Doomsday Book
Yes. The London Film Festival was last year. I just didn’t get around to talking about any of the films. What can I say? First up is Doomsday Book in bullet points. All of this will be bullet points. I saw 12 films. I don’t know how I managed it. I make no promises about spoilers. I also make no promises about ever getting around to the other films.
Doomsday is a film in three parts.- The first part was kind of a zombie love story, where a put-upon young man gets infected with zombie flu along with the girl he went on a date with. The meat they eat also infects a whole bunch of other people. Basically, it’s a total zombie apocalypse.
- The second part is about a robot that attains enlightenment - the company that built him feel threatened by his evolution and seek to deactivate him.
- The third part is about a girl, her family and a giant asteroid that is approaching the planet.
- The first and third parts have the most funny moments - the second…doesn’t really have anything chuckle-worthy (which is fine).
- Briefly, the first part was very doomy; the second was quite sad in places; and the third was very heartwarming.
- I enjoyed all three parts - I think my favourite was the second with the robot because it raised a lot of the same questions that I’ve considered thanks to my interest in science fiction and that were brought up in the “Philosophy of Computer Science” (or whatever) module I did at university.
- My least favourite was the first part, with the zombies. It wasn’t bad or anything, it just wasn’t as cute as the last part.
- The third part - with the girl and her family - was a good story to end the film on. It had a good solid resolution and left me with the sort of happy satisfied sensation you might get after eating a delicious cheeseburger.
- I am going to ramble about the second part in more detail though, since it raises interesting questions. Feel free to stop reading here.
- I did wonder why it seemed impossible for humans and this robot to live together - why it was necessary that he be deactivated. I suppose the fear is that the robots could replace humans some how, forgetting that idea that we could peacefully coexist. The other thing that I though might get mentioned, but didn’t, was when the CEO was talking about how the creation was a monster that would threaten its creator someday - no one made the suggestion that the created robot was in some ways no different to a human child. A baby can grow up into a monster and threaten its creators (its parents) but no one uses that as an argument for killing babies.
- With the reveal that the technician was also a robot (or at least, had a robot arm), I wondered who had created him and how he was able to fit in, assuming that he would never age. What would the reaction be if it was him that was the perceived threat and not this enlightened robot? It’s something that I would have liked to have seen explored further.
- So if he is a robot, how does that change the perception of what he seems to think of the enlightened robot? Does he act out of a kind of fear for his own discovery? What about the risk he takes in protecting the robot?
- Then I suppose the disposable attitude towards robots that many of the humans share should be addressed. The girl with the dog demands that the technician fix it right away (and for free too apparently), but when the repaired dog is not as good as before (and still needing a visit to the proper repair shop), she easily ditches the puppy in the rubbish, despite the hissy fit she pitched when the technician was initially reluctant to fix it. Does she know that he is a robot? Or do the other people who live nearby know? Is this why she has such an entitled and demanding attitude towards him or is she like this with everyone? We don’t know.
Originally published at half girl, half robot. You can comment here or there.