MOVIE REVIEWS | AUTOMATA

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The movie "Era of Machines" is not a very popular movie. Compared with the famous "Machine Enemy", it can be said to be unknown.

　　Before writing this film review, I was doing rope skipping exercises in the study; after sitting for a long time, my arms and shoulders were sore and painful, so a few swipes could ease it slightly. At the beginning, I set myself 100 times, and I breathed out in one breath. Today, on a whim, after I counted 100, I started reading from 1 again, and gritted my teeth and counted to 100 again. I was quite surprised that my physical fitness was far from being developed. So, another question is coming, mine, or ours, I don’t mean we made up of you and me in a narrow sense, but where is the physical limit of our human beings. How many times can a person skip rope without interruption? I'm afraid this is difficult to conclude. But no matter how much, there must be a limit there, as the Guinness Book of Records worthy of praise is well-known worldwide. But how does it compare to robots? The latter may easily break the limits of mankind and establish a benchmark that is beyond the reach of mankind. This is obvious and needless to say. The question is, how far can we see from this situation?

Machine Age Poster

　　The movie "Era of Machines" is not a very popular movie. Compared with the famous "Machine Enemy", it can be said to be unknown. The path of "Machine Era" is similar to "Machine Enemy". Both are robots awakening and murder cases after the awakening. The difference is that in "Machine Enemy" people die, while in "Machine Enemy" "Death is a robot, and also "suicide"; "Mechanical Enemy" sprouted from Asimov's science fiction novel "Me, Robot", so the famous three laws of robots, "Machine "Epoch" puts forward two laws that limit the awakening of robots, which are similar to the three laws of robots in general: the first law, robots cannot harm any life; robots cannot transform themselves or other robots. The first law is to protect humans, and the second law is to prevent robots from awakening. The whole movie revolves around the second law.

　　Some robots have violated the second law and started to repair themselves. This is not a good thing for robots or humans. A robot that can repair itself can also transform other robots, while a robot that can transform other robots will do harm to humans. It is a threat. In particular, there is not much humanity left. This starts with the setting of the movie. Although the story follows the Hollywood path of "Mechanical Enemy", the style and setting of this film are similar to the other science fiction classic "Blade Runner". It was a bloody doomsday scene, the same dilapidated neighborhood, the same grim night and the constant rain, huge projections of people everywhere in the city, and even some Chinese characters. The atmosphere of all this makes the film wrapped in a wet and greasy mood from beginning to end. To be honest, it feels a little depressing. Fortunately, the storyline is attractive enough, especially some of the dialogue is worth playing.

Awakened Robot

　　The protagonist Jack is the after-sales service staff of the robot production company. He often deals with the "derailment" of some robots. Life is good or bad, and everything is in peace. Until a robot with a tampered chip appeared. In fact, until here, Jack can still choose to turn a blind eye, but he wants to use this as an opportunity or springboard to make a leap in life-he wants to leave the city he currently lives in. The city is undoubtedly safe, but it is also corrupt. He is eager to give his upcoming daughter a good living environment, an environment without corrosive acid rain, an environment with sunny spring breeze, and an environment where he can play on the beach. The little boy playing on the beach has appeared many times in the beginning and the end of the film as a symbol, just like the protagonist's continuous flashback at the airport in "Twelve Monkeys", giving people a special attention.

　　In order to find out the case, the key is to find the person who tampered with the robot chip, he called it a mechanic. Jack quickly found a female roboticist and mistaken the latter for a mechanic. Here, he had a conversation with the female robot expert, which can be said to be the core of the whole movie.

　　The female expert said: "You are here today to trade nuclear batteries because a monkey decided to get down from a tree a long time ago; it took us 7 million years for the brain to evolve from an ape to your current cognitive ability; this It's a long way. And a robot without the second law can complete this evolution in a few weeks." The word used by the female expert here is "evolution". She doesn't see the robot as a cold component, but A living body, just as humans evolved from apes, then why can't robots evolve from humans?

　　When Jack found the real mechanic, a conversation also took place, allowing Jack to truly understand the meaning of a female expert. In order to better show the theme of the movie, a huge sacrifice and spoiler had to be made here. The real mechanic is not a human, but a robot that breaks the second law. Jack asked the mechanic who did what to it. The mechanic said: "No one has done anything, it just happened naturally; just like the appearance of human beings, we appeared naturally." Here, the movie provides us with A fresh viewpoint and theory is that living things always evolve from low-level to high-level. Robots with self-awareness are also a kind of life form in a sense. Therefore, what the movie wants to express is that we did not create robots, but robots evolved from us humans. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

Banderas with beautiful hair

　　Let us return to the beginning of the article, the question of skipping rope. When a creature jumps rope, it needs to have two necessary factors. First, it can have "hands" holding both ends of the rope; second, it can have "lower limbs" that jump upwards, and it also needs to have the consciousness of movement. As we said, knowing how to use tools is one of the fundamentals that distinguish humans from other animals; the implicit meaning of this sentence is mostly to use tools for labor or survival, while using tools for labor or entertainment is a higher level performance . Taking rope skipping as a judgment, a creature that can skip rope is higher than a creature that can't skip rope, and a creature that skips a rope is higher than a normal skipping creature, and the robot naturally wins.

　　We simply look through the evolutionary history of mankind. About 2.1 billion years ago, cells showed simple functional differentiation; about 560 million years ago, the Cambrian life explosion event began, and primitive multicellular organisms evolved into various forms. It is now known The differentiation of the various types of animals appeared at this time; the Devonian began 400 million years ago, called the fish age; about 320 million years ago, the earliest amphibians appeared in the middle of the Carboniferous, these animals can be short-lived Out of the water, and the limbs can walk on land; about 290 million years ago, at the beginning of the Permian, one of the amphibians gradually broke away from the aquatic environment, and the hardening of the egg shell allowed them to reproduce on land; about 200 million years Previously, viviparous mammals appeared; about 4 million years ago, Australopithecus began to walk upright; 2 million years ago, capable people appeared and began to use various tools; and our ancestors, Peking apes, lived about 500,000 years ago; Up to now, like I can sit in front of the computer and type, and you can sit in front of the computer and watch. It can be seen that the evolution of species is becoming more and more adaptable to the environment. According to the setting of "Machine Era", solar storms are getting stronger and stronger, the earth is full of radiation that kills living things, and the deterioration of the environment makes the living space of humans smaller and smaller, so why can't robots that are more adapted to this environment stand out? What?

　　Finally, as usual, briefly introduce the main creation of the film. If you watch a film with dual subtitles in Chinese and English, you will notice that the protagonist Jack is spelled Jacq instead of Jack. This is because the film is not made in the United States. The director Gabe Ibanez is Spanish, compared to the name The little-known director, his Spanish fellow and the starring actor of the film, Antonio Banderas, can be said to be famous. I was deeply impressed with this actor in Rodriguez’s "Trilogy of Murders." In that Latin movie, Banderas had long flowing hair and a weapon. The guitar box walks down the street. In the later movie-watching experience, I saw Bandera wearing a mask with the same chic and long hair. Now "Zorro's Mask", this movie made him a household name, and the code name of Zorro is also linked to Banderas Together. Therefore, when he appeared in "Earth of Machines" with an almost bald head, I hardly recognized him immediately. However, it is worth mentioning that although Banderas is no longer flying long hair, but Banderas's acting skills are long-lasting and his charm remains undiminished. This makes this film, which is a bit slow and dull in style, a little brighter in the viewing process.