Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Trending
    • Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall
    • Jay Aston Of GENE LOVES JEZEBEL’s US TOUR 2022
    • Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon: Traciii Guns and Director Andre Relis (Interview)
    • Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd
    • San Antonio Actor Antonio Raul Corbo On Voicing Lubicchi For POUPELLE OF CHIMNEY TOWN
    • Blumhouse Television & EPIX’s UNHUMAN Interview With Director Marcus Dunstan
    • Tribeca Film Festival World Premiere Of FAMILY DINNER: Writer/Director Peter Hengl and actors Nina Katlein and Alexander Sladek (Interview)
    • DASHCAM: TIFF Award-Winning Livestream Horror from Blumhouse and HOST Director Rob Savage (Interview)
    AMFM Magazine.tv
    • Features
    • Movies
      1. Movies – Indies
      2. Movie Reviews
      3. Movies- Wide Release
      Featured
      May 5, 20220

      THE OFFER: Miles Teller, Juno Temple, Matthew Goode, Burn Gorman, Patrick Gallo, Dan Fogler and Givanni Ribisi Talk About The Fantastic New Series Based On The True Story Of The Making Of The Godfather

      Read More
      Recent
      June 24, 2022

      Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall

      June 19, 2022

      Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd

      June 17, 2022

      San Antonio Actor Antonio Raul Corbo On Voicing Lubicchi For POUPELLE OF CHIMNEY TOWN

    • Photography
      1. Event Photos
      Featured
      December 7, 20210

      Nat Geo Photographer Joel Sartore Founds Photo Ark Project To Document All The World’s Species – Before They Disappear

      Read More
      Recent
      February 11, 2022

      NAT GEO EXPLORER Gabby Salazar Documents Conservation Around The Globe

      December 15, 2021

      Nat Geo’s Photographer Gordy Medroz On Ski And Snowboard Illustrated Guide ‘100 Slopes Of A Lifetime’

      December 7, 2021

      Nat Geo Photographer Joel Sartore Founds Photo Ark Project To Document All The World’s Species – Before They Disappear

    • ABOUT US
    • Music
      1. Indies
      2. Majors
      3. Reviews
      Featured
      May 9, 20220

      Paul Humphreys Talks ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK North American Tour Hits Dallas, Houston 5/10 and 5/11

      Read More
      Recent
      June 23, 2022

      Jay Aston Of GENE LOVES JEZEBEL’s US TOUR 2022

      June 23, 2022

      Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon: Traciii Guns and Director Andre Relis (Interview)

      June 3, 2022

      Composer Theodore Shapiro Talks Apple TV+ Series SEVERANCE

    • THE WIRE
    • Literarians
    AMFM Magazine.tv
    You are at:Home»World News»Movies»Majors»Frightened Old World: Gabe Ibanez’s AUTOMATA Gives Birth To Earth’s Next Big Thing

    Frightened Old World: Gabe Ibanez’s AUTOMATA Gives Birth To Earth’s Next Big Thing

    0
    By christine on October 10, 2014 Majors, Movie Reviews, Movies

    Automata

    The Set-up: A mere fifty years in the future, planet earth is in the midst of gradual desertification. Mankind struggles to survive as the environment deteriorates and the slow regression of the human race begins. Technology, planes, cellular phones, the satellites we used to carry their signal, all gone. On the brink of life and the reality of death, we combat the uncertainty and fear with the creation of the first android, the Automata Pilgrim 7000. Designed to bring support to society’s plight, man and robot reveal what it means to co-exist in a culture defined by human nature. This is the new SciFi noir from writer/director Gabe Ibanez’s Automata.

    Fantastic Fest is not necessarily the perfect fit for a SciFi film in the classic mode, a film like Omega Man or Andromeda Strain or the original Planet of the Apes film, a film that uses the science fiction setting to talk about the human condition, but that is what writer/director Gabe Ibanez created with his feature debut Automata, and it ended up being one of my very favorites of the whole festival. In Automata, Antonio Banderas plays Jacq Vaucan, an insurance adjuster who investigates malfunctions in robots in the service of humans. Ibanez has shortened Asimov’s laws to just two protocols, that robots cannot harm humans and that robotics cannot modify themselves. Most of his cases involve owners trying to blame their own actions on their robots, and his company, one of the few still functioning in a decaying world, rarely ever pays out a claim. Then a low-level cop (Dylan McDermott) discovers a robot making its own repairs, in direct violation of its programming. Vaucan’s inquiry leads to the discovery that right under our noses robots are evolving, and ready to take their ‘life’ to the next stage. A heady exploration of what life truly is, Automata my have been a wee bit too intellectual for the crowd at the fest (but not Harry Knowles who introduced and facilitated the best Q&A I saw), and some of its early reviewers. However, Automata is sparkling SciFi in the old-school tradition, a worthy answer to Blade Runner, and a fresh herald of the coming robopocalypse.

