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What's the worst change made in a movie adaptation of a book? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 50 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I, Robot.

Asimov was explicitly trying to get away from the trope of "robots take over humanity". To be clear, the first short story that became I, Robot was published in 1940. "Robots take over humanity" was already an SF trope by then. Hollywood comes along more than half a century later and dives head first right back into that trope.

Lt Cmdr Data is more what Asimov had it mind. In fact, Data's character has direct references to Asimov, like his positronic brain.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I, Robot was about as far from the source material as you could get.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    That sounds like a challenge to Hollywood. Though I'd put Starship Troopers up there too, haven't scrolled enough to see it mentioned but I assume it is.

    Edit okay I did now and it's not mentioned. While a fun movie it doesn't have nearly the same story that the book does. Still I'll watch it for what it is, but doesn't have the same tone or scenes the book does.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Shouldn't be called an adaptation, really. They only dressed it up a tiny bit as Asimov for marketing reasons

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    From what I heard, they got the rights to I, Robot, grabbed some script about a robot uprising that they already had optioned, and slapped a few things on it.

    This is apparently fairly common. If there's a Hollywood movie based on something that doesn't really align with the original, there's a good chance that this is what happened. Starship Troopers was the same way (though that's a whole different ballgame on whether the Hollywood version is good on its own merits).

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