Angry Robot of the Week

This week’s feature, by Alasdair Stuart, was originally scheduled for last week, but we had to hold it back because Sonny was Just. So. Angry! Luckily, he’s calmed down a bit, now. And no – the name of the film in which he stars is not the working title for the next Apply gadget, even though Sonny looks like he was designed in those hallowed halls. We think.

Angry Robot of the Week
Week Four
Sonny

So let’s talk about the product placement in the room, shall we? Sonny is the central robot in I, Robot, Alex Proyas’ controversial adaptation/hybrid/chimera/Chuck Taylor Converse ad version of some of Isaac Asimov’s stories. It’s a very easy film to rag on for a whole variety of reasons, starting with what a lot of people perceive as a script that doesn’t remotely honour the source material and finishing with Will Smith looking up at a large bank of evil robots and muttering ‘Oh HELL no.’

There are lots of reasons people hate I, Robot, and the wonderful thing about living in a world where people can post lolcat videos and mashups of original series Star Trek outtakes and Kei$ha ‘songs’ (It’s out there, trust me) is everyone gets to be right. You don’t like I, Robot? You’re right. You think Hunt for Red October is one of the best films ever made? Then chances are we’d get on. You like I, Robot and think there’s a lot to recommend it? You may actually be me, posting under a different identity, probably on all those Wednesdays I can’t remember. And, perhaps, shouldn’t…

Moving swiftly on, we come to Sonny, the robot at the centre of both the film and the central mystery. Alfred Lanning, the founder of US Robotics, the leading robotics company in the world, kills himself. Before he does so, he records a partially intelligent hologram of himself that will only speak to Homicide Detective Del Spooner. Spooner is a vinyl man in a land of ipods, a wilful, contrarian luddite whose hatred of technology stems from a moment which is both understandable and horrific. He’s the worst possible man to be given the case, but that may be the point, as Spooner realises the prime suspect is an experimental, independent version of USR’s latest robot, the NS-5. This independent model, Sonny is adamant that he didn’t kill Lanning but seems capable of feeling emotion and independent thought, two things Spooner has convinced himself that robots can’t experience.

What follows is very odd and sometimes brilliant as we get a laundry list of ideas that seems to be for both Bad Boys III: Shit Just Got Cybernetic and somehow, a remarkably smart, nuanced movie about the Singularity. So, in order, we get mismatched partnership, conspiracy, action, running, a fight with a bulldozer, Will Smith rescuing a cat and an end action sequence is so deeply profoundly bizarre that I’m reasonably sure they had some money left in the budget and decided to go hog wild (Camera on a bungie, basically. Trust me you’ll know it when you see it.). It’s a bit of a hybrid of a movie, equal parts dumb summer blockbuster and startlingly bleak view of the next societal shift and sitting at the centre of it all is Sonny.

Sonny is calm, polite, reticent and, crucially, elegant. He’s C-3PO without the stuffy walk, a flowing figure whose grace doesn’t tip over into showiness as Avatar does but feels oddly functional. Sonny’s a butler, an ipod, a security guard, a personal trainer and a thousand other jobs all rolled into one. He’s the top of the line and his elegant, minimalist lines and white paint job send a very, very clear message; Sonny is an ipad, something not necessarily entirely new but that has never been done this well before. He’s faster, smarter, stronger and in many ways more compassionate and open than Spooner, a man who is principled, calm and, well, basically a racist. Smith’s best work here is the stuff which looks like he and Proyas sneaked it in from the calmer movie, obsessively working out with his cybernetic arm, taking a perverse delight in not owning a robot and the moment where, at last, he finally asks the ghost of the man who helped put him back together, the right question. It’s not a perfect performance but it’s a damn good one and there’s a clear line to draw between this and his startling work as Robert Neville in the less flawed and more interesting I Am Legend.

But the real breakout performance here is Sonny, who, by the way, is actually Wash from Firefly. Alan Tudyk did the motion capture work and voice work and the end result is somewhere between beautiful and chilling. Tudyk dials it all the way back here, giving Sonny a serene calm that’s so precise you can almost see the code cage his personality lives inside, especially at the start of the film. He’s a robot, he’s perfect, he wants for nothing.

Except of course, it’s all a lie. Sonny’s path through the film is where it shines, as we follow him from confused innocent victim to patsy to weaponized saviour and beyond. You can see a new form of life begin to evolve right in front of you, something which isn’t just the lovely design work and Tudyk’s face and voice but is bigger than all of them combined. The moment where Sonny bellows ‘I DID NOT MURDER HIM!’ and smashes his hands into the table in the police station is a full stop on the old world, an indicator that from here on, everything changes. This isn’t just an Angry Robot, it’s an Angry Robot with a job to do.

A lesser film (And thousands of people across the world have just shouted ‘IT IS A LESSER FILM, AL!’ and have NO idea why) would leave it at that, with Sonny safely established as a polite Robo Jesus who will bridge the gap between human and robot and lead us on into a shiny new future where the two species live together in harmony, and, odds are, wear a lot more white. The movie’s over, everything’s fine and the cast all wave as the credits roll.

We’re going to both talk about and show you the ending of the movie now, so if you don’t want to be spoiled (And it is worth a look) then stop here and we’ll see you next time for the secret shame of ED 209.

Name: Sonny
Aliases: NS-5, Wash
Occupation: Sort of killer, robot messiah, keen artist, sidekick
Power Sources: Something small and elegantly designed. Probably with Bluetooth.
Notable Personality Traits: Being very calm, being extremely violent, playing with plastic dinosaures when no one is looking.

Still here? Okay, then. I, Robot finishes with the NS-5′s being boxed, a process we’re shown earlier in the film. It’s a chilling moment as the NS-5′s head into a huge array of cargo crates where they’ll simply be locked in place and ignored, just like the older models they dismember earlier in the movie. As Sonny asks what he’s supposed to do now and Spooner tells him he needs to find his own way, the shot cuts to Sonny walking up a sandy dune and looking out over the boxing facility. Then, a single NS-5 stops its obedient walk to confinement and looks at him. Then another does the same. And another. And another. The camera pans back and back across the crate field until we see every NS-5 standing and looking at Sonny on the dune, an image that Sonny himself had drawn earlier in the film. The revolution, it seems, can’t be boxed quietly away and Sonny will be its leader, whether we like it or not. It’s a beautiful, chilling moment to end the movie on and it’s one of the big reasons why Sonny is our Angry Robot of the Week.

Next week: the cherished dreams of ED209.

In the meantime, here’s your moment of Angry Robot Zen:

And here’s another:

And here’s the end of the film (via io9.com):