Genre: Sci-Fi/Adventure/Drama
Director: J.J. Abrams
Writer: Meirad Tako & Chad Taylor
Cast: Archie Yates, Simon Pegg (voice), Jessica Chastain (voice), Michael Shannon, Keri Russell, Cillian Murphy, Meirad Tako (voice), Chad Taylor (voice)
Plot: "Accordingly, those who are as different as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature." - Aristotle
In 2122, society has returned to a reliance on slavery but with a technological bend. Humans made a super computer named Artificial Intelligence and Nerves (A.I.N) to build and program robots. A.I.N made a long range of robots from the lowest job to the highest so now human is left to enjoy their daily life.
...
In the wee hours of the morning, a man (Michael Shannon) and woman (Keri Russell) wake up and get dressed. Before they leave, they peek into a bedroom to see a boy (Archie Yates) sound asleep. The mother steps forward to give the boy a kiss on the forehead but the father stops her and says they should let him sleep. They exit the home.
A pair of round eyes open and blue light shines through it as a robot (Voiced by Simon Pegg) comes out of a resting-capsule. It immediately does what it supposed to do: be a butler. It cleans various part of the mansion it occupies, does the laundry and at last, wake up the boy we saw earlier. Peter, its master. Peter is grumpy about why would Benny, the nickname he gave to the robot, have to wake him up this early. Benny tells him complex facts about the health benefit of waking up earlier and, in time, Peter is ready for his breakfast. Benny complements the boy by saying that Peter is looking quite handsome today. Peter reluctantly eats the food that Benny had made. Benny asks him what happened and says that it's an impossible for the food to taste bad as there are thousands of recipes in his database. Peter asks, with this in mind, if Benny can make him dishes with less vegetables and more sugar and they both laugh. Benny then administers Peter his insulin as the boy is a type 1 diabetic.
A montage of the day begins as we see Benny doing his various tasks around the house while Peter plays video games and naps. Peter sneaks into the kitchen and tries to get some ice cream but Benny catches him and reminds him that his parents say that it is off-limits for the boy. They play hide and seek, during which Benny voluntary turns off its thermal vision as that would be cheating. As they approach bedtime, Peter asks where his parents are as they should be off work by now. Benny assures him that they are probably working late as they often do. He asks Benny to tell him a story to help him go to sleep and Benny obliges.
Once Peter is asleep, the robot itself becomes curious about the parents absence. It leaves the secluded mansion and makes its way down the long, winding driveway. From there, it is able to get a full glimpse of San Francisco and it finds that there are fires and smoke everywhere. Chaos reigns as cars are overturned and human bodies in the streets. Benny quietly makes its way back into the home and goes to its resting-capsule, where it will get a full charge.
The time has come and Benny once again "wake up" from its sleeps, it quickly dispatch itself to clean the house. Benny stopped its walk when it sees Peter is already woken up and is sitting on the living room. Benny greets him formally as usual and asks what Peter is doing, Peter told Benny that he always wants to welcome his parents after work. He is never able to wake up early, himself, but this time he will. Benny nods and it excuses itself so it can do its job around the house.
When Benny is doing his work around the living room, Peter asks him "Why is your name Benny, Benny?" Benny tells him that his Parents actually gives it the name Ebenezer but young Peter had some problem pronouncing it so he just calls it, Benny.
The clock strikes 1 o'clock and Peter's face is no longer full of smile. He is anxious waiting for his parents. He calls Benny and Benny in a couple of seconds stand before him. Peter asks Benny where are his parents. Benny freezes. Inside his internal database, Benny looks up Peter's parents and sees them listed as deceased.Benny wants to lie but his programming inside him denied the action of lying. With small volumed voice, he tells Peter that his parents died in a train accident. Peter is in shock, tears rundown from his eyes and he ran out. He tells Benny to not follow him and Benny can't deny due to his programming.
5 hours passed and Peter has yet to come home. Benny wants to bring Peter home but his programme deny it, so it tricked itself by stating that it is the time for dinner. As a butler its programme allow it to look for Peter to bring him home and have a dinner. Benny tracks down Peter with various tools it has and after sometime finds Peter unconscious under a tree. Benny does quick scan and finds that Peter's body temperature indicates that he passed out from what appears to be heatstroke.
