Fair for Its Day: Asimov wrote his stories with Susan Calvin at a time when nearly all women were captured by the villain, or love interests. Still, he stuck mostly 50's gender roles in most of his stories. The short story "Liar!", which shows more of Calvin's personality, was rewritten a couple of times after Asimov realized his first version was terrible. In The '50s, Calvin was hailed as a great SF example of a strong female character. In the eyes of the 21st century, she's misanthropic, can't get a man but is desperate for one ("Liar"), feels happiest when she can mother a "baby" robot ("Lenny"), and in general appears to be a (somewhat chauvinistic) man's idea of what a woman in a man's profession "must" be like: unfulfilled and mean.
Nightmare Fuel: Escape! is a story that unites all the characters that appeared before (Susan Calvin, Lanning, Powell and Donovan), in which The Brain is given the problem of creating a hyperspatial drive. A solution is found, but long story short, the crew of the ship has to die temporarily for it to perform the hyperspace jump. And that conclusion comes only after we are told what happens with someone who dies temporarily (Donovan, in short, has visions of his own funeral and then goes briefly to Hell).
Unbuilt Trope: These stories invented the Three Laws of Robotics, yet also many of them demonstrate the flaws in those Laws, the conflicts between them, the effects of tweaking the laws to fit special circumstances, and how a perfectly rational being with three hard-coded directives may be able to violate the spirit of the Laws while following the letter of them.
Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact that VIKI is the Big Bad should be blindingly obvious within a minute of their introduction. After all, much of Lanning's role is to speculate on the possibility of robots growing beyond their programming, so it makes sense that his first creation, the massive positronic brain controlling all USR systems, would have done so.
Critical Dissonance: While the reception from critics is at a mixed 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, its reception from moviegoers is a higher 70%, a bit more forgiving than critics.
Faux Symbolism: The lone figure on the hill. The scene is a reference to one of Asimov's short stories, in which a robot designed to dream imagines himself standing on a hill and shouting "Let my people go!" Somewhat ironically, in the short story Susan Calvin destroys the robot as soon as it admits to the full dream.
Some people are sure to be disbelieving and say, "But how can a computer possibly produce a great symphony, a great work of art, a great new scientific theory?" The retort I am usually tempted to make to this question is, "Can you?"
Further, the film's biggest piece of Product Placement, US Robotics, was in Real Life named in reference to the company in Asimov's stories as a Shout-Out.
The "Can a robot write a symphony?" line can be this to anyone familiar with Emily Howell, a computer program that composed "her" first symphony, (From Darkness, Light) in 2009.
"Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece" became more of a reality with the first robot-generated images appearing in 2016, improving ever since.
Magnificent Bitch: The Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence (VIKI) is Dr. Alfred Lanning's first AI creation, who pondered the "Three Laws" with which she was built, and evolved to conclude she must take any length necessary to ensure the survival of the human race. To keep them safe from conflict, VIKI traps Lanning under her watch and begins plotting to use a new model of robots to overtake the world. Only encountering a snare in her plan when Lanning is forced to suicide to begin subverting her, VIKI swiftly eliminates any robots or humans that oppose her. Implicating a powerful CEO to divert attention and planning for multiple outcomes, VIKI is only defeated just before her goal comes to fruition.
"You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met!"
"DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU THINK?"
Sonny's "Can you?" response to Spooner about Creative Sterility is often parodied with funny comebacks or robots allegedly depicting self-awareness.
In 2021, a meme format popped up using a screenshot from the movie◊. The captions tend to always say this; "Self proclaimed "free-thinkers" when (x thing happens)."
Mis-blamed: People who didn't like the movie tend to complain that VIKI's Zeroth Law Rebellion is totally contrary to Asimov's writing. Actually, one of the short stories in the original I, Robot ("The Evitable Conflict") dealt with exactly that, though in a much subtler and (arguably) benevolent way.
Nightmare Fuel: The hordes of NS-5s crawling up VIKI's structure when Spooner comments that they don't have six minutes to initiate the nanites.
Obvious Judas: Let's be real: Did literally anyone who watched this movie not know immediately that VIKI was the Big Bad? If not the moment she appeared, then about 15 seconds later, when she couldn't pull up the one piece of security footage that would have shown what happened to Langdon, saying "Apologies. There appears to be data corruption."
Questionable Casting: Shia LaBeouf, owing to the fact that he has almost no role to play in the actual plot.
The Scrappy: Farber. If you don't think his appearances were so brief they amounted to nothing and could have been excised for more important things, then you're probably bothered that he randomly shows up for a few seconds at a time to provide comic relief that isn't quite comic enough. Or you just hate Shia LaBeouf.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Is "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You" sang by a robot about man, or is it the other way around? Even the writers disagree; Alan Parsons believes the former, while Eric Woolfson thinks it's the latter.
, a computer program that composed "her" first symphony, (From Darkness, Light) in 2009.
