I, Robot (2004) on Netflix
PG-1320041h 55mActionMysterySci-Fi
In 2035 Chicago, robots serve humans under the Three Laws of Robotics. Detective Del Spooner distrusts them, and when U.S. Robotics founder Alfred Lanning dies, he suspects a robot called Sonny.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.1/10621,530 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
By 2035, humanoid robots hold public service jobs across the world, and the Three Laws of Robotics keep them from harming people. Homicide detective Del Spooner dislikes robots; a robot once pulled him from a car wreck while a twelve-year-old girl in the other car drowned. When Dr. Alfred Lanning, co-founder of U.S. Robotics, falls from his laboratory window, a message he left behind asks for Spooner on the case. The department calls the death a suicide, and Spooner does not. Lawrence Robertson, the company's CEO, lets him investigate, with robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin alongside him. The office window was security glass, too strong for the elderly Lanning to break, and Spooner suspects one of the new NS-5 robots, a machine named Sonny.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about I, Robot (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film began as an original 1995 screenplay called Hardwired by Jeff Vintar, with no connection to Isaac Asimov's work at all; it was an Agatha Christie-style locked-room mystery in which detective Del Spooner interrogates a cast of robot suspects over a scientist's murder.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to play Del Spooner for years before Will Smith took the role once scheduling delays pushed Schwarzenegger out, and Denzel Washington had also turned the part down.
- Director Alex Proyas later said the shoot was an unpleasant, tightly controlled experience, describing the studio as micromanaging every stage of production from pre-production through the final cut.
- The film renames Asimov's "U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men" as U.S. Robotics, which is also the name of a real modem manufacturer that was itself named after the fictional company, and gives it a futuristic USR logo.
- Marco Beltrami composed the score, which was recorded at the Newman Scoring Stage in a short span of 17 days and performed by a 95-piece orchestra from the Hollywood Studio Symphony and a 25-member choir from the Hollywood Film Chorale.
- The Audi RSQ was designed especially for the film, and surveys conducted in the United States afterwards showed that the concept car gave a substantial boost to the image ratings of the Audi brand.
