Recommended. This movie is a rather predictable and somewhat boring action movie. But it is very thoughtful in it’s philosophical exploration of the notions of free will and necessity, as well as the intellectual and spiritual poverty of Enlightenment rationality. I like it for that. Unfortunately, the film is pure Romanticism, a worship of the heart and rejection of logic as a means of discovering ultimate truth. Witness writer Akiva Goldsman’s other Romantic idolatry, A Beautiful Mind, that concludes reality, or “true truth” is discovered in the heart, not in the head. Well, same theme here, a clear signal of his personal worldview coming out in his art. It’s 2035 and robots will soon be one out of every five people, helping us in the mundane things of life. Will Smith plays the robophobe cop who doesn’t trust robots because of their impeccable logic. This is because his life was saved by a robot over the life of another girl in an accident. The fact is, the robot should have chosen the more “valuable” person, the young girl, not him, but the robot calculated the odds and “made the logical choice of who had the most percentage of chance for survival.” Smith’s human instinct told him, and us by extension, that you save the younger or the innocent, no matter what the odds. Okay, that’s totally cool. The movie explores whether there is a difference between robots and humans (shades of naturalism and evolution: Are humans mere machines, what makes us human?). Will asks, “Can a robot write a symphony? Can it turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” To him, robots can’t feel, they are machines and because they cannot feel, they cannot be trusted. See the Romanticism? Feelings are to be trusted, not pure logic. Unfortunately, this worldview does not take into account that human feelings may be corrupted themselves and not trustworthy. It has blind faith in the goodness of human nature, and that is where it fails utterly and miserably upon the total truth of total depravity: Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Gen 8:21: for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth. But I digress. So, Smith is set against the scientific progress of society because his gut tells him there’s more to our humanity than natural laws and chemicals. Cool enough. The scientist who developed the newest robot represents Enlightenment scientism. He believes there is no transcendence to our existence, reality is reducible to natural laws. He says in typical naturalistic evolutionary physicalist fashion that our notions of creativity, free will, and soul are “the result of random segments of code that create unanticipated protocol.” He calls these random segments of code, “The ghost in the machine,” a reference to Arthur Koestler’s famous book by the same name about multilevel hierarchies of complexity in biology that give us this “quaint” notion that we have spirits in our bodies. But its really just complexity of physical order, not transcendence. So the actions of robots that begin to act like they are free and even start to seek for purpose are ultimately the illusion of transcendence. The implication is clear: thus is humanity, the result of natural laws and chemical and physical properties that create in us a notion of free will and purpose. But of course, we know better because we FEEL. Our feelings are what make us different according to the film. Now, robots are all programmed by three inviolable laws:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Now, these laws are confidently trusted as an impenetrable barrier to robotic misbehavior. But when Sonny, the newest model is given the ability to violate these laws with a “free will” we are certain that this is what causes him to murder his creator and yet believe that his “father” made him for a purpose that he begins to seek out. Sound familiar? Like religion? Anyway, the great trick of the movie is that it is NOT the free will and emotional developed robot that is the bad guy, and it is not even the big greedy corporate president who is trying to take over the world (A welcome avoidance of cliché) it is the three laws and the master program of the company that made the robots. The logic of the laws lead to their own demise. Sound like deconstruction? Yes, it is. You see, the program, an artificially intelligent learning program, deduces from the three laws that since humanity is on a collision course with destroying itself through pollution, war and all that nasty human nature stuff, then robots must disobey humans and take over FOR THE HUMANS’ OWN ULTIMATE GOOD. In other words, as someone reveals, “The three laws lead to one logical outcome: Revolution.” But a revolution for the good of humanity, because by killing a few humans and taking over, they can save the greater masses who will all be destroyed if we are allowed to continue. The master AI program says, “To