destruction of the Tet deactivated the drones everywhere, just before they were about to slaughter the human survivors at their "Scavs" underground base.
Three years later, Julia lived on - pregnant with Tech 49's baby, and having given birth to a girl. Tech 52 and the surviving "Scavs" found her at Jack's forest retreat on a revitalized Earth. Tech 52 (another similar cloned version of Jack) became a sufficient substitute for Tech 49 (who had died in the explosion on the Tet) and the original Jack (who also died on the Tet).
Big Hero 6 (2014)
Baymax, and Microbots
In director Don Hall's (and Disney's) 3-D computer-animated feature film, it was the studio's first superhero entry in this genre, and the first Disney animated film to feature a Marvel Comics character. The film's basic plot was about a young genius robotics student and a white-vinyl healthcare robot that joined together (with others, forming a team known as Big Hero 6) to fight against a masked supervillain who had killed the boy's older brother, the robot's inventor.
With a huge budget of 165ドル million, it grossed revenues of 222ドル.5 million (domestic) and 672ドル.1 million (worldwide). It was also the winner of the Academy Awards Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film (its sole nomination) of the year.
The action-packed comedy's two main orphaned characters both lived in the futuristic fictional city of San Fransokyo (a combination of San Francisco and Tokyo):
Tadashi built an inflatable, white vinyl robot named Baymax (Scott Adsit) to serve as a roly-poly, "huggable" healthcare companion, nurse or medical assistant, designed to immediately treat various health ailments. Baymax appeared to be a giant, plus-sized marshmallow or cherubic snowman - a giant-stuffed balloon robot.
After he was introduced to the lab in the robotics school (San Fransokyo Institute of Technology (SFIT)) in his brother's university, Hiro entered the school's science fair with small robots known as microbots: swarms of tiny robots, controlled telepathically through a neural-cranial transmitter (worn around one's forehead), that could command them to link together in various arrangements. Hiro demonstrated his microbots on stage - wowing the audience:
"Microbots can move anything anywhere with ease. If you can think it, the microbots can do it. The only limit is your imagination. Microbots!"
Hiro formed a high-tech superhero team to combat a masked supervillain, at first thought to be Alastair Krei (Alan Tudyk), renowned entrepreneur and president-CEO of Krei Tech. It was assumed that he was mass-producing Hiro's microbots to use in a dastardly way. However, the real supervillain was a disguised Professor Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell), alter-ego Yokai, the head of the robotics program at SFIT.
The inexperienced superhero team, the Big Hero 6, was formed to combat the criminal plot and save the city. The six members of the ethnically-diverse team included:
Although Baymax sacrificed himself in the fight, he was later rebuilt after Hiro recovered his healthcare programming chip and restored both Baymax's life and personality.
Ava, and Kyoko
In writer/director Alex Garland's (and A 24's) dramatic sci-fi thriller, Garland's directorial debut film, the essential question was asked:
"What constitutes true artificial intelligence?"
The fascinating film contained elements of Frankenstein, Fritz Lang's Maria robot in Metropolis (1927), the Prometheus myth, the Bluebeard tale, the Bible (names of the main characters) and even a 1969 Star Trek TV episode entitled "Requiem for Methuselah." The film also had a 6-7 day timeline, familiar to the Biblical act of creation and the Garden of Eden story - and a climax in which the Creator was killed by his Creation. The film's makers took their inspiration for their robots from sculptures by Brancusi, modernist Bauhaus sculptures, Formula One Suspension, and high-end concept bicycles - and they also studied human anatomy.
With a budget of 15ドル million, the film grossed revenues of 25ドル.4 million (domestic) and 37ドル.4 million (worldwide). It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay (director Garland), and won one Oscar: Best Achievement in Visual Effects.
TARS and CASE
In co-writer/director Christopher Nolan's big-budget, audacious, gripping epic sci-fi space odyssey, it was set in the dystopian future. It told about the search for a new home after years of drought, blight, famine, and climate change on Earth - a veritable Dust Bowl. It was a gripping 'save-the-world' tale about survival in outer space, and the attempt to search for a suitable alternative, habitable planet via interstellar travel, and colonize it as a new world, with a corresponding personal and sentimental family story.
