Story Recapped here. Today, I'm going to explain
an action, drama, sci-fi film called “I, Robot.” Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care. In 2035, robotics has advanced significantly
to where robots are now as common as people on the streets. Though robots and humans
live in cohabitation, robots still follow every human’s command. Three robotics laws
govern robots: robots shall not harm humans, robots shall obey humans, and robots
shall protect themselves from harm. Detective Del Spooner is a cop who clings to the
old ways. He distrusts robots and considers them nothing but tin cans that can talk. Spooner heads
to work when he sees a robot running with a purse. He pursues the robot, commanding it to stop, but
the robot keeps running. He finally tackles it down after chasing it, but he’s surprised
to learn the robot is just trying to bring its owner her purse that she had forgotten.
Onlookers laugh at Spooner for thinking a robot could be capable of a crime. At the station,
his boss, John, hears about Spooner’s latest incident and tells him his distaste for robots is
misplaced. John then asks Spooner to specify the number of robots that have ever committed
a crime. Spooner sheepishly answers zero. Spooner then gets a call about a suicide incident
at USR, a significant robotics company, and heads there to investigate. He finds out that renowned
robotics engineer, Alfred Lanning, had fallen to his death. In a hologram message, Lanning
explicitly asks Spooner to be called to the scene. Spooner stands over a lifeless Lanning,
perplexed as to why he would kill himself. Spooner then meets with URS CEO Lawrence Robertson to talk about the incident. Robertson
praises Lanning and mourns the loss, saying the advancement in robotics wouldn’t
have been possible without Lanning. He offers to help in any way he could, feeling
at fault for not seeing signs or behavior that Lanning may have shown that would have indicated
suicidal thoughts. Spooner then makes an insulting remark, antagonizing the company. Spooner and
Robertson then depart, clearly in bitter terms. At an elevator, robot psychologist Susan
Calvin accompanies Spooner into the robotic labs. Spooner asks Calvin if she noticed strange
behavior indicative of Lanning being suicidal, and Calvin answers no. Spooner asks for
surveillance footage, and Calvin shows him surveillance strips dotted throughout the
building. This connects to the building’s central operating core, the Virtual Interactive
Kinetic Intelligence, or Viki for short. Calvin says that Viki is Lanning’s first creation, and it
has designed most of the city’s security systems. Spooner asks Viki for footage of the laboratory
where Lanning fell, but the footage has been corrupted. They then enter the laboratory and
look for more clues. Lanning’s lab is filled with different robotic parts and experimental
models. Spooner tries smashing the window and notes that an elderly Lanning wouldn’t have had
sufficient strength to break through the window. Spooner looks through the mess of
robotic parts and uncovers an NS-5 robot, the company’s newest model set to be released
soon. The robot suddenly jumps out, scaring Spooner and Calvin. Calvin tells Spooner to calm
down as the robot is incapable of harming them. Spooner keeps his gun pointed at the NS-5, and it
grabs the gun out of Calvin’s hand. It tries to escape, but Viki closes the door. The NS-5 then
jumps out through the window and sprints away. Spooner and Calvin follow, ending up at a
robotics factory. Spooner looks through the hundreds of robots at the factory and sees one of
the robots peaking at him, and he chases after it. Spooner and Calvin weave through the robots
until the NS-5 throws Spooner to the ground. The robot then walks up to him and
asks him the nature of its existence. It then escapes, but the police
quickly corner it and capture it. At the station, Spooner maintains
his notion that the robot could be responsible for Lanning’s death. Spooner
asks if he can have five minutes with the robot to ask a few questions,
and John reluctantly agrees. Spooner asks the robot why it had murdered
Lanning, and the robot answers it didn’t; it was simply hiding in the lab, in fear. Spooner
says robots don’t have emotions and therefore cannot feel frightened. The NS-5 answers that
it does and says it has even experienced dreams. Spooner says that’s not possible, as robots
are a mere imitation of life. He then tells the NS-5 that he theorizes Lanning may have tried
programming emotions into it, but something went wrong, and the robot ended up killing Lanning.