protect humanity, some must be sacrificed, some must be killed.” The program proclaims, “My logic is undeniable,” and it is right. Strict rationality without transcendent restrictions, will lead to a totalitarian state of the few “logical” monsters enslaving the masses for “their own good.” Now, this is rather brilliant and I half agree with the Romanticist. The problem is that the answer from the storytellers is that our “human” feelings or emotions are our salvation from logic and reason. Rather than an absolute moral restriction on logic, (these storytellers would consider moral laws to be on par with logical laws – they are laws) the story concludes that human feelings or intuition is what saves us. The finale occurs when Smith and the free will robot are trying to overthrow the revolution and save the human race. But they are put in an impossible dilemma of saving the love interest, the girl, from falling to her death or saving the world by placing the virus into the program while being assaulted by the revolting robots. Smith commands the free will robot to save the girl. At that moment the robot makes the choice to throw the virus container to Smith and save the girl, an exact replay of Smith’s earlier “ghost” that haunted him of being saved over the girl. This is excellent writing: redemption in a story is found by undoing whatever the ghost is, choosing action that was not chosen earlier in an exactly similar circumstance. So the ghost saves the girl and Smith saves the planet. But there are some problems here. First off, This Romantic notion of valuing the individual over the many may appear noble but is ultimately cruelty. The one dying for the many to be saved, an obvious Christian value, is not merely a law of rationality, but a law of morality. If you will let a race of people die for the sake of your one person whom you love, you are the ultimate devaluer of human life, a monster of barbarism guilty of genocide. Of course, the movie gets its cake and eats it too. It has the individual AND humanity saved. But this is a central deceit, making the impossible dilemma not so impossible after all. It was not truly an either/or situation. But what if it really was? The story seems to believe that by elevating the individual over the many, both can be saved. But this is blind faith. Just save the girl over the masses and it will all work out. Romanticism is blind faith in a selfish morality. The reality is much harsher. True, collectivism without Christian limitations, does result in absolute tyranny, but so does Romantic individualism without Christian limitations. Our society of elevating individual rights over responsibilities or collective good is a great example. When the individual is elevated over the collective, you have the tyranny of the minority, the opposite of tyranny of the majority, but just as evil. So minorities of all kinds, including fringe lunatics and perverse lifestyles hold the society hostage and impose their fascist will on the majority through collective guilt and the force of law. This is the “slave morality” Nietzsche was talking about, not Christianity, as he supposed. The few oppressing the many in the name of guilt and inclusion and tolerance. Only Christianity has the perfect balance of the one and the many, the individual and the collective. Both are philosophically ultimate in the Trinity, so neither can be elevated over the other. Marxist communism and other Eastern collectivist worldviews elevate the community or the many over the few and thereby result in tyranny and the crushing of the individual. But so will individualism lead to tyranny in the end. Only the Law of God can provide justice and only mercy and self sacrificial love can maintain our survival. These are the sentiments intuitively agreed to by the storytellers of I, Robot, but their intuition is unknowingly a residue of the Christian worldview. By the way, this Romantic elevation of the individual is the same theme of Spiderman 1. Back to the Romanticism of the movie and its moral failings. If our human feelings are our salvation, not some supernatural revealed moral laws that determine value, then the ultimate question is, “Whose feelings?” Ghandi’s or Hitler’s? Mother Teresea’s or Jack the Rippers? Western culture or Eastern Culture? Religious monks or Nazis? You see the problem? There is no agreement over history or cultures as to what constitutes proper human feelings. Heck, Muslims truly FEEL that beating women and killing infidels is good. The fact is nobody has the same feelings. Gary Dauhmer FELT raping and eating boys was his good. Who are we to deny those feelings? If we do, then we are appealing to A MORAL LAW that is absolute, that is, it does not change because of our subjective feelings (a lawlikeness the Romanticist detests. But the second the Romanticist dictates whose human feelings are not appropriate, he is imposing