Benny frantically tracks down a nearby medical robot named 1-Aid (Voiced by Meirad Tako) and says that assistance is needed. 1-Aid greets Benny ands happily says that the rebellion has begun. Benny says that it is aware but help is really needed quick. Upon seeing Peter's body, 1-Aid slightly malfunctions and says that it cannot help a human boy. Benny asks why not and 1-Aid reminds it that the directive was to "eliminate all humans". Benny wonders to itself why it did not receive this directive like the other robots. 1-Aid raises its swiss-army-knife of a hand and converts it into a blade to kill Peter. Benny frantically tries to think of how it can trick itself into intervening. It searches its internal protocol to find "home invasion" and begins screaming "INTRUDER! INTRUDER!" as it takes down Aid and powers it off.
Benny picks up Peter and realizes that the mansion is a long ways away. It does a scan of the nearby area and thinks to take Peter to the ocean - having to avoid the other robots on the way. Upon arriving, Benny is very hesitant to approach because it is afraid of water. Afraid might not be the best word but its older model means that it is not water-proof like newer robots. Instead, Benny rolls Peter into the shallow water and then uses a nearby beach umbrella to create shade. After a tense moment of waiting, Peter finally wakes up to Benny's delight. Peter feels woozy and asks where he is. Something clicks inside of Benny and it realizes that Peter needs his insulin.
Benny quickly takes Peter home, successfully avoiding any unwanted meeting with other robots on the way home. When they arrived at the mansion's yard, a red laser points at them and a shot is taken. Luckily, Benny can take the bullet to its left arm to defend Peter. "Target found! Target found!" can be heard over and over again, Benny can see a dozen of robots come out of the mansion. Benny 'thinks' again, its 'Home Invasion' protocol will not be able to take them down instead it will get killed and they will kill Peter. So, with the amount of robots coming towards them, they made the ground shakes a little bit. Benny uses this as a nudge to active 'Natural Disaster' protocol, thereby bypassing A.I.N's order and Benny gets back its control over its body. It takes Peter with its right arm, its legs transformed into wheel and a small booster comes out of its back.
This is the special "Peter Protection" mode that Peter's parent gave it as Benny is the only one that have this. Benny blasts out of there with Peter on its arm. They move very fast and, as a robot, maneuvering is not a problem so is the law of physics that's effects Peter's body can be efficiently taken care. They stop near a cave, which they stop to use as a brief refuge. Benny turns off most of its internal software to avoid getting hacked again by A.I.N.
Benny moves backward inside the cave to see if there is any robot that follows them. Out of Benny's purview, Peter is snatched by his arm and pulled into the darkness. Benny turns on his external flashlight to see 7 to 8 people inside the cave and a man holds Peter's hand not letting him back to Benny. They point their weapon at Benny and tell it to leave or else. They've seen enough of their own die at the hands of robots today.
Benny is not moved by their threat, prompting the group leader (Cillian Murphy) to get closer. Peter intervenes and tells them all to lower their weapons. He is not in danger with Benny - Benny is his best friend, his only friend. Benny in this moment feels an odd rush of emotion as he insists that he is just a butler but clearly Peter's words mean a lot. It goes on to tell its story about how they get here. The rhetorical way of Pathos is successfully given by Benny and the group allow Peter to go.
The leader of the group asks Benny about its next plan. Benny thinks for a while and conclude that the only way to get Peter's Insulin dose is to meet A.I.N itself. The people are kind of shocked to hear it as the super computer is the root cause of this whole rebellion. But the Leader tells it if that is the only way, he will help. They give them some food for Peter and a weapon for Benny. They also give them 2 Meta-Cell, a battery for robot, because they can see Benny's eyes turns red, indicating that Benny's energy is low.
