Ron’s Gone Wrong made me actively angry. I’m not ScarJo in “Lucy” angry, but still angry. Spoilers, I guess.
Posted by
Mop (aka rburriel)
Dec 26 '21, 22:39
|
I believe what we’re meant to understand is that Ron is sentient. Fair enough. This is basically a Short Circuit remake. But there’s so much wrong with this movie, from the obtuse father and grandmother, to the suggestion that everyone in the school would have a B-Bot except poor Barney (except he’s not exactly, “poor”, suggesting that there are other places, with actual poor kids, who don’t get B-Bots). There’s also the naive - or lazy - writers who suggest that these robots actually serve to improve a child’s friendship skills and only the evil Andrew wants to turn them into a child’s only companion, when that’s actually what would happen in any real world scenario (and is the very concern that Barney’s father has). You can see it from the very opening scene as the script goes off the rails as Marc introduces a child in the audience to her very own B-Bot who clearly is the only best friend she needs but then they tack on the “Oh, and it can help you find other friends, too!” element, in an attempt to save the concept. That opening scene is so cringy, you expect to immediately cut to a dystopian scene of isolated children glued to their B-Bots, but the writers actually present the whole thing unironically. No joke, at first I thought I was watching the opening scent to The Mitchells vs. The Machines and had to check the title to make sure I hadn’t played the wrong movie.
Of course, we see right away that Ron is dangerous as other kids learn to turn off the safety protocols on their B-Bots, with hazardous consequences. So what’s the solution in the end? To corrupt all the B-Bots and make them like Ron. It makes them all sentient, which is demonstrated by the B-Bots all doing whatever they like, which has multiple flaws. Why would children play with them if they didn’t do what the kids wanted? What happens to the B-Bot if the kid is no longer interested in playing with it? Do we end up with a community of homeless B-Bots? And, finally, it’s clear that the B-Bots don’t understand basic social norms, resulting in sometimes violent behavior in a robot that can kill people. It’s like giving a baby a gun.
The plot is all over the place. The Marc character seems rudderless. Is he here to help or hurt or neither? Barney hides in the woods in an adventure that should alarm any parent. There’s basic core themes about how you have to be a friend in order to have a friend, and about sacrifice in order to help others, but the narrative is a disaster. The writers clearly had a bunch of half-baked ideas and no one thought to tell them to give their script another pass.
|
|
|
Responses:
-
Spoils
-
Beryllium
Dec 26, 23:02
|