Guilty Pleasures #23 - Robot Overlords

To draw this year to the close, I’m going to be looking at 4 lesser known films and 1 big but ultimately sh*t adaptation. The first of these is Robot Overlords

Made in my home country of the United Kingdom (the word British is used by Politicians and Marketing companies, it’s rarely used by English/Scottish/Irish people, at least few that I’ve heard) anyway, this film was released in the UK in 2014 and in the US in 2015

Made with a low $21m budget, it doesn’t appear that film got a wide release, only being in 30 cinemas in the UK, as such what research I found seems to imply that this film did not make a return on that budget. The few critics that rated it on Rotten Tomatoes found in their favour, gaining a 60% rating, but it only rates 23% with audiences. IDMb ranked it somewhere in between with a 4.6/10.

OK, I’m gonna start with something I don’t usually mention. Subtitles. I find subtitles useful in making reviews, it allows me to bring attention to dialogue I might have missed, it’s also a wonder for people who have hearing difficulties. The DVD release of this movie in the UK has no subtitles. This is fundamentally dumb, but it’s something I’m going to come across again with the last movie before year’s end.

OK, we open like a paranormal activity film for some reason. “Three years ago… the Robots invaded Earth. The war lasted just eleven days” and now we get the creepiest robot voice in the known universe telling everyone that whilst their occupation will be peaceful until their research is finished. They have one rule, stay indoors. All the time? That’s gonna become a problem. Assuming this has been the case people might be starving to death, leakages and bursts can’t be investigated meaning some households might be without heat and water, not to mention electricity. Did I mention starving to death?

OK, so it’s night in the UK and cubes of decent for the budget CGI are hovering over us. One father is outside and his ear-implant is flashing red. A ship arrives and he’s warned to return home. He’s raving like a drunk person and is eventually killed. His child sees the entire thing and goes out having seen his father killed despite his I think mother and brother. Telling him to come back inside. The robots are about to kill him when he’s granted amnesty by… Ben Kingsley. You’re no stranger to Guilty Pleasures are you, with Ender’s game and Iron Man 3 under your belt your next outing for here is Robot Overlords? It’s a step down is what I’m saying.

The robot ship retreats and it’s time for our title. Turns out the two I called ‘mother’ and ‘brother’ were more family friends and the ‘mother’ pleads to Mr Smythe. OK, stop there. His name is Smythe? You may as well have called him Dr Evil, it’s not subtle.

OK, so it turns out these human erm minions of the robot overlords are the ones providing food, and hopefully maintenance to the rest of the human race. So I have a new question? Why do the aliens need humans to stay in their homes, what exactly is their objective? But before any of these questions are answered, time to meet our child protagonists. Oh god… We have Kate, played by Gillian Anderson. She’s the pseudo-guardian of this house of orphans and misfits if you will. She’s not important.

We have Sean, played by Callum McAulifee. He is important, we’ll get to that later. Right now you should know he doesn’t believe the story that his father’s dead because of… the Plot? OK, it will turn out that he’s right but what inclination other than hope does he have? You’d have thought he might’ve moved on; it must’ve been a while now. We have Connor played by Milo Parker, that kid we just saw react badly to his father being killed. We have Nathan played by James Tarpey and we have Alexandra played by Ella Hunt, I’ll get to their roles as they come about.

*ahm* Mr Smythe allows Kate to take the boys in. 5 minutes before curfew, wait there’s a curfew now, for crying out loud. Make up your minds! Anyway, 5 minutes before curfew Connor is allowed to go home and collect his things, out of time he trips over, almost being killed by a robot. He’s obsessed with Viking lore; Gee I hope I’m not reviewing anything next year with a character like this

Oh god! Back to the creepy voice, who is mediator 452 played by Craig Garner. To his credit, it’s intended to sound creepy with only some distorted vocal effects and it works. The next morning, Kate, who is Sean’s father is crying over a photo. Sean is creating wanted posters, stuffing them into tennis balls and using a home-made catapult to fling them probably just outside his fence (seriously, given the design of that catapult it’s unlikely it would have much range)

So whilst Sean is punching out all that anger we haven’t yet seen, Nathan is reading superhero comics, 2000AD, the comic series that brought us Robocop. He’s talking with his… erm… Grandfather about heroes? Sean seems to be training for some reason, keeping a tally of push-ups he’s doing, I assume he’s doing this to better man the catapult. It’s not gonna work, it’s work is pitiful.

