In the near future, AI robots are everywhere. The world is wonderful until a nuclear blast incinerates a million people in Los Angeles. The United States and much of the world turns against AI in the wake of this and declare war on the regions that still allow AI. Somewhere in Southeast Asia, Joshua (John David Washington) lives with his wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), and many AI robots. Harun (Glen Watanabe) was the primary leader among the AI robots and held Joshua in high regard. Then the American soldiers stormed the beach. Breaking his cover, Joshua tried to call of the attack. Instead, he only revealed his duplicity to Maya. She fled without him and was presumed dead.
Several years later, Joshua worked as part of a cleanup crew in Los Angeles. One of the duties was to recover robots and crush them. The robots act like humans, showing emotions for those who died in the nuclear blast. The military approached him and requested his return to service. He's not interested. Then he saw a video with Maya. The AI was making a weapon that would destroy the NOMAD - a space-based weapon platform that was key to American combat ability. If NOMAD was destroyed, the AI would win the war.
An insertion team led by Col. Howell (Allison Janney) landed in SE Asia. Their goal was to locate the underground complex that housed the weapon and destroy it. Joshua found an AI robot that looked like a 7-year-old girl; he called her Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles). She was the weapon. Unable to kill her, he instead went on the run with her, hoping that she would guide him to Maya. Not only must he avoid the AI police robots, he also had to keep ahead of Col. Howell.
Though visually impressive, the story is inexplicable. As shown, AI is nothing more than human-like robots. The Americans don't seem to worry about their technology being taken over by the AI, only being turned off. The robots come in a variety of designs. There are those that look entirely robotic, with blocky heads, metal limbs, and garbled voices, then there are the ones that could pass for human but for the missing parts around the ears and neck. The hole through the head around ear-level was a curious design choice. The Americans are not entirely opposed to robots. There was once action sequence where ambulatory bombs - kind of a barrel with arms and legs - would charge at the enemy line and then detonate. That's odd. Why not a mortar or an RPG?
The AI countries are inept. One would think that a society that had robots on every corner would basically have a near perfect system for following a pair of fugitives through a big city. No, it proves incredibly easy for Joshua to sneak among robots without being noticed. Robots have a sleep mode, don't you know. Worse, Col. Howell is able to chase Joshua and Alphie through AI countries, also doing so without too much trouble. And these incompetent AIs are viewed as a threat?
Humanity - at least that portion opposed to AI Robots (i.e., the Americans) - is the bad guy. Yes, it is left to Joshua and Alphie to win the fight for freedom and equality. Robots are people too. Humanity proves to be just as incompetent as AI. Somehow, despite being in a military convoy, Joshua and Alphie escape, flee ahead of all the soldiers, somehow get to LAX, board a ship headed to the moon, hijack the ship to reroute to NOMAD, and are allowed to dock with humanity's only defense against AI victory. Seriously?
The makers do not understand technology. There is no exploration of the true threat of AI. The only thing that NOMAD did was serves as an orbital missile platform, which hardly seemed an improvement over modern cruise missiles. The robots only communicated with each other through speech, not bluetooth or Wi-Fi. What's the point of that? When it does come to a toe-to-toe fight, the Americans so outclass the AI forces that one wonders why they didn't just march across the AI territory and blast every underground bunker they found.
Mediocre. Skip.
No comments:
Post a Comment