From: jack.bohn64@gmail.com   
      
   [Posted before the movies, because part of the reason is to alert those who   
   can watch them.]   
      
   We have THX 1138 by George Lucas.  (Presumably another movie of his with   
   robots would have been too expensive to get, while this one had been   
   co-produced by Warner Brothers.)  The robot police officers are a minimal   
   effort, hiring physically imposing    
   actors such as Robert Feero and Johnny Weissmuller, Jr and dressing them in   
   uniforms that cover the whole body except the face, which has a metallic   
   mask.  We meet a man who says he is a hologram; I've never decided whether he   
   just means a hologram star,    
   and only as unreal as a TV star, or whether he means he is a total fiction.    
   We do get to see the state of early 1970s technology, as he filmed operation   
   of remote manipulators for radioactive material -- that in-story these are   
   building the robot    
   policemen is slightly worrisome.  Is the population of this future   
   roboticized?  Do you see a difference between being roboticized and being   
   sheepified?  I see them not as being forced to do things they otherwise   
   wouldn't do, but being kept from doing    
   things they otherwise would do.  The main computer, OMM (voice of James   
   Wheaton) seems to have happiness --within the order of society-- as a goal.   
      
      
      
   Robocop and the wonderful Enforcement Droid ED 209.  But it does show the need   
   for a better expert system about law enforcement, and also a unit more compact   
   and humaniform.  If it were easier to interface with a mind than it would be   
   to program, the    
   answer would be easy: use the brain of a slain officer for its knowledge and   
   run the rest by computer.  Eventually the other life experiences also come to   
   the fore, and the Robocop becomes a cybernetic full-body transplant for the   
   man.   
      
      
   Tuesday we have "Mad Love" (1935), not really involved, but about a hand   
   transplant in the genre "it has a mind of its own." (There's gotta be a joke   
   there about having more brains in its little finger than in the rest of the   
   body.)  Thematically, such a    
   story is stronger when the intrusive part of the body is an operator, like the   
   hand, a witness, like the eye, or a motivator, like the heart.  The concern   
   may be harder to express over the liver or a knee.  Simple artificial   
   replacements don't seem to    
   have this problem: a pirate's hook or pegleg doesn't seem to make him more a   
   "man of oak" than another sailor, but as they start getting more complex,   
   although not even close to a biological unit, the fear creeps back in.  I'm   
   trying to think of a movie    
   or show where a person's mechanical parts "took over," or were even taken over   
   from the outside, but nothing's coming to mind.  There's "The Terminal Man"   
   owned by WB that could have been thrown into this month, but there's a couple   
   minute segment in "   
   THX" that covers about everything in that 107 minute movie except the approach   
   to a pun on the word "terminal."   
      
   Thursday and not part of the celebration is "The Devil-Doll" (1936).  Let me   
   see if I can keep this short: a businessman framed for embezzlement was sent   
   to Devil's Island.  He escapes back to France with a somewhat mad scientist   
   who was probably    
   suspected in disappearances of persons as his test subjects.  They go to his   
   house, where his wife has been carrying on their work: shrinking living   
   creatures; she thinks she has made the breakthrough tonight, so they test it   
   on a servant, alas, no,    
   still when the brain gets too small it can no longer think for itself,   
   although the body will respond to strong mental impulses of others.  "But   
   that's murder," says the businessman in unironic horror, until he realizes how   
   he can use this in his own    
   plan to kill those who set him up.  He will borrow the collection they've   
   amassed of tiny animals and people, and sell them as lifelike performing   
   dolls.   When he gets them into the houses of his targets, they will perform a   
   task for him!   
   My whole post has been about the subject of actors playing robots.  This movie   
   shows small automata imitating humans and being faked by humans -- portrayed   
   by actors!  Admittedly, the technology allowing humans to portray dolls here   
   is probably further    
   out of reach than just building a mechanical toy, but it's the concern behind   
   it that counts, isn't it?   
      
      
      
   Score:  THX's robotic cops (like Metropolis's Maria, there does not seem to be   
   a name given in the film, there doesn't seem to be a half dozen alternatives   
   vying to be the "official" one, I guess obsessively giving names and backstory   
   to background    
   characters is reserved to a different Lucas film) a minimal effort, but still   
   a detectible effort, with less money or thought, the actors could have just   
   tried to keep their faces impassive; somewhere just above 0.1.   
      
   Robocop: in-story it is a man in a tin suit... well, parts of a man.   Still,   
   my rating system can be used on cyborgs as well as robots: The Six Million   
   Dollar Man's limbs being portrayed by the actor's, with an occasional wire   
   sticking out, versus this    
   half-million dollar costume.  Of course, all cyborgs have a built in excuse   
   for looking as human as the story's tech level allows.  (Eventually I'll get   
   to the rant on the naive "I built a robot, so of course I gave it skin, and a   
   nose, and individual    
   hairs.")  Robocop was designed to be a robot, but able to use the existing   
   stock of cop weaponry, and drive a cop car, with a cop motor, cop tires. cop   
   suspension, cop shocks.  (Actually, the Robocop suit couldn't sit in the cars   
   they had.  Peter Weller    
   merely wore the top half that could be seen through the window; an insert shot   
   of the door opening and a mechanical foot planting itself on the pavement,   
   then a cut to Weller standing up in the full suit gave the impression that the   
   robot was functioning    
   in the human-sized world.  I'll score Robocop around Maria's 0.3.   
      
   ED 209: Well, it's not a person in a tin suit.  I think I heard that there was   
   a full-scale mockup, but in action it was a stop-motion figure.  So 1.0?  No,   
   there's still the aspect of believing it's a robot.  I want to leave a little   
   room above the ED    
   for others.  There's still people-in-robot-costumes above Robby's 0.5, and I   
   haven't really explored these higher reaches, so I'll slot ED-209 around 0.9   
   or 0.95.   
      
   --    
   -Jack   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)