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”