he feature film I, Robot, starring Will Smith and directed by Alex Proyas, hit your local megaplex a couple of weeks ago, hoping to be the latest number-one blockbuster between Spider-Man 2 and Shyamalan's The Village. It is a very effective and watchable action-adventure movie, another turn of the popular Will Smith wheel. It also has the sort of smart, SF-friendly style you would expect of Proyas, director of Dark City.
And it has garnered a ton of criticism. One noted SF critic called it a "travesty." Why?
Because it does not share the vision and tone of Asimov's original book.
This, of course, is nothing unusual: Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers was given the fannish equivalent of a summary execution for the same reason.
It happens. Time after time, a published sci-fi novel is adapted for film or television and outrages the very readers who made it worth adapting.
The question is why?
I've been involved with a dozen adaptations, ranging from works by Robert A. Heinlein to Clifford D. Simak to Philip José Farmer to Larry Niven to George R.R. Martin to Tom Godwin to John D. MacDonald.
With the exception of the MacDonald script, which was not sci-fi, but rather film noir, not one of my scripts was any closer to the original than I, Robot is to Asimov's I, Robot.
That used to trouble me. It still troubles me. Why can't I simply take the story that exists, and put it on the screen?
Sci-fi movies are mini-miracles
First problem: The "future" of a classic sci-fi story is often past—or passe. How would you adapt Heinlein's "Man Who Sold the Moon," about a ruthless visionary entrepreneur who funds the first flight to the moon, without mentioning Apollo or Neil Armstrong? How do you justify a world of robots (as imagined in 1940) without using personal computers?
OK, you have to start tinkering with the setting.
Second problem: Change the setting and you've changed the characters. Related to this ... there are often relationships that work on the page, but not on the stage. I spent several years doing both TV and film versions of Cilfford Simak's Way Station, where the central relationship is between a man out of time, a Civil War veteran named Enoch Wallace, who is physically in his late 30s or early 40s, and a teenage girl named Lucy, who has telepathic powers.
In the novel, it was sweet and innocent. On the screen? Well, a similar Bill Murray-Scarlett Johansson relationship played wonderfully in Lost in Translation—but Miss Johansson's character was over 20, and married.
Subtract six to seven years from her, and you've got an image that doesn't work. (This same sort of relationship has kept Heinlein's wonderful Door Into Summer from reaching the screen.)
Then there's the action ...
Asimov's Foundation trilogy has been bought for filming at least twice that I know of. The Foundation is one of the most important concepts in the history of sci-fi—you can see echoes of it in Star Wars. But the stories themselves are little more than clever debates between two or three characters. A faithful filmic adaptation would be like watching six hours of Hardball or The Capital Gang ... but less exciting.
Change one of these, and you're already diverging from your source.
Change three and you're in creative freefall.
And keep in mind that these three broad areas for divergence from the source can be affected by dozens of other entities. A writer can be replaced by another writer. Writers have their work shaped by agents, managers. Then by studios.
Then by directors. Then by actors. (Do you suppose Will Smith had any thoughts about his role in I, Robot?)
Good God, this isn't creative freefall, it's a gut-wrenching corkscrew through multidimensional space.
It's almost as if the existence of a sci-fi film that captures the tone and essence of a story is a miracle.
Doing it right or not at all
Robyn Asimov, daughter of the late author and spokesperson for the late author's estate, has been quite gracious about I, Robot. Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle on July 25, she praised the intelligence of the filmmakers while noting that there were copies of Asimov books all over the set—to remind cast and crew of the origins of their film. She thinks it unlikely that a faithful version of the I, Robot book—which is a collection of linked stories—would ever be made.
Embracing the inevitable is a useful strategy.
Or you can fall back on James M. Cain's answer. The author of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce was once asked how he could tolerate Hollywood "ruining" his books.
Cain pointed to his shelves. "They haven't ruined my books. My books are still right here."
You could call this lofty indifference.
I'm no longer satisfied with either approach.
I think you've either got to do the work straight—as in Lord of the Rings, Slaughterhouse-Five, SCI FI Channel's Dune minseries—
Or don't do it.
Part of the mystery is this: Studios and filmmakers buy these famous works because they have an audience.
Then they twist them so much that they alienate the very people they hoped to court. (Well, a cynic might suggest that they buy these works because people have heard of them, but don't actually know them.) I don't think this is smart business.
I can't bring myself to blame the writers and directors (well, with the exception of Mr. Verhoeven, who clearly disliked Heinlein's novel). Most of these adaptations—however divergent—make it to the screen because somebody loved the book. Some writer or director or actor wanted to live in that fascinating world.
How do we make this better? How do we avoid controversy?
Let's come up with a new version of the "based on" credit—"suggested by" has been suggested. "Freely adapted from" is another. Those words would be your warning that you are seeing a movie that diverges from its classic source material in a major way.
Meanwhile, outraged fans everywhere, accept my apology, for what it's worth. (And, given the way at least one of my projects is going, accept a direct apology in advance. ...)
Michael Cassutt's most recent credits include The Dead Zone (USA Network). He is currently writing an original project for Fox Studios, and making a "free" adaptation of a classic SF novel.