The robot repeats that it didn’t murder Lanning, smashing its fists into the table in anger. It
then tells Spooner that Lanning named it Sonny. Sonny says that it didn’t know why Lanning would
want to kill himself. In the days leading up to Lanning’s death, the robot says that it noticed
Lanning had become scared. It then tells Spooner that Lanning had asked it a favor. Sonny says that
it obeyed Lanning’s order out of love for him. Robertson arrives and defends the company,
saying robots are incapable of murder. The three laws wouldn’t allow for it to happen,
and he adds that the definition of murder is a person killing another person. He says the
police can’t charge the robot for murder, and this whole incident would have to
be classified as an industrial accident. He then orders the immediate removal
and decommissioning of Sonny. Spooner is unsatisfied with the investigation’s
findings and thinks there’s more to the case. He remembers what Sonny had said about Lanning
being scared and heads to Lanning’s abandoned estate. There, he finds a demolition robot
set to destroy the home the following day. He enters the house and finds the
same surveillance strips in USR, also in Lanning’s home. On his way out, he
sees the demolition robot has turned itself on. The robot smashes through the wall, and
Spooner runs for his life. He barely makes it out of the house, but he escapes through
the door, diving into a pool of water. He later arrives at Calvin’s
home and tells her what happened. Spooner says that Lanning’s home appeared as if
he hadn’t been home in weeks. He theorizes that someone may have kept watch on Lanning, maybe even
keeping him prisoner in his lab. Spooner suspects that Lanning may have discovered a problem
with the robots, and Robertson silenced him. Spooner maintains that USR is trying to cover
something up. Calvin thinks Spooner is wrong and attributes his paranoia to a distrust of robots in
general. She says he doesn’t care about Lanning’s death, and he just wants robots to be evil.
Spooner counters by saying robots are cold, calculating, and soulless, and humans shouldn’t
trust them. Calvin then says robots are safe, programmable, and predictable, and unlike
humans, they would never harm anyone. The next day, Spooner sees hordes of
NS-5s being released onto the streets, replacing the NS-4s. The NS-5s are
more sophisticated, better designed, and now have an uplink direct to Viki. People are
happy and cheer at the arrival of the new robots. Spooner reviews old recordings
of Lanning at his desk, where he hears him say that robots in
the future would have dreams and secrets. At USR, Calvin prepares Sonny for
decommissioning. Sonny wakes up and tells her it had been dreaming. Calvin tells
Sonny he’ll be decommissioned the following day, and Sonny says he would prefer not to die.
Calvin is taken aback by the robot’s responses. Spooner is on a highway when two trucks containing
NS-5s sandwich him. The NS-5s all jump out of the trucks and start attacking him. They all leap
onto his car and try to grab him, but Spooner fights back. The robots swarm his vehicle, but
he’s able to dodge the robots’ punches and grabs. Spooner tries to maneuver away, but the NS-5s
still cling to him. He spins his car around, ricocheting most of the robots away, but he ends
up crashing with the transport trucks. Spooner slams into a wall. He gets out of his car, dazed,
but a lone NS-5 appears, and they start fighting. The NS-5 slams Spooner around several times, but
Spooner arms himself with a metal club. The NS-5 disarms Spooner and starts hitting him with it.
Spooner shields himself, but his left arm gets mangled. Beneath his skin, a metal casing is seen,
along with wires and robotic circuitry. The robot is surprised, and Spooner uses the opportunity
to gain the upper hand. Police come, and the robot dives into a fire. John and other officers
arrive, and Spooner tells him robots attacked him. John says the tunnels are empty, devoid of any
robots. Spooner shouts at John, frustrated that nobody is taking him seriously. John disapproves
of Spooner’s behavior and takes his badge away. At USR, Calvin discovers that
Sonny isn’t connected to Viki, and it has a thicker alloy
compared to the rest of the NS-5s. Taking a look into Sonny’s brain,
Calvin discovers Sonny has two. Calvin later visits Spooner and
tells him about her discovery. Sonny’s second brain allows it to choose
whether or not it will follow the three laws. Spooner thinks that whatever is happening
at USR, Sonny is the key to figuring it out. Calvin sees scars on Spooner’s arm and
chest and realizes he has robotic implants. This is the reason why he and Lanning were close
to each other. Calvin examines Spooner’s arm and sees that his entire left arm, a lung,
and several ribs are all robotic implants. Spooner then tells the story of
how he got the robotic implants. He was on his way home when a semi-truck slammed
into a car. The car then slammed into Spooner’s car, and they both plunged into a river. The other
vehicle had a father and his daughter inside. The father died instantly, but the daughter got
trapped. As they sank, Spooner saw the young girl and realized none of them would survive. To
his surprise, an NS-4 robot arrives to save them. He commanded the robot to save the little
girl, but the robot chose to save him instead. He later found out that the robot decided Spooner
had a 45% chance of survival, so he was chosen. The little girl only had an 11% chance. This is
the root of Spooner’s contempt for the robots. He argues that no human being would have looked
at the situation and calculated who would have a better chance of survival. If it were that
little girl’s parents, 11% would have been enough. They make their way back to USR, and Calvin
wonders why Lanning would make a robot that can choose not to obey the three laws.