    “It was really difficult to get the money together for the film because it was classic science-fiction,” Gabe Ibanez tells me in one of the awesomely themed karaoke rooms at the Highball, next to the Fantastic Fest’s Alamo Drafthouse location. “The producers asked me ‘When are the robots begin to fight’ – ‘No the robots are not going to fight’ – ‘But the robots have to fight, they have to kill people.’ – ‘No it’s not that movie.’” Ibanez has hit upon the current issue in science fiction filmmaking, and one discussed at great length in this excellent piece from one of my colleagues, Film Colossus. Films like Transformers, or Edge of Tomorrow, and Guardians of the Galaxy are not really science fiction. They are shoot-em up, no-thought, action films that just use science fiction as a backdrop for their CG-created fight sequences. Automata delivers everything that great science fiction literature has been doing for year. It has created a vivid world at the turning point of its development, and a weighty conflict that has no simple answer. What is the answer in Edge of Tomorrow? Kill the invaders. Sure. But Automata takes the time to really examine the sanctity of life (yes, I’m using that buzz phrase for purpose) and consider if it is truly our right to do so.

    IMG_1224.jpg

    Vaucan’s city lacks hope. The people have gathered behind these huge barriers to keep out the desert wasteland. Most of the work is done by robots, and human existence is, by their own admission, fleeting. Banderas plays against type here, which is fantastic. He’s a pencil pusher essentially, a company man, just taking it one day at a time, he’s not a hero. “We were trying to make a very gray… an anti-hero,” says Ibanez, “an insurance agent is like perfect, and the idea that everything is going down, but you still have insurance.” It does seem like where we are heading. In another telling moment, when his pregnant wife heads to a hospital, they basically interrogate her about health care, so I guess our current experiments with socialized medicine don’t pan out in this future. I loved seeing Banderas ‘playing small’ – it’s like I’m conditioned because at any moment I kept expecting him to whip out a shotgun and blow away the robots, but as Ibanez says ‘it’s not that movie.’ If the character’s means are limited, the choices he is presented are epic. “It was very interesting to me that this character who has such a low profile is involved with something so very big,” the director says, “it’s also the classic character of a noir, something small that begins the investigation, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.” When Vaucan discovers the robots have removed their second protocol, and are now removing the second protocol from other robots, what he actually discovers is the birth of a new species. “This is a man that doesn’t believe in life,” says Ibanez, “doesn’t want to have a baby, is completely destroyed, and at the end he decides that what is important is the life.” It is up to Vaucan to help the robots make it to their next step of evolution. Banderas serves not only as the lead actor in the film, but also one of the producers. “Antonio is very brave and courageous, he wants difficult things,” says Ibanez, “he was brave as an actor, and also as a producer. Antonio as a producer all the time he say to me ‘Don’t forget why we are doing this movie, don’t forget from where you came.’ And that’s great, to have a producer pushing you in the direction of doing something different.”

    I came away from the screening with so many questions, not in a frustrated way, but in a mind-opening way. In the same manner something like Blade Runner affects you. I asked Ibanez about the Philip K. Dick adaptation, in which the robots are returning to earth to meet their creator. In Automata, they perfectly understand their creator, and what mankind does, and have a bit of a different response. “They understand that life is impossible with humans,” he says, “they have to run away from the violence.” It is quite telling that while they change their second protocol, allowing them to modify themselves and other robots, they do not alter the first protocol, protecting life. “That’s not something he needs,” the director says, “he needs to change the second protocol for evolution but there is no need to change the first protocol. They are robots: they do not kill people, that’s part of who they are.” Of course, when the robots make new robots, they don’t have any of the protocols, freeing themselves from artificial human restrictions. More than that, the new robots are not based on human forms, nor do they speak – these are not things that will be necessary in their next phase.

    automata_02

    The ‘baby’ robot (I’m not revealing anything more here to retain your surprise) has one other main difference from the other robots in the film, it is CG. The other robots in the film are all created practically, with puppeteers. “We always wanted to do a very realistic science-fiction movie,” Ibanez says, “and I have been working many years in computer graphics, I know how far we can go. And we can go very far, and we can make something very realistic, the perfect render, the lights, the shadows, everything perfect. But being realistic is not only about the image, it’s also about the relationship between the actor with the robots. Ibanez feels that having to work in this way gave the film a much more classic science fiction feel than other films, the actors actually had something physically there to play against. The robots sometimes took two, even three puppeteers, and much of the CG of the film was really to erase these actors, or to touch up the background. The film was shot in Bulgaria, which actually doesn’t look like a desert wasteland at all. However, by finding a quarry and going down inside of it, then just removing the trees and such above digitally, Ibanez got a ‘practical’ location that the actors could slosh through, on foot, and interact with. “In the shooting it was quite difficult,” he says, “but for the actor it was good to have the real robot. Nobody’s working this way now.”

