All Roads Lead to Rome

Many critiques of director Proyas's interpretation of Asimov's book and his three Laws revolve around the director's decision to trade off  subtly contrived subplots that gradually build up upon one another for direct, fast-paced, gun-a-blazing, singular story arch. While Asimov's nine short stories span over the entire career of Dr. Calvin, Proya's Hollywood cliche took place in a few weeks. While Asimov's Dr. Calvin, Donovan, Powell and the rest of the gang bossed the show in space, Proyas's Detective Spooner and Dr. Calvin were in for a cat-and-mouse thriller around the futuristic metropolis of Chicago. While Asimov's Dr. Calvin was a fully competent robopsychologist whose conviction in the loyalty of robots for humans roots in her cold logic, Proyas's Dr. Calvin's somewhat naive, unsuspecting nature kicked her out to the sideline and made her Spooner's unwilling sidekick (no pun intended)/ romantic suspect and overshadowed her intellectual capacity (Darn you Hollywood cliche). The list goes on, infinitely, which proves quite detrimental for those who long for a close adaptation of the book (although Asimov's die-hard fans may find a swift moment of satisfaction as they recognize the scene with 1001 NS-5s was inspired from the last scene of "Little Lost Robot"). Both despite and because of this long rap sheet, however, there is no substantial reason to take a perpetual dislike to the movie, for Proyas merely reworded Asimov's age-old question while still left its gravitas intact:

 What does it mean to be human?

 Asimov asked the right question and there was no need for Proyas to fix what isn't broken. All that he could do was, to the best of his ability, simply wow us with a new way in which a robot can find a loophole within the three laws, effectively pushing us into a metaphysical corner and forcing us to think, for our sake, the true nature of human beings. And that was the purpose of Sonny and his two conflicting operating systems. Should we be disappointed because we did not get a chance to see how Dr. Calvin's resentment for Herbie could come alive to the screen, or how the comic dynamics between Donovan and Powell could have been a perfect opportunity for another collaboration between Simon Pegg and Benedict Cumberbatch? No, because we already imagined it. It would be quite self-fish not to let Proyas imagine something on his own. All roads lead to Rome, and while some take 272 pages, others an hour 55, and there's nothing wrong with that.