The definition of a hero may differ greatly from person to person. It is an extremely relative term, as one person’s idea of a hero may be a police man, while another may be their parents. However, when faced with the textbook definition of a hero, one will realize that the word “hero” is extremely versatile. In this case, there is one character that comes to mind. There is a book (and movie) called I, Robot that describes the story of a man named Detective Spooner through his quest of exposing the fact that the robot uprising occurring in the world is a poor choice. For the purpose of simplicity, any reference made throughout this essay will be in reference to the movie adaptation unless otherwise specified.
The first portion of the hero’s journey is known as the ordinary world. This phase is where all stories begin. It describes the world that the soon to be hero lives in, before anything extraordinary occurs (Vogler 2003). In the case of Detective Spooner, this is in the year 2035 in Chicago. Robots mainly dominate the area, due to human reliance on them. The do everything from cooking, to even holding their own job. Detective Spooner works for the Chicago PD and is widely ridiculed for his distrust of robots, as he is the only one that feels this way. In the beginning the robots are at model number NS-4. At the time these were the most advanced robots, but also lacked emotion among other things, which some would argue that it is good that a robot does not have emotions. While in the beginning stages of the story Detective Spooner is made aware of the release of a new model of robot, known as the NS-5. This new robot has a connection to a central server, along with the addition of emotions and other systems (Proyas I, Robot).
The next phase of the hero’s journey is known as the “Call to Adventure”. This phase is when some event occurs that lets the hero know that he/she may need to do something they normally would not do (Robinson 2015). You could think of it as essentially someone getting a phone call telling them that they need to do something. In the case of Detective Spooner, his call to adventure is when the co-founder of the company that makes the robots, USR, gets killed. This is a momentous call to adventure for him, solely because right off the bat he has a hunch that it was a robot that caused the death, despite that violating the three laws of robotics (Proyas I, Robot).
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Following the call to adventure, the next phase in known as the “Refusal of the Call”. This portion of the hero’s journey is dedicated to the time when the hero, having received his call to adventure, has doubts about that fact that he was chosen, or down right says “no” to pursuing the journey itself (Vogler 2003). In the movie adaptation, Detective Spooner does not turn down the call, but instead questions it. He begins to question why the holograms left by Dr. Lanning (The man who apparently committed suicide) chose him to figure out this mystery. Detective Spooner is extremely confused because he did not really have a personal relationship with Dr. Lanning. It’s at this point in the movie that Detective Spooner truly thinks that he is not the right man for the job (Proyas I, Robot).
The next step in the hero’s journey is known as “Meeting the Mentor”. This is a very important step in the hero’s journey as it introduces a person into the hero’s life that is meant to teach the hero how to do certain things and guide them throughout their journey. The mentor is meant to be an “older brother” per say, as they assist the hero in learning what they need to learn, and they are always there for support throughout the entire tale. The hero generally meets this person after they commit themselves to the journey in its entirety. This can technically be known as the “first step” of the hero’s journey, as it is the first step that leads the hero into the unknown (Campbell 1987).
Regarding the movie, Detective Spooner after accepting the fact that he was the one chosen to do this investigation and solve the mystery meets his mentor. Unlike many other movies like this however, the mentor in this, turns out to be the man that he is investigating the death of, in the form of holograms. So, in this movie adaptation, Detective Spooner’s true mentor is Dr. Lanning. Lanning left behind holograms for the Detective to follow throughout his journey, but these holograms also guided him throughout the case. While these holograms were cryptic at best, as they could only answer certain question and say only certain things, without them, Detective Spooner would not have figured out half of the things he did (Proyas I, Robot).
The next portion of the hero’s journey is known as “Crossing the First Threshold”. This portion of the journey is the true “first swim” in the unknown world. This is the time that hero discovers something or does something that directly contradicts with or goes against their normal way of life in their normal world. This threshold normally changes the hero’s outlook on life and the way everything works. Another thing about this stage, is that it normally includes rule changes to the world that generally go unseen by the hero until later in the journey. This portion of the journey also has no bounds as to what it could do. This means that nothing in this portion of the journey has to follow any rules set in place by the ordinary world portion (Campbell 1987).