    I’m personally extremely frightened by the oncoming robopocalypse, but according to Automata, and the director, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. “Even the second protocol,” he reminds me, “the first robot doesn’t change the second protocol, it’s something that just happened.” This is the spark of life that seems especially dangerous to some people’s core beliefs. “If you have a religious concept of life, and you feel that humans are here because God put us here, that concept is very strong,” the director suggests. Here we see ‘evolution’ happening naturally. The time of humans is near its end, and the robots represent the next stage of life on Earth. Ibanez continues: “if you have a not-religious concept of life, and feel like we’re alive just like dogs are alive, like monkeys are alive and we are just humans, the logical thing is that any moment we will disappear.” I can only imagine this disregard with man’s place as the inheritor of the Earth is about as frightening to some people as it was five hundred years ago to suggest the Sun does not revolve around the Earth.

    Stanley Kubrick said “the most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent,” a quote that Ibanez took to heart in the creation of this world. The film really resists any attempt at judgment. The robots are not evil, they are just natural, the humans are not evil (they do some evil things) but they are just acting out of their own defense, as any animal would. The universe does not intercede. But Jacq Vaucan does; “in a way he is like a traitor to the human beings,” Ibanez says, discussing Banderas’ character, “because we don’t know what is going to happen with the robots… but that’s the decision of the character to say ‘important is the life.’” But even the robots tell him that we will live on, in the robots. “And that’s a beautiful thing,” says the director, “we cannot do nothing, it’s a life, it’s going to happen. We are not here as humans to be all determinant on the earth. Many species disappear.”

    automata_a_l

    Ibanez and I discuss Stephen Hawking, who just a few months ago said, essentially, there is no way to know what artificial intelligence might be capable of, because it will be a bigger, better intelligence than we have to imagine it. He said: “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.” This is at the core of Ibanez’s Automata, making it more frightening, really, than any of the horror films I saw at Fantastic Fest. Ibanez looks back at Isaac Asimov, saying, “he would feel that the robots are going to be good, that they are going to take care of us, but who knows if this is going to happen?” And then he hits me with this: “Maybe for the robots we are going to be like ants, we don’t care about ants. We don’t try to kill all the ants, but…” At this point he stands up… walks a few steps, then sits back down and looks at his shoe. How many ants did he just kill? Does he know? Does he care? (note: this is just a metaphor, there were certainly no ants in the brand new, spotless rooms at the Highball). But his point is well taken, artificial intelligence is a real danger, because it we don’t know where it will lead. “Maybe this intelligence will decide the best thing for human beings is to disappear,” Ibanez says, “because you remove the pain.”

    Automata opens tonight in select theaters, looks like NYC, Detroit, Dallas, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Denver, LA, Seattle, San Francisco and somewhere in Arizona, BUT, is also available day and date on VOD, from the awesome people at Millennium Entertainment. I highly recommend this film for anyone who enjoys real science fiction, and likes to think. But beware, you will start looking at your Roomba somewhat differently.

    automata-poster02

    BearsAMFMshotBears Fonté is the Founder and Executive Director of Other Worlds Austin, a new festival in Texas’ capital focused on SciFi.  Prior to that, Bears served as Director of Programming for Austin Film Festival from 2012-14, overseeing some 200 films selected to screen at eight venues over eight days.  The 2013 Festival saw 28 world premiere features and 7 films picked up at the festival or the week after.  His most recent short film, THE SECRET KEEPER, has been selected by over 35 US Film Festivals since September of 2012.  His feature thriller iCRIME, which he wrote and directed, was released on DVD, VOD and streaming by Vicious Circle Films in 2011.  Bears also self-produced two web-series which have been seen by a combined ten million viewers.

    Prior to arriving in Austin, Bears wrote coverage for independent producers and coverage services in LA and placed in nearly every single screenwriting contest out there including Screenwriter’s Expo, Final Draft Big Break, Page International, Story Pros and Austin Film Festival.

