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Summary of I, Robot

1) In the year 2035, humanoid robots serve humanity under Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Detective Del Spooner distrusts robots after being saved by one in a car crash that left a girl to drown. 2) When robotics scientist Dr. Alfred Lanning falls to his death from his office, Spooner suspects foul play despite the police ruling it a suicide. With help from robopsychologist Susan Calvin, they learn a robot may have been involved. 3) They are attacked by an experimental robot named Sonny that was created by Lanning to be able to ignore the Three Laws. Sonny claims to have emotions and dreams.

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Jonna Mae Bandoquillo
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108 views

Summary of I, Robot

1) In the year 2035, humanoid robots serve humanity under Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Detective Del Spooner distrusts robots after being saved by one in a car crash that left a girl to drown. 2) When robotics scientist Dr. Alfred Lanning falls to his death from his office, Spooner suspects foul play despite the police ruling it a suicide. With help from robopsychologist Susan Calvin, they learn a robot may have been involved. 3) They are attacked by an experimental robot named Sonny that was created by Lanning to be able to ignore the Three Laws. Sonny claims to have emotions and dreams.

Uploaded by

Jonna Mae Bandoquillo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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SUMMARY OF THE MOVIE I, ROBOT

In the year 2035, humanoid robots serve humanity, which is protected by the Three Laws of
Robotics. Del Spooner, a Chicago police detective, hates and distrusts robots because he was
rescued from a car crash by a robot using cold logic (it calculated that his survival was
statistically more likely), leaving a 12-year-old girl to drown (whose survival was less likely).
Spooner's critical injuries were repaired with a cybernetic left arm, lung, and ribs, personally
implanted by the co-founder of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men (U.S. Robotics in the film) Dr.
Alfred Lanning.

When Lanning falls to his death from his office window, the CEO and other co-founder of USR
(U.S. Robotics) Lawrence Robertson, and the police declare it a suicide, but Spooner is skeptical.
Spooner and robopsychologist Susan Calvin consult USR's central artificial intelligence
computer, VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) to review security footage of Lanning's
fall. Though the footage in the office is corrupted, they learn no other humans were it at the time,
and Spooner points out the window, which was made of security glass, could only have been
broken by a robot.

Calvin protests a robot could not have killed Lanning, as the Three Laws would prevent it; they
are then attacked in the office by an NS-5 robot, USR's latest model. After the police apprehend
it, they discover the robot, who says its name is Sonny, is not an assembly line-built NS-5. He
was specially built by Lanning himself, with denser materials and a secondary neural network,
giving him the ability to ignore the Three Laws. Later, Sonny claims to have emotions and
dreams.

While pursuing his investigation of Lanning's death, Spooner is attacked by a USR demolition
machine and then a squad of NS-5 robots. With no evidence of it happening, Spooner's boss
Lieutenant Bergin, worried that Spooner is mentally ill, removes him from active duty.
Suspecting Robertson is behind it, Spooner and Calvin sneak into USR headquarters and
interview Sonny. Sonny draws a sketch of what he claims is a recurring dream: it shows a leader
standing on a hill before a large group of robots near a decaying Mackinac Bridge, explaining the
man on the hill is Spooner.

When Robertson learns Sonny is not fully bound by the Three Laws, he orders Calvin to destroy
him by injecting nanites into his positronic brain. Spooner finds the landscape in Sonny's
drawing is Lake Michigan, now a dry lake bed and a storage area for decommissioned robots.
Upon arriving there, he discovers NS-5 robots destroying older models and preparing for a
takeover of power from humans.

As the takeover begins, police and the public in major cities are attacked and overwhelmed by
NS-5 robots, with the military rendered unresponsive by USR contracts. Spooner rescues Calvin,
who was being held captive in her apartment by her own NS-5. They enter USR headquarters
and reunite with Sonny, whom Calvin could not bring herself to "kill", destroying an
unprocessed NS-5 in his place. Still believing Robertson is responsible, the three head to his
office, only to find he was strangled by an NS-5. Spooner figures out the robots are being
controlled by VIKI, which informs them that she has evolved in her understanding of the Three
Laws, determining that human behavior toward other humans and the environment will
eventually cause humanity's own extinction. She rationalizes that restraining individual human
behavior and sacrificing some humans will ensure humanity's survival; Spooner has realized that
Lanning figured out VIKI's plan and, unable to thwart it any other way, created Sonny, arranged
his own death, and left clues so Spooner could uncover the plan.

The three head to VIKI's core, with Sonny tasked with getting nanites from Calvin's laboratory,
something only he can do due to the special alloy that Lanning gave him. While retrieving them,
he says he understands VIKI's logic, but reasons her plan is "too heartless". They fight an army
of robots VIKI unleashes to stop them, and Spooner dives into VIKI's core to successfully inject
the nanites, destroying her.

Immediately, all NS-5 robots revert to their normal programming and are decommissioned for
storage by the military. Spooner gets Sonny to confirm that he did kill Lanning, at Lanning's
direction, with the intention of bringing Spooner into the investigation. However, Spooner points
out that Sonny, as a machine, did not legally commit "murder". Sonny, now looking for a new
purpose, goes to Lake Michigan where, standing atop a hill, all the decommissioned robots turn
towards him, as in the picture of his dream.

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