Why, robot, why? A technophobic Will Smith investigates mechanical murder in 2004’s frustrating ‘I, Robot’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Feb. 4, 2015

When the science fiction action film I, Robot was released in 2004, it received reviews that I remember as being tepid at best. So it was mainly by happenstance that I picked up the movie — it was part of a combo DVD with Independence Day, the 1996 action vehicle that helped vault Will Smith into stardom.

I, Robot is based on characters and situations created by Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), the phenomenally prolific science fiction author and science essayist. Asimov may be best known for creating the three laws of robotics, which I, Robot presents in title cards at the very beginning of the movie:

Law I: A robot may not harm a human or, by inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Law II: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

Law III: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

Many of Asimov’s tales are puzzles or mysteries, wherein one or more of the supposedly inviolable laws of robotics has apparently been breached. Ultimately, however, the author, through his agent (in a few prominent tales, that would be 35th-century Earth detective Elijah Baley), reveals that the laws remain intact. For instance, in one case, as I recall, a robot’s arm was detached and used by someone to beat a victim to death.

Up in the air: J.J. Abrams juggles balls aplenty in a dynamic, overstuffed ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Aug. 28, 2014

Star Trek Into Darkness, director J.J. Abrams’s second entry in the rebooted Star Trek series, is packed to the gills with characters, plot threads and action. Unfortunately, the 2013 film is guilty of trying to do a bit too much.

Into Darkness is fun, no doubt. It recapitulates one of the most popular narratives in the Star Trek oeuvre: The story of Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered warlord who was frozen in a cryogenic tube and exiled from Earth after the bloody Eugenics Wars of the late 20th century. Gene Roddenberry’s pioneering 1966 television show featured Khan as the villain of the week in “Space Seed,” a first-season Star Trek episode; 16 years later, the character formed the dark heart of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which many still consider to be the best of the franchise’s dozen movies.

Abrams’s movie combines elements of both outings while adding plenty of new twists. Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch, charismatic but far paler than any man playing a character named Khan should be) and his frozen coterie of superhumans are discovered by a Starfleet commander other than the Enterprise’s James T. Kirk, and Khan’s 23rd-century machinations take quite a bit of unraveling as our heroes seek to learn just who he is and what he’s about. (As superfans already know, the movie is chockablock with dangerous newfangled torpedoes, and there are a pair of characters named Marcus, but there are no signs of the U.S.S. Reliant or the planet-shattering Genesis project.)

The film begins with an action sequence on the planet Nibiru, where Kirk (Chris Pine) breaks all the rules to preserve a primitive civilization and the life of his first officer, Spock (Zachary Quinto). The opening act sets up several character arcs by displaying Kirk’s immaturity and Spock’s refusal to engage with the emotional needs of his friend (Kirk) and lover (communications officer Uhura, played by Zoe Saldana).

A few minutes later, a Starfleet facility in London is destroyed and a gunship kills several officers at fleet headquarters in San Francisco. This prompts a furious Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to dispatch Kirk to the Klingon home world, Qo’noS (pronounced Kronos), with orders to kill the fugitive responsible for both attacks. But it turns out that the fugitive is not who he seems, and neither are some of the other characters who are either crewing or focusing their attention on the Enterprise.

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By Matthew E. Milliken MEMwrites.wordpress.com Jan. 17,
2014 Let me start off with this: Right from the start, I’ve had
mixed feelings about the rebooted Star
Trek enterprise. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the
pun.) One reason for this, of course, involves the cast: William
Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, the late DeForest Kelley, George
Takei, Nichelle Nichols and all the rest of the cast of the
original Star Trek portrayed their
characters throughout three TV seasons and six feature films. The
thought of seeing different people play Captain James T. Kirk,
Spock, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Hikaru Sulu, Nyota Uhura and the
others is just — well, it’s
frankly weird. I first became aware of
the original Star Trek when I was a
child, and I still vividly remember the excitement that surrounded
the release of the first several Star
Trek movies. It’s a stretch to say I grew up with
these characters, whose adventures I also followed throughout a
number of original novels — but not a huge one. When
producer-director J.J. Abrams assembled his cast for the 2009
reboot, titled simply Star Trek, he came
up with an interesting group. As Kirk, Chris Pine has something of
the charisma of the young Shatner. Zachary Quinto seems to be a
fine actor, but I frequently think that he has the wrong voice (too
high-pitched) and nose (not angular enough) for Spock. Karl Urban
(a New Zealander,
natch) and Zoe Saldana capture some of the essence of McCoy and
Uhura, respectively, even though I find Urban’s gruff intonation
cartoonish and grating.

Look out ‘Below’: World War II submarine action meets ghost story in fun but flawed genre mashup

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Dec. 6, 2013

I have a love-hate relationship with horror films.

From a very young age, I’ve always found scary movies to be absolutely terrifying. Once, as a child, my family went to visit my Aunt Gussie and Uncle Paul’s apartment in Queens, and some kind of monster movie was playing unnoticed on a TV in my line of sight. Every time I looked at the screen, I was overcome by a wave of foreboding, and my heart would start racing. I would look away and soon calm down… But I couldn’t resist redirecting my gaze toward the TV, even though I knew it would upset me.

At some point — I think as the scene reached its climax and the monster (Frankenstein’s?) finally unleashed some kind of rampage — my mother or someone else noticed my abject terror, and either the channel was changed or the TV was shut off or my attention was actively redirected or I was moved to another room. (Yeah, it was definitely one of those things.)

Even to this day, I don’t watch a lot of scary movies. One of the few I saw at a relatively early age was Alien, and the only reason I watched it was that it belonged to the science fiction genre, which I found all but irresistible in my younger days.

Still, sometimes I just want to be scared without being totally revolted or terrified. Over the past year or so, I found a way to channel this impulse: By reading scripts for scary movies.