Of course, some of your universe's critics fail to appreciate Robotropolis. For example, reviewer davidfurlotte writes, "Seriously, did anyone even bother to THINK before they put some of these scenes together?" Reviewer slmcdee writes, humorously but incorrectly, "This movie is absolutely terrible. The best thing about this movie is... gimme a second... well the part where... nope. Okay, there are no good parts to this movie." And reviewer philip4579 writes, "It's predictable. It's anti-climatic. It's poorly thought out. Poorly acted (you know everyone is phoning it in)."
Read on for the truth about Robotropolis...
The film begins in found-footage mode as we watch the video point-of-view of a man moving through misty foliage. We hear the man tell someone through his communications link that he is getting close to something. Then he sees a headless body, and, more shockingly, he sees, rendered in impressive visual effects, a white robot holding a human head.
After the film’s titles, we watch an impressive motion graphics sequence that lasts for roughly five minutes telling us we are viewing a news program called Nouveau Reports. Christiane Nouveau appears, strolling through a well-kept but empty block of apartments and telling her viewers she is in New Town, a city on an island in the South China Sea owned by an oil company. Also, the town is serviced by robots. “That’s right, I said robots. They are the public servants, the town police, they even work as medical technicians in the local hospital. This groundbreaking experiment has been a well-kept secret, until now.”
The filmmakers cut to Ms. Nouveau’s producer Jason (an hour later, we will find out that Ms. Nouveau and Jason are in a relationship) and his editing crew, housed in a modern office building. They watch her live as she says, “Now, all of this might sound a little bit like science fiction to you. It did to me. But as we have discovered during these past few days, her in New Town, science fiction is just a fact of everyday life.” A robot, who looks very little like the one in the prologue holding the human head, hands Ms. Nouveau a tropical cocktail.
After some admittedly confusing conversation among Ms. Nouvea and her two camera people Sky and Danny that might or might not be sexual innuendo about Ms. Nouveau’s desire for a robot, the film cuts to some B-roll footage of how robots serve in New Town, including one large robot walking a line of children to school.
The news program then shows an interview between Ms. Nouveau and Gordon Standish, the owner of the oil company and the second richest man in the world. She tells him, “I’m having a really hard time thinking of you as a powerful oil man.”
He replies bluntly but in good humor, “Because I’m not Arabic enough?”
Ignoring the racist remark, Ms. Nouveau replies, “Maybe you’re just too much robot geek. I mean, you are, aren’t you? You’re a geek.”
“Ah, Christiane,” he says, “Don’t you know we run the world?”
In the interview, Mr. Standish says he wants robots to be incorporated everywhere in the world, so his company will sell them at a low price to anyone who wants one.
Returning to the live broadcast, we watch a game of soccer with a group of men and one robot. In a clever shot, in the background of Ms. Nouveau’s fawning commentary about how useful robots are, the robot shoots a soccer player on the field.
In a fascinating subversion of the expectation that watching a robot shoots someone in broad daylight would cause panic and an emergency response, the soccer players simply mill around the field as the robot stands motionless over the body of the dead player.
Ms. Nouveau reports matter-of-factly, “I’m being told that the robot has just shot a man on the field. I didn’t see it myself.”
The news crew reacts professionally, continuing the live broadcast. They also show a replay from the second cameraperson’s angle that clearly shows the robot shooting the man.
The robot simply walks away toward an apartment complex. Nobody follows it, for unknown reasons. Ms. Nouveau interviews the milling soccer players, who quickly become an anti-robot mob. They chant “No bots!” as they continue to mill around the soccer field.
At the office building, Standish confronts producer Jason on camera. “We don’t know what happened,” Standish says.
“One of your robots killed a man,” Jason replies. “We all saw it.”
“It may not be that simplistic. There’ll be an investigation.”
“But right now the killbot is on the loose.”
“Killbot?” Standish says incredulously. He adds, “Security is handling it.”
“You mean more robots?”
“Yes, more robots. If a man commits murder, are all men suddenly implicated?”
“Murder? You mean this could have been premeditated? Is that what you’re saying?” (It is unclear why Jason jumps to premeditation as a characteristic of robot murder, but it is a dramatic moment.)
Later, we watch more motion graphics for another news program, and Standish tells his security chief Luther that the only way to solve this problem is to have other robots bring in the “body” of the “killbot.”
Eventually, camerawoman Sky is taken into robot police custody while Ms. Nouveau and Danny walk through the city, searching for a building called the Robot Center. When they reach it, they interview a man and tell him, “One of your robots killed a man.”
“Again?” the man says, shockingly. He leaves before Ms. Nouveau can ask him more questions, allowing the news crew to access the Robot Center unhindered.
“We are in the robot bay,” Ms. Nouveau says on live TV. “A lot of robots here.”
Seconds later, Sky is accompanied by a police robot into the robot bay, but when she tries to talk to the rest of the news crew the police robot shoots her.
The signal is finally cut off on the image of Sky dying on the floor. Clearly, the robot revolution has begun.
In his office, Standish tells people working in their cubicles, “Well, what are you standing around for? We’ve got robots to kill! Move!”
In one chilling image, a robot strangles a man in the background as another robot chases young people across a basketball court.
Ms. Nouveau and Danny watch as the nearby oil platform explodes. “It’s like the end of the world,” Danny says.
Eventually, Jason searches through the smoky city for Ms. Nouveau. He comes across a child’s birthday party and a robot wearing bloody clothing, for unknown reasons. The robot says, “Hello. How can I help you?” Jason runs.
Jason reunites with Ms. Nouveau and Danny, and they are able to kill a robot by covering its head so it can’t see. They also lose a young girl named Gillie.
As they run through the streets, they are nearly killed by a helicopter falling from the sky, rendered in impressive computer graphics.
The news crew are chased into the jungle by the robots, who can run like attack dogs. Danny is killed when a robot crushes his head.
Back at the office, it is revealed the robot revolution is due to sabotage by Tobin Orloff, Standish’s best friend and MIT engineer who was jealous of his friend’s success and fame.
In the field, Ms. Nouveau and Jason are rescued, ironically, by the employee at the Robot Center who refused to speak with the reporter. However, the robots soon return. After a nicely apocalyptic image on the beach, they are saved again by Standish discovering how to transmit a kill code via satellite. The movie cuts to black with audio implying that the kill code successfully stopped all the robots.
The End
It would be difficult to find a more professionally made film about robots than Robotropolis. The director's style (swinging the camera around people as they are talking) fits perfectly with the high-tech sheen of the film's visual effects. Roughly 15% of the film is professional motion graphics introducing TV news shows and breaking news text created at a world-class level; the graphics are so good one might even think the film is a portfolio reel for motion graphics designers looking for work. And the visual effects are of course top-notch, as it is nearly impossible to distinguish what is real and what is CGI.
One question that is not addressed directly in the film is how the prologue with the robot holding a human head (presumably set after the incidents of the film) squares with the ending, in which it is approximately 70% clear that the robots were stopped by the kill code. Did the robots return to their revolutionary ways? Could the prologue have been intended as a setup for a sequel? (One might question the placement of the sequence, in that case, as it might have worked better as a postscript after the film.)
In any case, Robotropolis might be the first film to make us wary about robots being integrated into human society. What if these helpful machines were to revolt for no apparent reason? Robotropolis must be the first film to ask this question, but I would wager it will not be the last.