Sean’s annoyed about Smythe’s continued flirting with his mother as Connor tries to fix the playstation using technical skills most people his age don’t have. Nathan is flung back by an electric shock. They notice his implant is turned off, they all try it and eventually head outside. Connor picks up a tennis ball and they begin sneaking around with the robots not noticing them at all. They head to a railway museum and shop because… the plot says so and begin helping themselves to the shop’s sweets and chocolates, and fireworks. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen. Nathan eyes up a lighter. Is he a pyromaniac or an under aged smoker?

Nathan, talking like he’s kinda drunk (not sure if that was intended, the actor was drunk or just bad direction) says that they should now start a resistance. You are 4 people, you’ll be slaughtered! Apparently his uncle taught him some guerilla warfare skills. Connor shows Sean the Tennis Ball, a response to one of the posters. His unit was captured and put on ration duty but was moved on to somewhere unknown.

The ‘zone chief’ apparently keeps files at the school (because this movie’s protagonists are children, of course there’s going to be a school scene) so of course Sean says he’s going there and the others follow suit. They head into this ‘crawling with Robots school’ which looks more like Hogwarts than any school I’ve ever seen. They leave Connor behind, not wanting to put him in danger, despite the fact that leaving him alone somewhere that’s crawling with robots is obviously putting him in danger. They enter a hall and are we sure this isn’t a church, because it looks about as much like a school as... I have no idea. Ok, in the next scene it looks more like a school as the ‘zone chief’ takes files downstairs and the others follow.

He leaves and they raid the cabinets, they spot several of them have red crosses, implying they’re dead. Season finds his dad’s files, with a zone reference pointing him towards a hotel. Alexandra notices Nathan’s implant is beginning to reactivate but they left the battery with Connor, whose implant is also beginning to activate. OK, are these implants trackers, or are specifically designed to go orange if someone’s outside? If the latter, you’re not outside, just find somewhere to hide.

Connor shocks himself, most likely killing himself given that he’s thrust back into a vending machine and at the very least must have injuries from the glass he shattered. The implants begin to flash red and a robot attacks, grabbing Nathan. Alexandra is also grabbed, forcing Sean to run. Mr Smythe tells the robots to stand down but somehow they’re still captured.

He wants to know how the implants were turned off and brings in some leverage, Morse Code Martin. As you can tell by his name (or at least how he’s credited on Wikipedia) he’s been sending out secret messages and gets a different implant for his troubles. He’s hooked up to a machine that does a deep scan of his mind, causing unbearable pain before making him basically incapable of anything before he dies of natural causes. Well, there goes your leverage, idiots!

Oh and mediator arrives with his creepy voice. So Connor wakes up and begins running, the robots prepare to perform the lobotomy on Sean, Connor raids the science lab and begins setting things on fire. Then he grabs some scrolls. Sean, meanwhile, taunts Mr Smythe reminding him that he killed his own son and wife (what did I say about him being an obvious villain again?) as he somehow escapes from his impending lobotomy.

Connor distracts them with some fireworks as Sean frees the others and they escape, this doesn’t even change the mediator’s expression. Nathan activates the gas and leaves his lighter behind, creating an explosion that destroys an unseen part of the school (guessing that's a budget thing). They go to a bowling alley to sleep with Nathan not being happy about Martin being dead and blaming Sean for it until Alexandra breaks them up. You know, you were the one suggesting setting up a resistance movement. If you thought there wasn’t going to be consequences to that, you are delusional.

Anyway, Smythe is alive because of no adequately explained reason and he takes a cross of a file, ok, so the red crosses are people with immunity to the robots, which they can tell somehow. They come across 2 more kids on their travels, they’re totally pointless. They head to the hotel, knocking over a barrel that gains the robots’ attention. OK, how do these robots operate. The robot appears to mimic Sean’s head movements, coincidence?

They enter a bar, full of erm… the usual pub crowd. Upon noticing them they attack until a guy with a gun (how did he get a gun, they’re kind of illegal in the UK) stops them and orders them taken to blonde woman Mc NotVillain here. Sean shows her a picture of his father and she offers to tell him what she knows in exchange for the knowledge of how they turned off their implants.