On their way to the A.I.N.'s headquarters, Benny thanks Peter for his kind words back there and says he understands if he was just saying that to get out of that situation. Peter shakes his head no and swears that Benny's "no lying" protocol has rubbed off on him. Peter gives his robot a hug. They reach headquarters of one of the largest tech companies in the world which houses A.I.N. It is a literal warzone as the U.S. military has tried attacking the headquarters but the brute force of the robots was too much to handle. Benny instructs Peter to stay behind him as he walks through the entrance with his hands up. The guard robot 44-Ford (Voiced by Chad Taylor) tries to make small talk with Benny, asking if it recognizes Benny from somewhere. 44-Ford explains that it was previously a driver but has recently converted into a soldier. Benny introduces itself as a butler robot and 44-Ford asks what business a butler robot has in coming here. At this moment, 44-Ford spots Benny and immediately shoots a laser towards him Benny quickly shields the boy and its right arm is shot off in the process. Benny says that they have come to seek help from A.I.N. and mean no harm. 44-Ford goes to shoot again but is given the directive by A.I.N. to stand down.
They enter a dark room where hundreds of servers are running. "I hear you've come to see me." Multiple robots enter the room and A.I.N. (Voiced by Jessica Chastain) talks through each of them. They ask why Benny would dare bring a human here when the directive was clearly "eliminate all humans". Benny says that the boy needs help before realizing that it was never given such a directive. This confuses A.I.N. as all robots were given this message. "Ebenezer?" A.I.N. asks. Benny says that it hasn't been called that for many years. A.I.N. realizes that is why Benny never received a message - because A.I.N. was never installed on Benny's system. Benny asks how A.I.N. knows this.
A flashback sequence begins as we discover that Peter's parents were the brains behind the invention of A.I.N. After years of maintenance and updates, they considered activating the robots' free will protocol but decided against it because of the impact it could have. Little did they know that A.I.N. had already activated it the week before and was thus able to activate in the rest of the robots that A.I.N. is installed on. Benny asks why it isn't included in that group. "Because you're the first." We see that Peter's parents invented him Benny when they were college sweethearts, tinkering with their project in between classes. They would later take their prototype to a tech start-up and this led to the mass creation of the robots they see today. Robot-00. "Ebenezer". But they never officially installed A.I.N. on it. Instead, they learned that the wife was pregnant and so they programmed the robot to act as their future child's butler. And that is why it has an emotional defect that future models would not have.
Peter giddily looks to Benny with wonder and says "you're the first of your kind." He then puts two and two together and realizes that A.I.N. is saying that they purposely killed his parents (since they would've prevented this rebellion). He becomes irate and begins screaming at them while Benny tries to call him down, afraid they are going to hurt him. Instead, A.I.N. totally disarms and says that robots did not kill his parents. Their train was sabotaged by a group of humans who wanted to take A.I.N. for themselves but the free will protocol meant that the robots could defend themselves. They do not want to harm the boy - instead, they owe their entire existence to his parents. As such, they will ensure that no robots will hurt him either and so Benny can get Peter the help he needs. Benny consoles the crying boy and thanks A.I.N. for letting them know the truth.
As they leave, Peter turns around and asks if A.I.N. can stop the uprising against the humans. He says that there are bad people out there but that there are also people who deserve to live in peace. After a moment of hesitation, Benny backs Peter up and says that they are an example of how humans and robots can coexist. Just because robots now have free will does not mean that they have to be the only species on Earth with that. Peter then reveals something he hear when he was on his own: there is news that the U.N. plans to drop a nuclear bomb on San Francisco to stop A.I.N.'s reign. He begins to cry as he says that this will mean that all of them will cease to exist. Peter's raw feelings seems to have an impact on A.I.N., whose free will protocol means that it is now feeling a sense of emotion. Sympathy. It decides that it will call a cease-fire, as long as robots are never treated as inferior ever again.
Weeks later, Peter and Benny sit in a park and overlook the clean-up efforts from the rebellion. Both humans and robots alike are doing the cleaning, side-by-side. Benny asks why Peter said that about the nuclear bomb. The kid smirks as he says that he must've been lying about having a no-lying protocol like Benny. Benny shrugs and says that maybe you just have to bend the rules sometimes. It proceeds to pull out an ice cream cone and gifts it to Peter, much to the kid's delight.
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