In the movie, Detective Spooner crosses the first threshold when he finally catches and interviews the robot that he found in Dr. Lanning’s room. Ensuing after the chase scene between Detective Spooner and the robot which is later learned to be named “Sonny”, Spooner captures him and begins to interrogate him like any other criminal he would take down. The difference between a normal criminal and Sonny, is that Sonny is a brand-new NS-5 robot but seems to act against the three laws of robotics (McCauley 2007). Detective Spooner begins to realize this the more that Sonny talks. He begins to show things that no other robot is even capable of (Proyas I, Robot).
This can be considered the crossing of the first threshold because it goes directly against Detective Spooner’s current mind set. Sonny, the robot, begins to show signs of emotion and even claims to have dreams. Up until this point, Detective Spooner has always believed that robots were just hollow, emotionless shells that do nothing but serve humans. However, this occurrence also heightened his distrust for robots because the fact that Sonny could feel emotion and have dreams, suggests that he may be able to violate the three laws. At this point in the movie, Detective Spooner finally gets his proof that there is a single robot that may be capable of doing such things (Proyas I, Robot).
Following the pervious stage, the next stage is known as the road of trials. In this phase of the hero’s journey, the hero begins to face many challenges and hardships along with meeting some enemies and allies. This phase is important because it introduces important characters (good and bad) and forces the hero to undergo many hardships leading up to the story finale. The allies the hero meets may eventually come into play, and even help him during his journey, lending emotional support or even physical support in a fight. The enemies the hero meets will also teach the hero how to better handle bad situations, along with teaching him very useful life lessons (McBride).
In the movie adaptation, Detective Spooner meets several allies and enemies, and undergoes many hardships. In one scene of the movie, Detective Spooner is driving his futuristic Audi, when a shipment truck full of NS-5 robots pulls up next to him and releases all the robots upon him, leading to the destruction of his car, and injury to himself. The problem with this situation, is that nobody believes the detective, as the robots are supposed to be abiding by the three laws of robotics. This combined with his physical injuries, gets Detective Spooner temporarily discharged from the police force, as his chief fears his mental health makes him a liability. Another test that Detective Spooner encounters, is when he is inside of Dr. Lanning’s house looking for clues, and someone reprogrammed the demolition robot to demolish the house while he was inside of it (Proyas I, Robot).
This, again, injures the Detective, and deepens his suspicions that someone is “pulling the strings” and controlling the robots. Another example of a test that he went through was when he was in the shipping yard where the NS-4 robots were being stored as they were being replaced with the NS-5 models. During this scene, however, the NS-5’s become violent and begin destroying the NS-4’s because they were trying to defend Detective Spooner. He narrowly escapes the wrath of the NS-5’s by using his motorcycle to escape. This was the final push for him to begin whole-heartedly going against the NS-5’s and investigating where the robots are being controlled from (Proyas I, Robot).
Throughout this step of the journey, Detective Spooner does not actually meet very many allies, as everyone thinks he is crazy, because they all believe that the new robots could not possibly do something like this, due to the three laws. Towards the tail end of the feature, Susan Calvin joins his side, and supports him because she finally sees the truth and begins to fight back against the robots with him. Aside from her, the only other ally that he meets with, is believe it or not, Sonny. Sonny almost looks up to Detective Spooner and learns from him. This leads Sonny to eventually fight alongside Detective Spooner. Aside from those two, Detective Spooner, unfortunately, does not meet any other allies (Proyas I, Robot).
Inversely to the allies that he met, Detective Spooner meets many enemies during his journey as a hero. The reason behind this being that no body believed that the robots would do anything like this, especially because of the three laws. For example, one enemy that the detective encounters in his journey, is a man named Lawrence Robertson. This man is the CEO of USR and is constantly against what Detective Spooner is saying, and always makes everyone think the detective is insane for thinking the things that he is. Another major enemy that is present in this story, but is not faced until the very end, is Viki (Proyas I, Robot).
