Film series “Artificial Intelligence in Cinema”: Who is the better RoboCop?

“Chappie” is the third movie in the film series “Artificial Intelligence in Cinema” and will be shown on 28 May at 18:30 in the Filmhaus Saarbrücken. The action film from 2015 deals with an autonomous police robot that is kidnapped by street gangsters and receives human consciousness. This leads to a dramatic chain of circumstances. Cosmina Croitoru, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken, will then comment on the science fiction movie produced in the United States and Mexico. The film series is organized by the Filmhaus in Saarbrücken together with the Competence Center for Computer Science Saarland and the German-American Institute.

According to the website “kino.de” the film mixes “hard action, street gangster milieu and political social criticism with a romantic hope for the good in man and machine”. This judgement is not surprising when you know that behind the Robocop version stands the same director who was nominated for four Oscars in 2010 with the film “District 9”. Once again Neil Blomkamp settles the plot in Johannesburg, South Africa. There, autonomous police robots, called “scouts”, reduce the crime rate without human losses. However, a militant robotics engineer sabotages them extensively in order to present a combat robot developed by him as a saviour in need. The consequences are catastrophic. Besides Dev Patel, known from the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”, Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the X-Men movie series) shines as the malicious engineer and also some actors who were unknown to international cinema.

Following the film, Cosmina Croitoru will separate the facts from the fiction. The doctor of computer science works at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in the department “Algorithms and Complexity”. She has written her doctoral thesis on artificial intelligence and has been teaching students in this field since 2015.
The “AI in Cinema” series comprises a total of eight films, most of which were produced in the past decade. The “Morgan Project” from 2016, “Chappie” from 2015 and the now realistic film “Her” are all part of the series. The film “Robot and Frank” is intended for an older audience. The only exception in terms of production year is “Blade Runner” by director Ridley Scott. The classic produced in 1992 is shown as “Director’s Cut”.

Further information:
https://filmhaus.saarbruecken.de/

Questions can be directed to:
Gordon Bolduan
Science communication
Competence Center for Computer Science
Saarland Informatics Campus E1.7
E-mail: bolduan@mmci.uni-saarland.de
Phone: +49 681 302 70741