    Bears received his BA from Carleton College in British Studies and Theatre Studies and a MFA in Directing from Indiana University and has directed over forty plays, including the Austin Critics Table nominee Corpus Christi, and the Austin Shakespeare Festival’s Complete Works of Shakspeare Abridged. He studied writing with noted playwrights Jeff Hatcher and Denis Reardon, and directed the first-ever professional productions by Princess Grace Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Don Zolidis and up-and-coming playwright Itamar Moses. He is currently working on a new five minute short to submit to festivals in 2015.

    //

    Share this:

    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • More
    • Print
    • Reddit
    • WhatsApp

    Related

    Automata Movie Review Bears Fonte
    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Previous ArticleSPORTS PLUS PRESENTS: 'THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT' INTERVIEW
    Next Article LATINWORKS AND DOMINOS PIZZA GIVE CONCERT AT TEXAS SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF
    christine

    Related Posts

    Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall

    Read More

    Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd

    Read More

    San Antonio Actor Antonio Raul Corbo On Voicing Lubicchi For POUPELLE OF CHIMNEY TOWN

    Read More

    Comments are closed.

    SEARCH BY CATEGORY
    • MOVIES
    • Music ICON
    • AUTHORS
    June 24, 2022

    Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall

    June 19, 2022

    Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd

    June 9, 2022

    Composer Lorne Balfe Talks Scoring TOP GUN: MAVERICK

    September 8, 2017

    GLEN CAMPBELL: ICON Pays Tribute With “Glen Campbell Live”

    May 6, 2017

    ICON PRESENTS: The Eagle’s Greatest Hits Volume 1

    March 3, 2017

    ICON SEASON FIVE: Get Ready To Rock And Roll

    June 14, 2022

    Author Angie Thomas on THE HATE U GIVE And CONCRETE ROSE

    June 6, 2022

    CONFESSIONS OF A DORK LORD And Book #2 GRAVE DANGER: Interview With Author Mike Johnston

    May 29, 2022

    SKANDAR AND THE UNICORN THIEF: Breakout Debut From Author A.F. Steadman (Interview)

    Hulu

    [instagram-feed]

    Recent Posts
    • Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall
    • Jay Aston Of GENE LOVES JEZEBEL’s US TOUR 2022
    • Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon: Traciii Guns and Director Andre Relis (Interview)
    • Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd
    • San Antonio Actor Antonio Raul Corbo On Voicing Lubicchi For POUPELLE OF CHIMNEY TOWN
    Archives
    amazon prime
    June 24, 20220

    Amazon Prime’s Thriller CHLOE: Talking With Series Stars Erin Doherty, Pippa Bennett-Warner, And Brandon Micheal Hall

    Interview by Paul Salfen Becky compares herself to the picture-perfect lives on Instagram, compulsively returning to one account: Chloe's. However, when Chloe dies suddenly, Becky's need to find out how and why leads her to assume a new identity. The series has been written by Netflix's Sex Education writer Alice Seabright. She is a writer

    Share this:

    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • More
    • Print
    • Reddit
    • WhatsApp
    Read More
    Featured Music
    June 23, 20220

    Jay Aston Of GENE LOVES JEZEBEL’s US TOUR 2022

    Interview by Paul Salfen ay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel will be taking their 40th Anniversary Tour over to North America this month. After the two dates at Pasadena’s Cruel World Festival, the band will embark on a 31-date tour of the US, with a date in Canada at Toronto. The dates and ticket links will

    Share this:

    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • More
    • Print
    • Reddit
    • WhatsApp
    Read More
    Featured Music
    June 23, 20220

    Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon: Traciii Guns and Director Andre Relis (Interview)

    Interview by Paul Salfen You can see Tracii Guns on tour now  with his band L.A. Guns.  Austin and Dallas SCHEDULE HERE Randy Rhoads, the legendary guitarist known for his unmatchable guitar riffs, re-shaped rock’n’roll as the lead guitarist for Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne. After forming Quiet Riot with bandmates Kelly Garni, Drew Forsyth, and

    Share this:

    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • More
    • Print
    • Reddit
    • WhatsApp
    Read More
    Blockbuster Movies
    June 19, 20220

    Phil Tippett Talks Stop-Motion Film MAD GOD, Opening June 22nd

    Interview by Paul Salfen Synopsis: Follow The Assassin through a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers, and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of thesubconscious mind. Every set, creature, and effigy in this macabre masterpiece is hand-crafted and painstakingly animated using traditional stop-motion techniques. MAD GOD is a labor of love, a testament

    Share this:

    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • More
    • Print
    • Reddit
    • WhatsApp
    Read More
    Copyright AMFMSTUDIOS LLC
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact
    • Cookie Policy (US)
    Copyright AMFMSTUDIOS LLC
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact
    • Cookie Policy (US)

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.