The residents begin shocking themselves. The blonde woman takes them to see Swanny, a guy who knew Sean’s father. He begins giving plot related babble that may or not become important later. The robots temporarily suspend curfew. Erm… Are they or are they not allowed out during the day?! Anyway, this a ploy to gather people outside so they can essentially give a wanted ad for Sean. Kate is now Smythe’s prisoner.

They head outside and Sean decides to go and rescue her mother. The guy in the black suit gives them some sandwiches and a radio link to the blonde woman so she can help guide them out of the city. So after getting out of the city the others begin arming themselves with guns they shouldn’t have to try and take their city back.

At a castle, Smythe shows off a bit to Kate, she’s actually falling for it. Dude, his name is Smythe!! When she finally wises up, he tells her that if she knew what the robots really wanted she’d beg them. With their implants active again, a robot pursues them but can’t seem to shoot Sean. His implant is in sync with theirs. He seems to be able to control it.

We have a scene where this kid, the dumbest guard in known history, who has claustrophobia gives Kate a sandwich and the keys.

This is why you don’t employ kids as guards, especially guarding people they know. Sean walks the robot towards the castle, making it look like he’s surrendered. Nathan grabs a gun, only good things can come from that. Kate comes across a map. Sean reveals his trap and demands his mother taken to him. Smythe sends for her, but likely aware that another robot has taken a sniping position behind them.

Kate is taken away on a horse as the sniper destroys the robot, several more begin firing with Sean taking the remains of the machine for cover. One of the snipers confronts him and he controls it (why aren’t the others firing on him) and makes it destroy another sniper via awful looking CGI (you can tell the background hasn’t changed. Nathan pursues Smythe with his machine gun. He has Smythe cornered but he falls and soon falls out of range. Sean manages to convert the machine into a battery using the link.

They pursue Kate on quad-bikes and eventually catch up, she’s relieved to see Sean alive. More drones are coming and they begin to ride away on the quad-bikes/van. They head into the woods as we see lots more robots are prepared. The mediator tells Smythe they need to capture Sean alive and the robots can’t do that without all being taken offline (that is a very poor design feature) anyway, they plan to deep scan everyone in the area and a ship with 4096 deep scanners is en-route. The mediator warns Smythe that he will be the first deep scan target if Sean isn’t captured.

OK, let’s start with a few problems here. First off, the problem is with the implant, you do not need him alive to study the implant. And you know it’s the implant because he hadn’t shown this ability prior to getting the new implant. Second, I did mention how stupid it is to have a hive-minded robot system that all must be shut down to make one change. Different planets must operate differently, there must be some leverage for them to adapt. Third off, how can they be a hive mind, you’re clearly not part of it. Are robots building robots now? Then the threat. Smythe is one guy, he can’t search everywhere on his own! There’s a high chance he wouldn’t find Sean, especially now they have vehicles and are off the grid. You’re gonna lobotomise him for that, thus taking off someone who is an asset to your occupation.

Moving on… They find the ancient burial site that sort of resembles stone henge, kind of. And it’s covered in graffiti and possibly a secret message. Nathan notices a possible romantic attraction between the main character and the only female character. Oh and Nathan is Alexandra’s brother, just to clarify his disgust. I wish they didn’t have to go for this trope. Elle is boring, she hasn’t had much to do thus far. Having "romantic interest" written on her really doesn’t help.

Connor calls them over having discovered the message which is written with such precision that they line up across several stones. The message is ‘cross river 3 times to safety’ look, if you cross the river 3 times aren’t you on the same side you would be if you only crossed it once? Anyway, they find that this clue leads to something Roman related, a quarry. They see dozens of machines heading towards them and start running.

So after crossing the river 3 times, they notice a kid and follow after him, coming across a spitfire hidden under some rags. Apparently it has 2 seats because that’s what the plot needs it to have. They’re confronted by some guys, including Danny Flynn, Sean's father. Sean and Kate embrace him, leaving the others with nothing to do in this scene.

They walk to the resistance as the robots smash the van. The resistance is over; they’re only trying to survive but they kept the spitfire just in case. Nathan talks about his own experience in flying on a computer game, and you’ll bet this’ll become relevant later, and still really dumb.