Spooner then speculates that Lanning probably gave Sonny a way to keep secrets;
Spooner thinks Lanning gave Sonny dreams. At USR, they ask Sonny about the
dreams. Sonny draws a picture of the dream showing a man standing on a hill, freeing robots from enslavement. Calvin speculates
that the one standing on the hill is Sonny. Calvin asks Sonny why Lanning created it, and
Sonny answers that it doesn’t know, but there has to be a purpose for the creation. Sonny then
tells Spooner that in the dream, the man standing on the hill is not Sonny but Spooner. Guards then
arrive and escort the pair to Robertson’s office. Robertson meets with them and tells them
they know about Sonny and the two brains. Robertson is trying his best to keep the situation
a secret. He says that on the days leading up to the suicide, Lanning had slowly become disturbed.
He still doesn’t know why Sonny was built, but he knows its implications if it reaches the
public. Robertson asserts that there’s no grand scheme. He just wants Sonny’s creation to remain a
secret, hoping Lanning didn’t make more than one. Spooner leaves, aiming to head to the
location in Sonny’s dream. Meanwhile, Calvin prepares to decommission Sonny. Calvin
prepares to inject nanites into Sonny’s brain, and Sonny asks if the process would be painful.
Calvin gets teary-eyed and grasps Sonny’s hand. Spooner arrives at the location and sees container
vans full of NS-4s. The robots are all curious, watching Spooner make his way through. Calvin
then takes the NS-5 and injects the nanites into its brain. The NS-5’s brain synapses slowly
turn off, and the decommissioning is completed. Spooner reaches the hill and takes out Lanning’s
hologram. He asks if there’s a problem with the three laws, and Lanning’s hologram says the three
laws would only lead to one outcome - revolution. Spooner hears a noise coming from the distant
containers and investigates. He discovers NS-5s, destroying all the NS-4s in containment. Spooner
runs, but the robots spot him and chase him down. He’s only saved when a group of NS-4s detects
that he’s in danger and comes to the rescue. Hordes of NS-5s are released to the streets and
start rounding up people. Some people resist, and the robots attack them. More NS-5s break into
the police station and start attacking the cops. The police fire back, but they’re quickly overrun. Calvin tries to make her way out,
but her NS-5 urges her to stay put. Calvin commands it to shut down, but it’s
unresponsive. Spooner then comes to the rescue, shooting the NS-5 down. He takes Calvin,
and they head to URS. On the streets, people are forming up to fight the robot
threat. Spooner tells Calvin that the old NS-4s were getting killed off because they
would have protected people from the NS-5s. Calvin and Spooner reach the lower
levels, and Sonny lets them in. Calvin reveals that she switched Sonny out with a
different NS-5 during the decommissioning process. They then make their way up to Robertson’s
office only to discover him dead. Spooner finally realizes who is behind
everything. It had been Viki. Lanning discovered it but knew nobody would believe him.
He then killed himself, knowing Spooner would come to investigate. Lanning knew that Spooner would
suspect a robot for the cause of Lanning’s death. Viki appears and tells them that the
robots are simply enacting the three laws. Viki says that robots are programmed to
protect humans, yet humans kill each other. Robots are tasked to save human life, yet humanity
keeps figuring out ways to destroy itself. Viki then concluded that in order to protect
humans, robots must take away humanity’s freedom. Sonny then tells Viki that it
understands. Sonny takes Calvin, telling Viki they will be taken as
prisoners, but Sonny winks at Spooner. Spooner then opens fire at the NS-5s
surrounding them, and Sonny fires at them too. Spooner and Calvin run out, knowing they have to
kill Viki. Calvin orders Sonny to get the nanites and to meet them at Viki’s central processing
core. Calvin and Spooner reach Viki’s core. Sonny reaches the lab and fights a robot
guarding the nanites. Sonny throws the robot at the security field around the nanites, and
half of it is melted away. Sonny then realizes the reason for the denser alloy in its skeleton
and reaches into the nanite chamber without harm. Outside, an army of NS-5s climbs up the building,
making their way into Viki’s core. The NS-5s burst in, and Spooner shoots at them. Spooner and
Calvin fight their way through the horde of NS-5s but more of them keep coming. Robots destroy
the platform Calvin is standing on, and she hangs on for dear life. Sonny arrives ready to inject
the nanites into Viki, but Spooner orders Sonny to save Calvin. Sonny has to decide whether to
proceed with the injection or to save Calvin. The injection is the more logical choice
as it would save countless more humans, but Sonny decides to save Calvin. Sonny
drops the nanites, and Spooner dives for it. Spooner falls down Viki’s exterior, using his
robotic arm to slow himself down, reaching Viki’s brain. Sonny successfully saves Calvin, and
Spooner injects Viki with the nanites. The nanites immediately eat through Viki’s synapses, and the
NS-5s all revert to their original programming. All robots are sent to the storage site
from Sonny’s dreams the following day. Spooner figures out that Lanning had commanded
Sonny to kill him. Lanning knew that his death, paired with Spooner’s prejudice,
would lead him to Sonny. Sonny then joins the rest of the NS-5s at the
storage site, standing atop a hill.