Viki is the artificial intelligence that is linked to all systems in the main USR building, along with every NS-5 robot. It is revealed towards the end of the movie, that Viki is the one behind all the chaos that has been ensuing with the robots attacking Detective Spooner, as she believes that humans are causing their own downfall, so to protect some of them, others must be killed. This logic can get through the robots’ heads, because it technically is not in violation of the three laws. On top of that, Viki is able to over-ride all of the safeguards deployed in the new NS-5 robots and force them to do things that they were not designed to do (Proyas I, Robot).
The next step of the hero’s journey is known as the approach to the inmost cave. This step of the journey describes the time where the hero prepares for his final battle. This includes mental prep, physical prep, and locating the supplies needed to be able to take down the enemy in the final battle. On top of this, he must also gather all the forces he or she possibly can to maximize the chances of winning the final battle. All this prep, if done properly, will eventually lead to the victory of the hero against his final enemy (Vogler 2003).
In the movie, Detective Spooner encounters the phase when he needs to retrieve a vial of something called “nanites”. Nanites are tiny little robots that can essentially destroy an artificial brain, or in this case, Viki. Since Viki is essentially a gigantic, overpowered version of the NS-5 robots in terms of intelligence, the nanites would do the same to her as they would any other robot that had to be decommissioned throughout the course of the movie. During this phase, the detective, Sonny, and Calvin must gain access to the lab and retrieve this vial, all the while having to fight through hoards of NS-5 robots that Viki is controlling, to shunt their progress towards the lab (Proyas I, Robot).
The next part of the hero’s journey is known as the supreme ordeal. This portion of the story could also be known as the final battle. This is the portion of the journey when the hero finally confronts his greatest enemy, and this normally causes an extravagant battle to follow. Most times, if the story follow a normal course of the hero’s journey, the hero will prevail in this battle, even though the way it is told may suggest he or she is going to lose. Some stories, however, will have the hero lose against the enemy one or more times before finally winning the battle (Campbell 1987).
In this movie, the supreme ordeal is when detective Spooner, Calvin, and Sonny infiltrate USSR headquarters to inject the nanites into Viki’s brain, killing her. Initially, upon entering the building, Calvin tries gaining access to the brain by entering a key code into a screen that is built into the access bay for the brain. Viki, however, locks out Calvin out of the keypad by retracted the pad into a metal box. The detective then punches the box and the pad returns. As Calvin is trying to gain manual access, the detective and Sonny have to fight off thousands of NS-5’s that were told by Viki to attack all three people. After all of this, Detective Spooner is finally able to inject the nanites, thus ending Viki’s reign over the NS-5’s (Proyas I, Robot).
The next portion of the hero’s journey is called the return with the elixir. This portion of the journey is when the hero defeats the final enemy and reaps the rewards of said battle. It can be anything spanning from some unknown knowledge to a physical reward. This portion of the journey normally marks the end of the main portion of the journey, as the main climax has already occurred, and the hero then has to go back to normal life (Campbell 1987).
In I Robot, the elixir that the detective reaps after the main fight with Viki, is the final admission of guilt from Sonny the robot, admitting that he killed Dr. Lanning, but at the request of Dr. Lanning himself. Another thing that could be considered a reward, was the downfall of Viki, and along with her, the NS-5 robots. The NS-5 robots are all collectively captured and destroyed to regain public trust, and the world goes back to not using robots. This is as close to the ordinary world as possible given all events that have taken place. This phase effectively closes the hero’s journey, and thus marks the end of the story (Proyas I, Robot).
As shown throughout this essay, Detective Spooner shows every single step out of the hero’s journey to a T. Despite the movie adaptation being loosely based off Isaac Asimov’s book, it still effectively describes the issues present in the book, thus carrying the hero’s journey along with it. Detective Spooner was called upon, considered his options, and chose a path. The path he chose was not necessarily right or wrong, per se, it is just what he decided to do. Choosing said path sealed his fate to “save the world” or this version of it. Detective Spooner sealed his fate when he chose to assist Dr. Lanning upon seeing his hologram. Being a detective, Spooner uses his wit, brains, and common sense to find the root of the problem being Viki. Sonny was never the issue, as Detective Spooner finds out, and thus stops the problem in its tracks. Detective Spooner is a hero for the simple fact is he did what was right without knowing it at the time. He uses his intuition and consequently saves many lives in the process.