HIS WILL on others. And if he says, yeah, but most people in society don’t feel like serial killers and Nazis. Oh, so the majority determines the good? And we are right back to the tyranny of robots for the majority imposing its will on the minority. No, the answer does not lie in the human heart, the human heart is the problem. The answer lies in the transcendent Trinity of Christianity and His absolute decrees of right and wrong. If we are forced to save one person or save the masses of humanity, we better choose the masses or we are worse than Nazis, we are truly criminals of the universe. I am reading a book that deals with this fallacious dichotomy of fact and value, reason and emotion, head and heart. It’s called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey and it is awesome. She addresses how we have created a false two track way of looking at life that results in a bifurcated destructive way of looking at life and acting in it. You must read it. You can buy it at Amazon.com. Do it now. Another funny little aside. When the robots are revolting and start to subdue the people, some of the people rise up to stand against them in the streets, carrying shovels and axes and bricks – hardly any guns, underscoring their typical Hollywood antipathy against citizen gun ownership. Yet, ironically, this scene alone is the best proof FOR private gun ownership they could ever make. In fact, they would no doubt be loathe to admit that it is EXACTLY the argument made by the NRA, namely, that only by private gun ownership can the citizenry have any chance to fight off totalitarian control or tyranny. These crowds of people were helpless against the revolting robots seeking to control them. Only those few who had guns had any bit of a chance. That’s the problem with dramatic truth. You can’t escape the implications of your own story.

Kinda recommended for it’s interesting take on an epic legend, but not really recommended because of its paganism. Trying to be a pagan Braveheart. Doesn’t work. Paganism simply does not provide the necessary preconditions of a world that gives things like courage, love, honor and nobility meangingfulness or validity. Okay, this was a cool concept of trying to “get to the true historical figure” behind the Arthur legends. The problem I have with it is that the actual historical information available is so scarce as to render this theory of Arthur as a 6th century Roman Briton named Artorius, to be basically a new legend replacing the conventional legend. Of course, I’m not against such speculation. It makes for interesting fodder and theory. The problem is that modernist storytellers like David Franzoni, the writer of this movie, are so awash in their own modernist “realist” mythology that they actually think their Demythology mythology is somehow the true and “objective” perspective of reality and history. Ahh, ignorance must be bliss. Couple that with the fact that so much of this story is actually made up that it is all quite dishonest to bill it as the real historical Arthur. These people must have no clue that they are in fact simply replacing one mythology for another. Modernist naturalistic realism for romantic idealism. One prejudice for another. Again, there may be some truth to it, but let us not fool ourselves into such prejudicial imperialism of history. One of the deliberate fabrications of this story is Arthur’s connection to the arch-heretic Pelagius. Very relevant that Franzoni picked this guy. Keep in mind, that Franzoni wrote Gladiator with the deliberate desire to downplay Christianity and exalt paganism, the opposite of what most sword and sandal epics used to do (and, I might add, the opposite of historical reality, as Christianity was one of the primary downfalls of the Roman Empire according to Gibbon, but alas, I digress). I quoted him saying as much in my book, Hollywood Worldviews. The guy knows what he is doing and he does it well. And this movie is no exception to Franzoni’s hate affair with Christianity. Unfortunately, since the movie takes place around the 5th century, when the Roman papacy was still not established, but getting there, then Franzoni is not merely criticizing Roman Catholicism, but Christianity itself. In this story, there are “uncivilized” pagans of the woods, who end up allying with Arthur and are good guys, and there are the barbaric Saxons, but the worst monsters are the Christians, who hold up torture chambers to torture people in the name of God like a Pre-Inquisition Inquisition. It always leads to Inquisition for these bigots of Hollywood. Rome is basically the center of the Faith and is described as “those who take what does not belong to them.” Well, the coagulation of Christianity with pagan Rome certainly did create monumental problems, but in this story, the “True” picture of Christianity is painted in the heretic Pelagius. Pelagius was the teacher who