PART I

RAGE – Animal activists break into a lab to release Chimpanzees despite warnings that it will free a virus called Rage. The test chimpanzees ultimately attack the activists and give them the virus that turns them into homicidal beings.

JIM WAKES UP – 28 days later, Jim wakes up in a deserted London and searches for signs of life. Jim ends up finding a group who is already infected and they try to kill him.

SURVIVORS – Jim is rescued by Selena and Mark who bring them to their secret hideout. They tell Jim that the Rage virus spread throughout the city while he was in a coma and that “The Infected” people have led to an apocalyptic London.

JIM’S PARENTS – Jim, Mark and Selena travel to Jim’s parents house and find that his parents committed suicide. The infected discover them and Mark gets contaminated. Selena then kills him so that he doesn’t turn into one of the infected.

APARTMENT – The next day, Selena and Jim explore an apartment where there seems to be activity going on. The infected discover them and, by the instruction of a man in the apartment, head into his home while he fends off the infected. Selena and Jim spend the night there with Frank and his daughter, Hannah. The next morning, the group decides to seek out a group of soldiers who claim to have the solution to this crisis.

FRANK’S CABS – The four head out of the city and eventually reach a deserted blockade. Frank gets infected from the blood of a dripping corpse and attacks Hannah. Hiding soldiers shoot Frank and take back Jim, Selena and Hannah back to their home base.

THE HOME BASE – Jim finds out that the soldiers are planning on forcing sexual servitude on Hannah and Selena and attempts to escape the house. They’re stopped by the soldiers and Jim gets imprisoned for the night.

THE WOODS – The soldiers lead Jim into the woods to be executed and Jim is able to escape while they are distracted. Back at the house, Selena gives Hannah pills so she can be sedated if the soldiers do rape them.

JIM RETURNS – Jim runs back to the house and unleashes Mailer, an infected prisoner, that they had chained there for observation. Mailer attacks the soldiers while Jim secretly moves throughout the house to save Selena and Hannah.

THE ESCAPE – The three run out to the cab and Jim gets shot by West. Hannah takes over and pushes West toward the infected so they can all escape. They head towards the hospital to save Jim.

THE END –  28 days later, Jim wakes up in bandages. He is in a remote house and gets up to find Selena and Hannah. Hannah claims to hear a jet and the three run out to lay out a signal so they can be discovered and saved.

 

PART II 1:28:16

This shot is taken from the scene where the soldiers are stripping Selena from her clothes and arranging to have both Hannah and Selena be sexual servants wherein the soldiers will eventually rape them. This is a medium shot that places emphasis both on a soldier watching Selena be abused and the act of Selena resisting the other soldier.

The left third of the camera shows the soldier holding the dress that they presumably want Selena to wear; however, this soldier’s expression suggests shock and discomfort with the action taking place before him. The rest of the shot is the other soldier forcing Selena’s clothes off but this is all presented through the reflection of a mirror. This shot is compelling because the mirror is reflecting a full shot perspective of the action contrasting with the camera’s medium shot. There is a tense imbalance taking place here as the viewers attention is forced to switch back and forth between the mirror shot and the camera shot.

The soldier on the left is holding a luxurious red dress that sticks out in comparison to the muted whites, blacks and green in the rest of the frame. The red suggests sex and lust in the context of this scene sustaining normative ideas about what is considered attractive despite the essential collapse of society after this epidemic. The notion of racializing sexuality or sexualizing racial identity is central to this specific shot and scene. In this case, a black woman’s agency is being compromised. Her body is not shown in clear form, it is blurry and not entirely pictured. Conversely, the outline of her aggressors body is quite distinct and positioned to overpower her. The black soldier who is watching this take place looks quite uncomfortable and in a position of inferiority and powerlessness. His job is to stand back and hold the dress demonstrating compliance, but also being silenced.

PART I

THE SUICIDE OF DR. ALFRED LANNING

Spooner receives a call to go investigate what was ruled as a suicide case of Dr. Alfred Lanning. Spooner is skeptical about this case and seeks to figure out why exactly the doctor committed suicide.

 

VIKI

Spooner and Calvin investigate other employees including, VIKI, the USR supercomputer, whose recording shows no other humans were in Dr. Lanning’s office at the time of his death. This leads Spooner to believe a robot could have killed Dr. Lanning.