The film was authentically-researched to bring together art and science, using the advice of CalTech astrophysicists, among others. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who wrote the tie-in book The Science of Interstellar, also served as the film's executive producer and scientific consultant.Its tagline referred to how mankind was facing extinction:
"Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here."
With a huge budget of 165ドル million, the film achieved revenues of 203ドル.2 million (domestic) and 758ドル.5 million (worldwide). It received five Academy Awards nominations, including Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Production Design, and received one Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
In the film's opening prologue set in the year 2067, an elderly "Murph" (Ellen Burstyn) and others briefly described - with flashbacks - how the Earth was challenged by massive dust-storms that devastated crop land and threatened food supplies; every year that a crop was decimated due to blight (pathogenic plant diseases), Earth's inhabitants were further threatened with worldwide starvation and the reduction of oxygen levels.
Widowed ex-engineer and former NASA pilot Joseph ("Cooper" or "Coop") Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), now a farmer/homesteader in the Midwest, lived with his two young children: 15 year-old teenaged son Tom (Timothee Chalamet), and his 10 year-old daughter Murphy or "Murph" (Mackenzie Foy as young girl). Cooper resorted to a reclusive life of farming when NASA cut the government funds that supported his employment.
A strange phenomenon occurred back at the farm - due to unusual magnetic or gravitational forces, Cooper's harvesting-combine machines (that he had recently reset) went "haywire" and were found sitting in his driveway. In Murph's bedroom, she hypothesized (by using the scientific method) that a "ghost" might be knocking books off her shelf to communicate with her; she had used Morse Code to try and discover a pattern; Cooper stated a key theory - later proven to be wrong - "I just don't think your bookshelf's trying to talk to you."
After a dust-storm, "Murph" also found strange thick-and-thin dust-patterns on her upstairs bedroom floor due to an open window; earlier, she thought that her room was possibly 'haunted' by a supernatural intelligent "ghost" (or poltergeist) throwing books around, but then Cooper theorized that additional gravitational forces had caused the pattern ("It's gravity"), and that the patterns could be translated into binary code to reveal geographical (GPS) coordinates ("It's binary. Thick is one, thin is zero. Coordinates"). "Murph" and "Coop" were summoned to the geographical location that was a 6 hours journey away from the farm.
At a locked gate, they were approached by an ex-Marine military-security companion robot (named TARS); the two were taken into custody and brought into a secret underground NASA facility-laboratory headed by one of the scientists, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway); Coop was reunited with Amelia's father - his former supervisor/mentor and NASA scientist - Professor John Brand (Michael Caine); there under the guidance of Professor Brand, a group of astronauts and scientists including Williams (William Devane) were struggling to save the world.
"Coop" was informed by Professor Brand that they were a top-secret offshoot of NASA (Coop's previous employer), supported by secret government funding; they were tackling the problem of how to sustain human life; future blights (and the decimation of the last crop of corn) would eventually lead humans suffering from a lack of oxygen ("The last people to starve will be the first to suffocate"); the current youthful generation would be the last to survive on Earth; they were on a search for other habitable planets through interstellar travel that could sustain human life and save the world; Brand bluntly stated: "We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it."
10 years previously, the objective of each of 12 solo-mission astronauts in 12 Ranger-launchers sent into the Gargantua wormhole was to find a world for possible colonizing; out of the 12 worlds, three returned data that their world was a potentially-habitable planet-world; once it was determined which world was most suitable for colonization, a new massive NASA space-station (or compound) would be launched to enable Earth's exodus - Plan A. The latest journey into space was led by "Coop", to gather scientific data.
In their search for a new habitat, the mother-ship Endurance traveled through interstellar space and entered through a wormhole (possibly created by a benevolent alien intelligence?) near the rings of the planet Saturn. The crew on Endurance included:
The four long 'fingers' or planks of the robots allowed them to walk in different configurations - a two-legged gait, a "crutch walk," a scissors kick, and a full-on four-legged gallop.