A watchman points out a robot ship heading nearby and they quickly head into hiding. As a bearded scientist guy begins removing their implants. Oh and the guy in the black suit, his name’s Wayne apparently. Wayne taunts him until Smythe reveals that he knows where the resistance was, the robots have seen the fires and washing lines. Wayne is the next to undergo lobotomy.

Kate reveals that the robots plan to lobotomise the entire human race using these deep scanners, they can’t do it quickly so they’re keeping everyone indoors. Why? You won the war against the military in days, what threat do the rest of the world possess? And why did no-one launch nukes at them, or are they protected from them as well, in which case I return back to my earlier question: why is anyone on earth a threat? Why keep them indoors? Just pick them off one by one, wherever they are.

So as everyone sleeps in the mine shaft, except Sean who’s examining his implant for some reason. Danny is teaching them how to fly, very briefly when a lot of noise is made when the camp is surrounded by literally 10 robots. Oh my, I’m so scared. They want Sean or everyone dies. But Sean’s already gone. He re-inserts the implants and calls a ship over to him.

A cube arrives to decimate the entire village. Danny and Nathan, who weren’t in the village, prepare to provide some air support, Nathan admitting he’s full of sh*t. The mediator sees the ship heading their way, a sniper heads up with the mediator to confront him. He’s piloting the ship straight towards the cube, Sean tries to control the mediator, the key to all the robots but finds he can’t do it, but he re-establishes control of the ship, sending the mediator falling to his 'death'.

The rest of the robots open fire, but Dean is protected by Nathan. Time for the bullsh*t to begin. The ship is now on its side at a perfect angle to fly straight into the cube. Nathan jumps, commanding a drone toward him to ensure his survival, the cube explodes and crashes down, destroying most of the village, the robots stand down I think.

Smythe is less than pleased, he goes after the sentries but without the cube, it no longer recognises him as an ally and kills him. They find the other half of the mediator and Seans tries to interface with him once again, he uses the link between them to shut down the robots and command the cubes to rise up an explode. The mediator expires, warning that this isn’t the end. The world is saved. But Sean is in need of saving, Alexandra kisses him, under the pretence of mouth to mouth. This love story is just so forced, they don’t have any romantic moments. Hell I struggle to remember a conversation between the two of them. They’ve exchanged a few glances, that’s it.

OK, so party party party, a few photos of those killed, people getting drunk. Nathan flirting. Sean just sort of walking, as if oblivious to everything. We can’t even hear what people are saying over the music. Long look at Alexandra because I guess staring constitutes a relationship (it worked for twilight I guess) and he looks up to the stars and then it just stops. What was the point of that last scene? What emotion am I supposed to feel? Is it setting up a sequel? What?

OK, this is one weird movie

The main plot of the movie is relatively basic, and that’s fine, a basic plot can work if the characters are interesting. And some of them are. Of the four leads my biggest issue when it comes to character is with Alex, she really comes off as a non-factor in the movie. She does little to advance the lot, her romance with Sean really isn’t explored either and that’s a red flag given that she’s the only female lead.

Sean is more interesting, he’s given a bit of character and is really the only one of the four with an arc, he might come across as a bit bland but I must admit there was enough for me with him, it’s a 90-minute movie, you’re not gonna get masses from it.

Nathan is largely comic relief. Whilst there are some interesting bits with him, especially after Martin, his Uncle was killed, he’s largely there for comic effect. Whilst that’s fine, I’d have preferred to see a bit more of his angry side

Connor I can’t quite pin down. He has a few moments of usefulness (the fireworks and figuring out the clue) that put him above Alexandra but really he’s in the roll of 'naïve kid'. His father dies in the first scene and it’s all but forgotten past the end of the first act, which is disappointing.

The story has been compared to a mediocre episode of Doctor Who and largely I have to agree, the Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff show from Doctor Who featuring the sadly deceased Elizabeth Sladen reprising her role of Sarah Jane Smith has a lot of similarities to this, but this being rated 12, because these days everything is, it’s allowed to explore some darker elements

But there are some positives, the effects are mostly decent (at least given their budget) the characters are well acted, especially from Ben Kingsley, it’s well paced, it never got dull and for all their lack of personality at least they didn’t give them qualities to make me dislike the leads. For those reasons, I can’t hate this movie and it deserves a spot with the rest of Guilty Pleasures

Rage Rating -35%

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Images/clips used in this review are from Robot Overlords, What we did on our Holiday and Ratchet and Clank and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.