Can’t We Just Talk This Over?
Can’t We Just Talk This Over?
Bots and Nots
What I Learned From Watching Robot Riot on Amazon
I watched Robot Riot on Amazon Prime Video and I am a better man for it.
By watching this plucky little gem I learned that robots don’t always want to be our friends. In fact, they probably want to kill us and if you give them a gun they’ll kill a lot of us.
I also learned that the bigger the robot, the bigger the gun and the greater the anger. Robot Riot has several robots bigger than a Buick that blasted people in the head without hesitation.
Robot Riot also taught me that when it’s people versus robots and they both have guns you should bet on the robots. This is because the robots tend to work together better than we do. Have you ever heard a robot arguing with another robot about who is in charge? No. But people tend to do that and then before they settle anything they usually ended up getting shot by a robot.
The robots in Robot Riot also don’t seem to be distracted by sexual tension of any kind. But I believe the human soldiers who were fighting the robots were weighed down by worrying about who would have sex with who once the robots were defeated.
Spoiler alert: no one ends up having sex in Robot Riot. Unless I missed it.
I’m not saying Robot Riot would have been better with a few sex scenes but, other than Gravity, name me a movie that could not have benefitted from a touch more gratuitous groping and nudity. Can’t do it, can you?
By watching Robot Riot on my phone while wearing a mask on a lonely winter night I also became aware of a subtle subtext, which is that even though the robots were the killers it’s the people who built the robots who are the real bad guys, especially the maniacal general who sat in the control room and said mean things. I get it, people are the ones who do bad things; robots are just the vessel of that hate. Sort of like when you whack your neighbor with a broom. Bad broom? Sorry, no.
The plot of Robot Riot echoes that of most Woody Allen films. In those movies a nebbish intellectual spends his time with artists and writers and drinks wine and sleeps with women much younger and attractive than him. Robot Riot depicts the plight of betrayed soldiers with computer chips implanted in their necks who trust each other only slightly more than they trust the robots whom they are battling to the death. The similarities are striking.
Would it surprise you if I said Robot Riot was written by a robot? It wouldn’t surprise me. Not really.
Do you ever hide your keys underneath the seat of your Hummer? You should because that could end up saving someone’s ass from the murderous robots, just like it did in Robot Riot.
Does Robot Riot teach us that that the robots are really ourselves and the fear is actually our genitalia? Yes.
Robot Riot is available for streaming on Amazon Prime and for rent at your local video store. --TK
Thursday, February 11, 2021