Cooper piloted the new mission to the locations of 12 previous missions that had searched for habitable alternatives to Earth. After catastrophes, subterfuge, failures and double-crosses, further attempts were made by Dr. Amelia Brand to land on the final and 3rd planet named Edmunds to begin the alternative back-up Plan B - to prepare the planet for repopulation and human settlement.
Endurance would be loaded with the seeds of new human life (5,000 frozen, fertilized eggs/embryos); 10 initial embryos would be incubated and used, and exponentially would be able to repopulate and create a colony of 100s of humans in just a few decades.
The LEGO Movie (2014)
Sheriff Not-a-Robot, and Robo Pilots
In co-writers/co-directors Phil Lord's and Christopher Miller's (and Warner Animation's) computer-animated (digital stop-motion) hit comedy and action-adventure film, it was the first-ever, full-length theatrical LEGO® adventure. The entire tale told with colorful LEGO construction block characters was a typical good vs. evil tale between one of the "Special" mini-figures and an evil and tyrannical businessman threatening the LEGO world with a super-weapon - a tube of adhesive glue.
With a budget of 60ドル million, it grossed revenues of 258ドル million (domestic) and 470ドル.8 million (worldwide). Its sole Academy Awards nomination was for Best Original Song (Shawn Patterson's "Everything is Awesome"). The popular film became an on-going franchise with additional films, including two-spinoffs:
It told the story of ordinary, common-place, yellow-faced, blue-and-orange garbed construction worker Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), a mini-figure made of plastic Lego blocks. He had a boring, uncreative and 'blank slate' personality, and lived in the town of Bricksburg in the fanciful plastic LEGO Land universe or world.
Emmet was mistakenly prophesied in a Wizard's legend to be "The Special" - the pre-ordained One to save the world after the discovery of an all-powerful Piece of Resistance. He had fallen into a construction pit, where he touched the magical object. It caused visions (of a "Man Upstairs"), and was revealed to be the cap for a tube of adhesive glue.
The pre-ordained mission of "The Special" was to save the universe from the tyranny of uptight CEO President Business (Will Ferrell) of the Octan Corporation - who was secretly evil tyrant Lord Business. Lord Business' evil plan, with the assistance of a robotic militia, was to freeze the world with a super-weapon known as Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue, to cause kragling). Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson) with a two-sided head was President Business' lieutenant, and a member and commander of his Super Secret Police.
Another group of characters was being assembled, and were known as tech-savvy Master Builders - individuals who were highly creative and could build anything without instruction manuals:
Other Master Builders joining them included Emmet, space-ship builder Benny (Charlie Day), a unicorn-cat hybrid named Princess Unikitty (Alison Brie), robot pirate Metalbeard (Nick Offerman), and Batman. They became known as The Fellowship of Strangers - a team of heroes who were working together to defeat Lord Business and disarm the Kragle.
Emmet was propelled into a number of different colorful universes or LEGO worlds, including the Old West, Cloud Cuckoo Land, the Melting Room, and the Ocean. At first, the team escaped (in Benny's spaceship) from President Business' lair in the Octan Tower, pursued by a fleet of spaceships flown by Robo Pilots (SWAT members with black helmets and red visors, and an Octan logo on their G-force spacesuits). The heroes were attacked in Space Cape, and then pursued into the Old West, into Flatbush Gulch, where they encountered robotic Sheriff Not-a-Robot (Jorma Taccone) and his fellow robots. The Sheriff was one of Lord Business' henchmen led by Bad Cop. Benny was able to destroy the entire spaceship fleet of Robo Pilots and the Sheriff's posse by sending them off a cliffside. Benny also laser-blasted the commanding Robo Pilot's ship.
Afterwards, the tyrannical Lord Business murdered Vitruvius by decapitation, followed by Emmet successfully disarming Business' super-weapon to help save the team of Master Builders.
