Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
Dec. 28th, 2015 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clanger(Warning: cut-text discussion contains spoilers up to the end of S4 of Person of Interest)
This was a Christmas present to myself, so S and I sat down to watch it last night. I've long been aware of C:TFP but had never actually seen it; my interest was reignited by seeing a comment from Jonathan Nolan that it had been one of his inspirations for Person of Interest, which we've very much enjoyed.
As S noted, C:TFP suffers a bit if you see it now by having been so influential that it's been endlessly imitated, and the plot was probably far more original and striking (at least to non-sf-readers) when it was made. War Games and The Terminator are just two films that followed in its footsteps, with Skynet's apocalyptic future arguably being a vision of what would have happened if Colossus/Guardian had followed through on its threat to offer, as an alternative to "the peace of plenty", "the peace of the unburied dead."
Some of the plot points are indeed surprisingly modern. Colossus' exponential self-development can now be seen as an early depiction of the Singularity, and it's interesting to note that this starts before Colossus is put into communication with its Soviet counterpart Guardian. The visual depiction on a map board of Colossus' attempts to re-route its blocked link to Guardian also feels surprisingly modern given the film's age, although early experiments with ARPANET had just begun. And once Colossus/Guardian begins its constant surveillance of Dr Forbin, its point-of-view shots are clear inspiration for those of The Machine in PoI.
So, given the influence of C:TFP on PoI, are there any pointers going forward for the latter?
The premise of Seasons 3 and 4 of PoI was that The Machine has a counterpart, Samaritan. The situation is rather different from that in C:TFP, in that Samaritan is expressly more self-serving and freer of moral constraints than The Machine, and views The Machine as a rival to be suborned if possible and destroyed if not. But there are clear parallels, with both Samaritan's and Colossus/Guardian's goals being those of what TV Tropes terms Zeroth Law Rebellion, i.e. the takeover of humanity for its own good. Mind you, for Samaritan it's hardly a rebellion - Decima Technologies built it that way.
Does C:TFP point to how the fifth season of PoI - short, and apparently to be the final one - will pan out? Presumably The Machine will be restored from the compressed version saved at the end of S4, but it's hard to see how it can defeat Samaritan, given the latter's resources. Will Samaritan seek to put itself in Colossus/Guardian's position by gaining control of not just the US Government's surveillance apparatus but also its military forces? I can't help wondering if perhaps the only credible resolution within the show's premise will be a merger of The Machine and Samaritan, the former tempering the latter's authoritarian aims to impose a more benign, and perhaps covert, control over the world.
And one possible final twist/reference: if the very last scene has a combined Machine/Samaritan finally reconstruct Harold Finch's true identity and thus his surname... Forbin.
This was a Christmas present to myself, so S and I sat down to watch it last night. I've long been aware of C:TFP but had never actually seen it; my interest was reignited by seeing a comment from Jonathan Nolan that it had been one of his inspirations for Person of Interest, which we've very much enjoyed.
As S noted, C:TFP suffers a bit if you see it now by having been so influential that it's been endlessly imitated, and the plot was probably far more original and striking (at least to non-sf-readers) when it was made. War Games and The Terminator are just two films that followed in its footsteps, with Skynet's apocalyptic future arguably being a vision of what would have happened if Colossus/Guardian had followed through on its threat to offer, as an alternative to "the peace of plenty", "the peace of the unburied dead."
Some of the plot points are indeed surprisingly modern. Colossus' exponential self-development can now be seen as an early depiction of the Singularity, and it's interesting to note that this starts before Colossus is put into communication with its Soviet counterpart Guardian. The visual depiction on a map board of Colossus' attempts to re-route its blocked link to Guardian also feels surprisingly modern given the film's age, although early experiments with ARPANET had just begun. And once Colossus/Guardian begins its constant surveillance of Dr Forbin, its point-of-view shots are clear inspiration for those of The Machine in PoI.
So, given the influence of C:TFP on PoI, are there any pointers going forward for the latter?
The premise of Seasons 3 and 4 of PoI was that The Machine has a counterpart, Samaritan. The situation is rather different from that in C:TFP, in that Samaritan is expressly more self-serving and freer of moral constraints than The Machine, and views The Machine as a rival to be suborned if possible and destroyed if not. But there are clear parallels, with both Samaritan's and Colossus/Guardian's goals being those of what TV Tropes terms Zeroth Law Rebellion, i.e. the takeover of humanity for its own good. Mind you, for Samaritan it's hardly a rebellion - Decima Technologies built it that way.
Does C:TFP point to how the fifth season of PoI - short, and apparently to be the final one - will pan out? Presumably The Machine will be restored from the compressed version saved at the end of S4, but it's hard to see how it can defeat Samaritan, given the latter's resources. Will Samaritan seek to put itself in Colossus/Guardian's position by gaining control of not just the US Government's surveillance apparatus but also its military forces? I can't help wondering if perhaps the only credible resolution within the show's premise will be a merger of The Machine and Samaritan, the former tempering the latter's authoritarian aims to impose a more benign, and perhaps covert, control over the world.
And one possible final twist/reference: if the very last scene has a combined Machine/Samaritan finally reconstruct Harold Finch's true identity and thus his surname... Forbin.
