In the previous review, we were introduced to Spooner, a futuristic detective who hates robots. The founder of a company called U.S. Robotics, Dr. Lanning, committed suicide, but before he died, he recorded a hologram asking Spooner to investigate his death. During his investigation, Spooner comes to suspect that a robot named Sonny committed Dr. Lanning’s murder. However, Sonny has displayed some anomalous behavior for a robot, which suggests that there is more going on than just an unfortunate accident.

After Sonny is taken by USR’s CEO, Lawerence Robertson, to be decommissioned, Spooner begins to wonder why Dr. Lanning chose him to investigate his suicide. He goes to the old man’s house, looking for answers.

In front of the house is a giant demolition robot, set to destroy the building in the morning. I’m not sure why houses need to be destroyed in the future. Surely, there was a distant relative or two who would’ve loved to move in, but for some reason, the old man’s place is scheduled to be demolished at 8:00 a.m. Spooner goes inside and begins looking around. He comes across a recording of Dr. Lanning as he’s talking about the ghosts in the machine. He describes these ghosts as random segments of code and asks questions like why robots choose to stand together rather than alone when they’re stored in a dark place. He also sees a picture of Dr. Calvin, the woman who guided him through the company headquarters. She’s standing next to Dr. Lanning, and Spooner infers that Dr. Calvin and Dr. Lanning were once close. This is as far as his investigation goes because the demolition robot’s schedule changes from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and the robot begins destroying the house with Spooner still inside. However, Spooner escapes before the robot crushes him.

Spooner then decides that since he’s now encountered two robots who’ve tried to harm him, his best bet is to pay a visit to Dr. Calvin. The two basically fight the whole time, and the scene goes nowhere, so Spooner eventually leaves. After this, Spooner has another dream where he is trapped underwater, but he quickly wakes up before the viewer can figure out what’s going on. Afterward, Spooner goes to visit his grandmother again, and while they’re talking, she mentions how messy he is and says she could follow his breadcrumbs. This statement forces Spooner to conclude that Dr. Lanning had chosen him to investigate the old man’s suicide for a reason, and he begins looking over the company’s private files concerning Dr. Lanning while he’s driving. He asks V.I.K.I., Dr. Lanning’s first robot, who is in charge of vital functions like security at the company, to access the files for him; however, she informs the CEO, Robertson, of his request. Robertson doesn’t like that Spooner is still investigating what is supposed to be an open-and-shut case, and in the next scene, Spooner is attacked by two giant vehicles filled with the NS-5 robots.

Spooner survives this next attack but has his badge taken away because nobody believes that two trucks full of robots attacked him. Here was the second plot hole I found in the story. There was a lot of wreckage on the road, and the movie shows a robotic cleanup crew coming out and picking up the debris. If Spooner insisted that robots were all over the place, trying to kill him, then surely, the police would’ve known about these clean-up crews and would’ve checked these robots for the remains of the accident. But then again, since Lt. John Bergin knew why Spooner hated the robots so much, he would’ve had good reason to not believe his detective. It’s arguable that he should’ve checked, but it’s not unbelievable that he wouldn’t. As I said in the previous review, I struggled to find plot holes in this story, and I’m really reaching here.

Breaking the Three Laws

Spooner goes home, and it looks like his investigation is over. But Dr. Calvin pays him a visit. She’s been put in charge of decommissioning Sonny, but she’s found some unsettling things about the robot. It’s much more advanced than the other NS-5 models. It’s made of a denser material, and it can break The Three Laws. She’s beginning to suspect that Spooner might be right.

While visiting with Spooner, she realizes that he’s partially robotic, so Spooner tells her why he hates the machines. It turns out that the dream he’s been having throughout the film is of a car wreck he was in sometime before. Both he and a little girl were trapped underwater, but a robot found them and saved him instead of the little girl because he had a better chance of survival. He tells her that robots are basically clockwork and that the little girl should’ve survived instead of him. However, he still wishes to speak with Sonny because he believes that the robot’s “dreams” are really a breadcrumb left by Dr. Lanning. So, Dr. Calvin sneaks him into the company lab.

Sonny tells Spooner about his dream. A man is standing on a hill overlooking a bunch of robots. Sonny draws a picture of the image, hands it to Spooner, and tells him that the man in his dream is Spooner.

Then some of the company’s guards come and take Dr. Calvin and the detective to Robertson’s office.

Dr. Calvin tells Robertson what she’s found, and Robertson says he already knows. He then says that Dr. Lanning was deluded and that Sonny isn’t worth destroying everything the company has built. Dr. Calvin seems to agree and says she will proceed with decommissioning the renegade robot. This angers Spooner, and he storms out of Robertson’s office. Using a landmark, Spooner figures out where Sonny’s dream was supposed to take place and finds himself in the middle of a giant storage area for the previous robotic models, the NS-4s. Earlier in the movie, all the old NS-4s were replaced by the updated NS-5s, and this barren wasteland was where the older robots were relocated.

At the same time, Dr. Calvin performs the operation meant to decommission Sonny. But did she really kill him? We’ll see what happens next in the concluding review.   

Here are Parts 1 and 3 of my three-part review:

I, Robot Review, Part 1: I, Robot merges sci-fi and noir beautifully. Will Smith versus a world of robots. I, Robot is one of those rare movies that manages to merge two genres seamlessly.

I, Robot Review, Part 3: Why Must Robots Always Enslave Us? Even after watching the movie several times when I was younger, I’d still forgotten that Robertson wasn’t the main villain. The film is content to let the viewers decide for themselves if the robot Sonny is sentient and doesn’t try too hard to convince them one way or another.