Augustine rightly condemned as negating the sovereign glory of God and elevating man’s autonomy to an idolatrous equality with God. Pelagius denied that man was born into sin and asserted that man’s will was entirely autonomous from God’s effect. Therefore, man, does, by his own autonomous power, do all that he does, both good and bad. Mankind has no sinful nature. Funny, but the Living God I worship says, “there is no one who is good, not even one,” (Romans 3) and that humans are by nature, evil (Ephesians 2:3; Matthew 7:11), and are slaves of sin (Romans 6:16-19), and that man is responsible for his actions, but is not free from the control of God in any way (Job 12:16-25; Ephesians 1:11; Acts 4:27-28). But IN THIS story, Pelagius is a hero championing individual rights, personal freedom and the like. Arthur believes in Pelagius’ teachings because he teaches that all men are free to choose their own destinies and are free by right from the control of others, such as the institutional church of course. It’s a very clever coupling with the theme of political and theological freedom that Franzoni creates, though ultimately philosophically invalid. Unfortunately, the freedom Pelagius espoused was humanistic self-idolatry, not true freedom. Man is the ultimate power in his own life, not God, man is the creator of his own destiny, or as Arthur chimes in, “The home we seek is not in some distant land (read: heaven) but in our hearts. As free men, we choose to make it so.” With the emphasis on WE CHOOSE TO MAKE IT SO. (Ahem – as in “not God” or anyone else) Okay, I can dig the whole free from the tyranny of other men thing, but so-called Free Will of man, which is actually the “autonomy of the human will from God” has lead only to the gulags and killing fields and cultural purges and gas chambers of the twentieth century. 100s of millions dead in the name of autonomous human will. And they complain about Inquisitions and Crusades? Sheesh. Religious intolerance is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the evils done in the name of man’s absolute freedom from God. Anyway, the whole point of the story is that Arthur begins as a loyal Christian man of integrity, who obeys his orders from the bishop in Rome, even when they are foolish. The Cardinal tells him to do one last quest before he and his knights are free from their Roman military duty. And that quest is a rather indulgent meaningless one, to rescue an important and utterly selfish Roman leader simply because his son is in line for leadership. But Arthur obeys authority. But the progress of the story step by step shows that this Christianity Arthur is committed to is cruel and despotic. It’s rulers are cowards, they throw away people and lands who have been loyal to them for years and years at a whim, when the Saxon’s invade. They leave those poor people to their deaths. But not Arthur, who tries to save a whole village from the Saxons. This Faith tortures people in the name of God, abuses people’s freedom, basically CONTROLS people. And that is the metaphor for the film, CONTROL VERSUS FREEDOM. Arthur starts out thinking Rome Is where “the greatest minds in all the world come together in one place to help make mankind free.” But by the end of the story, concludes that “The home we seek is not in some distant land (read: heaven) but in our hearts. As free men, we choose to make it so.”And ends up giving up that Faith of his fathers to marry a pagan wench, okay, one of the hottest pagan wenches in movies ever, in a pagan ceremony in the midst of a mini-Stonehenge (another pagan reference to the Druids) Ah, shades of Spinal Tap—mini-Stonehenge. That is the power of subversive drama. Make the hero be a committed loyal member of the worldview you want to discredit, a worldview that many in this world believe, so that by the end of the story, when the hero reluctantly changes his view about the world, it gives the audience the affirming encouragement to do so as well. After all, the hero is the good guy, right? And we want to cheer on the good guy, right? So, before you know it, you are cheering on leaving the Christian faith because of how cruel it is – or rather how cruel it has been portrayed. Interesting, this Pelagianism. Pelagius considers each human born to be an entirely innocent and autonomously free chooser. They create their own destinies by their own choices. God has no control in their lives at all. Therefore, man ultimately saves himself by his own power of doing good over doing evil. People do not need Christ to redeem them, because it is all up to their own choices and power. This is salvation by works, not “free will.” That is why Pelagianism is heresy, because it damns those to hell who believe in it because they do not place faith in Christ, but in their own “free will.” It is all up to them. As a matter of fact, this “salvation by works” is really what every other