Plus: 12th Fail proves it's never too late to reboot your story.
What Evil Robots In Films Signal About Our Tech Anxieties
| From the cold logic of HAL 9000 to M3GAN’s menace, cinema’s killer robots reflect our evolving fears about AI and control, writes Adam Daniel .
| FILMGOERS have long been captivated by stories about robots. We are fascinated by their utopian promise, their superhuman intelligence and, in the case of the cyborg, their often uncanny resemblance to humans. But it is the evil robot – the machine that malfunctions, rebels or was built to harm – that has most powerfully gripped the collective imagination of audiences. From the silent menace of Maschinenmensch in 1927’s Metropolis , to the relentless pursuit of the Terminator , to the campy violence of M3GAN , evil robots continue to resonate. These films not only thrill, scare and entertain audiences. They also reflect deep-seated cultural anxieties about the unpredictable consequences of the current and future human-robot relationship. Stream live sports, blockbuster films and hit shows with OTTplay Premium's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. The killer robot is far from a simple villain. It is a mirror held up to some of the most pressing cultural questions we have about human autonomy and responsibility in the digital age. The enduring appeal of the evil robot narrative lies in the way horror often channels our deepest cultural anxieties about the speed of technological advancement and the precarity of human control in an increasingly digital (and robotic) world. In The Spark of Fear, scholar Brian Duchaney posits that improvements in technology necessitate new types of horror stories, and that horror as a genre acts out our distrust of the social advances that new technology brings. Thus, in the late 1960s, when there was unease about the growing sophistication of computers and the impacts of the Space Race, HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) represented this threat through a disembodied AI that icily turned against its human creators. | Zero Se Restart Is An Illuminating Documentary On Filmmaking
| This documentary on the making of Vidhu Vinod Chopra's 12th Fail distils the ambiguity of creation rather than the disorder of production, writes Ishita Sengupta .
| ZERO SE RESTART , the documentary on the making of 12th Fail (2023), opens with a scene from the film. Manoj Kumar Sharma (Vikrant Massey), the UPSC aspirant, is sitting in a closed room. It is the final leg of his gruelling journey, and the interviewer is irked. We don’t hear Sharma speak, but the formidable face of the examiner fills the frame, so do the two words he chews out: “What arrogance!”. For those familiar with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s last work, the context is evident. And for those familiar with Chopra, the text is. Little about the filmmaker is unknown. His early career, National Award winning short film, struggle in distributing Parinda (1989; distributors had offered Chopra money not to kill the leads — Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit, but instead Jackie Shroff’s character), losing temper either with actors (he had infamously bitten Shabana Raza’s hand during Kareeb because she was making a mistake) or journalists (Chopra screaming during 3 Idiots’ screening is as well known as the film). When these are coupled with his filmmaking verve and producer-ambition, a tangled portrait of a man surfaces, one so incautious in dealing with others for the sake of art that it makes one wonder about the hubris of his artistry in private. Jaskunwar Kohli’s Zero Se Restart springs from that curiosity. Psst! 12th Fail is streaming on JioHotstar. JioHotstar is now part of your OTTplay Premium subscription. | Like what you read? Get more of what you like. Visit the OTTplay website or download the app to stay up-to-date with news, recommendations and special offers on streaming content. Plus: always get the latest reviews. Sign up for our newsletters. Already a subscriber? Forward this email to a friend, or use the share buttons below. | | | This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead. | | Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think it worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. | | In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
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