Tag: Robin Williams
Writing Prompt thingy
I think Bicentennial man is very underrated and underappreciated. It came out in 1999 and it was a really good movie but a lot of people shunned that movie because of the actors in the movie. Everyone heard Robin Williams was in that movie and expected a rapid fire hairy man to have manic humor instead they got a NDR series robot with a dry non-existent sense of humor that was trying to understand the world. As Andrew first came online he took to the family but he has a sense of curiosity that became his central drive.
The 1999 movie is based on Isaac Asimov’s 1976 science fiction story “The Bicentennial Man” and its 1992 expanded novel adaptation The Positronic Man, which Asimov co-wrote with Robert Silverberg. Almost everyone that reviewed that movie claimed it was boring. Yes if you watched the movie expecting a rapid fire comedian to be Mr. Data with a broken emotion chip the movie is boring.
If you watch it from the point of view that Andrew has that he understands he is not normal, and the fact that Sir instead of returning him, He takes Andrew under his wing to let him become whatever his destiny is. The endearment that Sir shows gives Andrew the knowledge of wanting to become free rather than a toaster.
This movie gives a great view of the human perspective when someone is different and how hard it is to be human. When someone has a disability, they are very much viewed as an oddity. Sir instead saw the spark and worked with Andrew to let him become one with the humanity he sought.
But if you remove the idea that Robin is a comedian and look at it from the perspective that Robin is playing a character that needs to learn humor. This shows what a masterclass his performance really is. While the film allows Robin to have a few scenes of his manic humor it fits more to the book than the expectation of having a crazed genie like Robin Williams.
This movie has a plot that takes a while, but the underlying plot is extremely good character development that people overlook and criminally underrate this movie for this. Given I have read both the story and watched the movie, this is a movie I would recommend to anyone and in the times of AI this movie actually would have fared better had it come out today rather than in 1999. The fictional concepts that Asimov created in his stories then are today’s battles with AI such as his three laws plus the zeroth law. With the public constantly worried about LLMs going off the rails and hurting people would make this movie the perfect hook in todays culture.