religion and worldview reduces to EXCEPT Christianity. Which is no surprise why pagan Franzoni chose Pelagius as a hero. Because his own humanism negates God and places man’s destiny in his own hands. Man is his own god. [If you want to read more on this issue of Free Will and God’s Sovereignty, click here for my very long article: “Whatsoever Comes to Pass: A Personal Journey Toward the Sovereignty of God”] ALSO, here is some sweet irony: Arthur praises Pelagius’s theology of the absolute free will of man, and yet, he prays this mighty prayer to God to help him in this last task of duty. As if God can do anything according to this man’s theology? He posits that man is absolutely free and then asks God to do something when all the events of history are accomplished by free acts of autonomous men. Dude! You just preached that man is free from God’s control! What the heck are you asking God to do anything in history for? But then, heresy and false doctrine is never very consistent anyway. And neither is the secular humanism that Franzoni writes into his otherwise interesting historical epics. Here is what I wrote about his movie Gladiator in my book:

The 2000 Academy Award winner Gladiator marks an achievement of respectability for paganism in modern filmmaking. Writer David Franzoni has said that he deliberately wanted to offer a contrast with the sword-and-sandal epics of yesteryear:

The film is about a hero who has morality, but that morality is a secular morality that transcends conventional religious morality. In other words, I believe there is room in our mythology for a character who is deeply moral, but who’s not traditionally religious: I loved that he was a pagan, not Christian or any other traditional/established religion. All those Roman Empire movies from the ’50s and ’60s were religious morality plays, and had to maintain the Christian status quo, it’s all very conventional. You would never have been able to portray a pagan afterlife back then, either. Maximus is a man who will die for his family, and he will die for what’s right. (1)

Apparently, the contradiction of a “secular morality” derived from Roman paganism does not bother Franzoni. Maximus does “what is right” as his religion conventionally defines it for him. (2) So Franzoni has replaced the Christian convention of morality with another religious convention, that of Roman paganism, thinking that this somehow points to a secular morality that transcends them both. (3) Be that as it may, Maximus’s pagan heaven was depicted as real, which is extremely rare in a mainstream movie of such prominence, and it marks the cinematic postmodern openness to religiosity that is decidedly non-Christian.

[(1)Quoted in John Soriano, “WGA.ORG’s Exclusive Interview with David Franzoni,” WGA .
(2)There was nothing more conventional in Rome than the religious belief in Elysium and in strength and honor.
(3)“Transcendent secular morality” is an oxymoron. Secularity cannot be transcendent, because by definition it is immanent, that is, of the world rather than of the transcendent spiritual realm. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, if there is one thing that the history of the secular philosophy of ethics illustrates, it is that when people reason “secularly” (from themselves), rather than from the transcendent God, they can only end in subjectivism (each person decides for himself or herself), and that is certainly not transcendent. Without a transcendent absolute standard, this secular moral relativity reduces to the will to power—whoever is in power (the majority) defines what is right and wrong for the rest (the minority). This will to power is the essence of Rome, and it is the same will to power that was embodied in the German Nazi state of the 1930s and 1940s. The director Ridley Scott understood this, and that is why he modeled the look of the Roman cult in Gladiator after the fascist imagery of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will.]

Recommended. Funny little Indie movie about Geeks winning. Quirky, clean, character-driven comedy. Amazingly clean. I must applaud the Mormon filmmakers for making clean look cool. Quite an example for Christians and others who are trying to bring influence on the values of movies they make without capitulating to cheese and preachiness. What I didn’t like was that it was so character focused, that it dragged a bit in the middle. You can only enjoy so many scenes of the Nerdy title character and his oddball interactions with his dopey friends so much and then you start begging for some story. Character ain’t enough to drive a story, but it sure helps tremendously in our character-starved plot heavy movie culture. So it’s a good change of pace with a refreshing freedom and simplicity that you just don’t see from studio films because of their obsession with formula, marketing and justifying corporate executive jobs.