 

SONNY

In Lanning’s office, Spooner and Calvin are attacked by a robot and chase it down. After the police apprehend it, they discover the robot, Sonny, was specially built by Lanning himself. Sonny claims to have emotions and dreams.

 

CALVIN’S HOUSE

Spooner grows even more suspicious about the robots and tells Calvin after arriving at her apartment. Calvin insists the impossibility that robots could be behind the death of any human. Frustrated, Spooner leaves Calvin’s apartment.

 

DRIVE

While Spooner is driving, two trucks full of robots attack Spooner and forces him to crash. He defeats all the robots, except for one, which jumps into the fire and destroys itself. Despite Spooner trying to explain himself to Lt. Bergin, Bergin dismisses him from active duty.

 

SPOONER’S APARTMENT

Calvin visits Spooner to tell him she knows its possible for robots to disobey the Three Laws. Calvin finds out Spooner is part artificial and then Spooner confesses to her that he knew Lanning.

 

USR

Spooner and Calvin sneak into USR headquarters and talk to Sonny. Sonny draws a sketch of a dream where Spooner is standing before a large group of robots on a hill. Robertson learns that Sonny is not bound by the Laws and orders Calvin to destroy him.

 

ROBOTS WILL REVOLT

Spooner goes to where the USR robots are decommissioned and he narrowly escapes from rogue NS-5’s, which destroy all the older robots on the compound.

 

THE REVOLT

The NS-5 robots go rogue and start roaming the streets. While Bergin is in his office, NS-5’s burst into the police headquarters and seize it. Calvin’s NS-5 also tries to stop her from leaving her apartment, but Spooner arrives and destroys the robot.

 

ROBERTSON?

Spooner and Calvin head to the USR building. He suspects that Robertson is using the new robots to take over. Once they arrive they find Sonny, who Calvin could not bring herself to destroy. They arrive to Robertson’s office and find him dead.

 

IT WAS VIKI

It is revealed VIKI was culprit in the rogue robots. VIKI bypassed the laws to create another that gave her control to subordinate humans as a means to protect them. Sonny, Spooner and Calvin then destroy VIKI and immediately, the new robots return to their normalized state.

 

THE END

The government orders the robots to be decommissioned and Sonny admits to killing Lanning at his forced instruction. Calvin concludes Lanning was enslaved by VIKI and suicide was the only message he could send to Spooner.

Word Count:495

PART II; FRAME ANALYSIS; 00:12:24

 

This is a wide, establishing shot where Spooner meets Robertson for the first time in the film. Robertson is positioned in the center of the shot leading the viewer to focus in on him. The color scheme in this shot is quite dark contrasting with the light beaming inside the office from the back window. The effect of this color scheme makes all of the executives (white) faces notably stand out. Furthermore, Spooner’s long leather jacket, dark pants, and hat make him blend into the black and grey setting. The positioning of Robertson in relation to Spooner is compelling. Although Robertson is quite shorter than Spooner, he shakes his hand on a ledge that makes him tower over Spooner making this greeting a display of dominance. Their positioning in this frame might help to answer one of the questions our class has been grappling with: Why has Will Smith been one of the only black actors that presents himself and his blackness in a form that is palatable and marketable to all audiences?

In her chapter on black science fiction cinema, Stephanie Larrieux discusses the popularity of Will Smith as a major development for the presence of blackness in the science fiction genre. Larreux writes, “Will Smith’s hyper visibility and indelible mark on the genre skate the line of facilitating a dynamic of black subjectivity… while also promoting a type of colorblindness that has enabled Smith’s tremendous crossover appeal” (Larrieux, 218). This particular frame coincides quite well with the notion race depoliticized in Will Smith films. Specifically, this shot establishes a difference in power between Spooner, a black detective and Robertson, a white CEO. Spooner’s lack of resistance to this is part of what makes Will Smith appear non-threatening to audiences. Their handshake suggests a compliance with these dynamics and allows for audiences to take comfort in a presentation of ‘multicultural harmony’. In instances such as these, it is not that race is being presented trivially; instead, there is a display of contentment with the presiding dynamics that allows the viewers to let their guard down.

 

Word Count: 346

Source: Larrieux,“Towards a Black Science Fiction Cinema: The Slippery Signifier of Race and the Films of Will Smith”