MovieChat Forums > Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Discussion > Odd that this one hasn't been re-made...

Odd that this one hasn't been re-made...


If ever a movie was ripe for an update this is it. For those who haven't seen it, it's the story of a supercomputer meant to bring permanent peace on earth. It achieves sentience and realizes that the only way to bring peace to all of earth is to subjugate the human race. It relies on the threat of assassination and tactical nuclear destruction to keep the human race in line. The movie ends on a bleak note.

A re-make could incorporate all sorts of new technologies that didn't exist back then. My version would be more of a political thriller than a sci-fi. Some government agency becomes aware that their country's population is being manipulated via strategic hacking, deepfake technology, seeded misinformation, stock market manipulation, tactical bio-attacks, etc.

A couple of agents are tasked with finding the source and purpose of the attacks. It's assumed that the attacks are either foreign governments or some Anonymous type organization, but over the course of the movie/series, it comes out that all major powers are experiencing these same attacks.

Eventually, it's revealed that it's all a complex plot by Colossus to secretly infiltrate and control every aspect of every person's life from birth to death, all for the 'betterment' (enslavement) of mankind. An velvet glove approach instead of an iron fist which keeps the masses dumb and happy.

I imagine it would make for a better one-shot 10-episode series than a movie.


reply

>> I imagine it would make for a better one-shot 10-episode series than a movie.<<

Someone should pitch it to HBO.

reply

They might needlessly draw the story out to a bunch of episodes, and it would be richly diverse, of course! But I wouldn't be interested in it.

reply

It's much more plausible now, with computers approaching that level of complexity.

Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies describes what could go wrong and how we might try to prevent it.

Max Tegmark's book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence starts with a fictional account of how an advanced AI might slowly influence society through taking control of news and entertainment programming.

reply

It has & it was titled “Wargames” even though a lot of the plot elements are different in that film. The general idea was still the same. Even though “Wargames” admittedly wasn’t as dire or as depressing as “Colossus” as it had a hopeful ending.

reply