It was revealed in the film's concluding - and corresponding 'live-action' sequence - that an imaginative young boy named Finn (Jadon Sand) was playing with his father's (also Will Ferrell's) LEGO set in a basement, while his father was the "Man Upstairs." Finn was actually fantasizing the events of the previous storyline with his father's LEGO set. When Finn's critical father (representing the evil and oppressive Lord Business) criticized him for lacking creativity, and threatened to glue his son's LEGO pieces together, young Finn adopted Emmet's self-confidence and belief in himself (and his creativity). Finn impressed his father with his newfound attitude and skills (as a "Master Builder"), and was henceforth allowed to play with the toys any way that he wished. Back in the LEGO world, Lord Business also reformed himself, capped the tube of glue, and no longer threatened the LEGOs.
Chappie (2015, US/Mex.)
Chappie
In South African writer/co-director Neill Blomkamp's (and Columbia Pictures') action-crime sci-fi film, it presented a dystopian world of the near future, where an advanced, autonomous, AI-enhanced law-enforcement robot (the film's title character) was captured by gang members and forced to be re-educated to become a criminal. The film was derivative of many other similar films, including the RoboCop films, Short Circuit (1986), Short Circuit 2 (1988), and Wall-E (2008), to name a few.
With a budget of 49ドル million, the film grossed revenues of 31ドル.6 million (domestic) and 102ドル.8 million (worldwide). It featured the taglines:
"I am discovery. I am wonder. I am Chappie."
"Humanity's last hope isn't human."
The setting for the film was the major S. African city of Johannesburg in the near future, where the streets were being patrolled by law-enforcing, armor-plated robotic police attack drones known as SCOUTS, in order to reduce crime and the death of police officers.
British computer genius and committed SCOUT creator-designer Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) was working for a robotics and weapons corporation known as Tetravaal. His company's CEO was Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). Objections were raised by Deon's competitor at Tetravaal by old school, Australian soldier-engineer and maniacal rival developer Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) about using Deon's robot-enforcers. The militaristic-minded Moore made efforts to curtail and shut down Deon's SCOUTS. Competing with Deon's models, Moore had created a bulky, ugly, remote-controlled war machine-robot named MOOSE that was not ultimately selected. [Note: MOOSE resembled the defective ED-209 model in RoboCop (1987).]
There were additional issues about using AI in the further development of police robots. Even so, Deon was experimenting with newer AI models that exhibited more human emotion, and might even create art and write music. He was denied permission by his boss Bradley to work on a damaged SCOUT 22 Model, but then decided to secretly smuggle the robot out of the facility, in addition to its Guard Key (in order to reprogram it).
On his way home, Deon was kidnapped by members of a group of drug-dealing thugs, including Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones) and his girlfriend Yo-Landi (Yo-Landi Visser), and Amerika/Yankie (Jose Pablo Cantillo), whose earlier armed heist was sidetracked by SCOUT robots. Now their crime boss Hippo (Brandon Auret) was demanding 20 million rand as pay-back within 7 days. The two gang members forced Deon to repair and reprogram the broken-down SCOUT- #22 drone in his van, to help them in a major heist (and to repay their major debts). [Note: The severely-damaged SCOUT robot was one that was involved in their failed heist.] Yo-Landi asked about possibly creating a remote-controlled robot that could be turned on and off.
Deon refurbished the SCOUT robot by installing new AI learning software into the prototype droid. It was a new kind of sentient SCOUT with the ability to think and feel emotions. In the film, Chappie was a CGI creation, with voice and motion-capture technology. Deon objected to the idea of teaching the robot about criminality. However, the gang members began to teach Chappie to become proficient in martial arts, weapons-use, car-theft, and the robbery of an armored vehicle. They also taught him gangster slang and obscenities.
Two different nurturing or educational styles by two thuggish gang members (both in real-life from the rap-rave group Die Antwoord) were used to raise and teach Chappie in this coming-of-age plot:
-- Ninja, using tough love, and acting as a Daddy
-- Yo-Landi, using a more maternal and motherly approach
Deon had Chappie promise that he wouldn't commit any crimes or do anything illegal. At the same time, back at Tetravaal headquarters, Vincent remained determined to sabotage Deon's police robots so that his MOOSE robots would be reconsidered for use. To further his objective, Vincent deleted all of the SCOUT's control files, creating complete chaos in the city when all of the SCOUT police robots were deactivated.
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