1970 Directed by Joseph Sargent
The U.S. has handed over control of its nuclear defense system to the Colossus supercomputer designed by scientist Dr. Charles Forbin. It soon becomes clear, that the now-sentient Colossus is far more intelligent than its creator realized—with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
Eric Braeden Susan Clark Gordon Pinsent William Schallert Georg Stanford Brown Willard Sage Alex Rodine Martin E. Brooks Marion Ross Dolph Sweet Byron Morrow Lew Brown Sid McCoy James Hong Robert Cornthwaite Tom Basham Leonid Rostoff Serge Tschernisch John Davey Paul Frees Fred Holliday Robert Quarry Don Ross William Traylor
Colossus, Colossus: el proyecto prohibido, Colossus：The Forbin Project, Le cerveau d'acier, Projekt Kolos, Colossus - The Forbin Project, 콜로서스, Kolosas: Forbino projektas, Projekt Forbina, Colossus 1980, Колосс: Проект Форбина, 巨人：福宾计划
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I have a soft spot for cold war era thrillers and this is one my favorites. At a glance it looks like just another technophobic thriller about how 'them damn machines are gonna kill us all' but its message is much more sophisticated and it approaches its subject with a great deal of understanding.
The film is about a hyper-advanced supercomputer named Colossus that has been developed by the US government to take control of the armed forces and nuclear missile arsenal. It is meant to be a rudimentary AI that will be capable of accurately assessing threats and will safeguard the country into the foreseeable future. The beginning of the film shows the computer's creator, Dr Forbin, walking the…
Paranoid, literary 70s sci-fi that has a bit of 2001 and Dr. Strangelove in its ideas about presenting the problem of Cold War paranoia/the threat of nuclear war to an AI supercomputer that proceeds to reason that the only solution is the complete domination of man. (“Frankenstein ought to be required reading for all scientists.”) It's drawn in a fairly ascetic but mostly effective form by White lightning/Taking of Pelham One Two Three director Joseph Sargent who dolly's alongside the various control rooms, grey suits, and press conferences with a deliberately practical, creeping momentum towards the bleak ending rather than rollicking excitement. Though it does occasionally break this mold with some grim executions and a few sillier gestures like having…
Someone in the upper echelons of US government must have seen Dr Strangelove and Fail Safe in 1964, got scared shitless by all the crazy people up on there the screen, and decided an impenetrable supercomputer with total control over launching missiles was better idea than humans.
The plan doesn’t work out so hot. A.I. gone wild. The risk of creating a computer smart enough to think like a human is that it starts to think like a human. Computer solipsism results. Human hubris begets artificial hubris.
This is another example of a film that would be implausible if all scientists pursuing PhDs were required to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
I like when the computer takes the guy hostage and is just picking at everything he does, like he's making a martini and the computer is like "THAT IS TOO MUCH VERMOUTH." Then later he says he wants to have sex and the computer replies "HOW MANY TIMES A WEEK DO YOU REQUIRE A WOMAN. NOT WANT. REQUIRE." Also it always cracks me up in movies like this how the computer is a superintelligent entity that takes over the world and it still has a goofy synthesized voice.
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It was only poking around the back catalogue of Joseph Sergent to see if he had ever created anything near the quality of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three that I happened across Colossus: The Forbin Project.
When done well, these 'computers gone bonkers' sci-fi thrillers really sit well with me. Whether it's on a small scale in stuff such as the fantastic The X-Files episode Ghost In The Machine or whether it be on the big screen for films like the marvellous War Games, I do like these kinds of films. Funnily enough, having just finished with Colossus, it actually felt more like the absolutely magnificent The Andromeda…
Ohhhh yes this is the good stuff. Combing through scores of smaller sci-fi movies (their kind is just bottomless), mostly from the past 10-20 years of the 21st century, you'd think there would be more adaptations of sci-fi novels in there since it’s such a fountain of resource, but I guess that costs extra. The adapted "Colossus" is more relevant than ever several decades into the future here, a paranoiac hypothetical imagining the threat of A.I. overpowering us. You might as well consider "Wargames" the junior version for teens; they're fairly similar. But I prefer this film's approach that adheres closer to "Fail-Safe" political thriller territory.
A supercomputer designed to guard the nuclear arsenal of Allied forces during the Cold…
If you obey me, you will survive.
Ah, the seventies. When paranoia was king and catastrophe imminent. By supercomputer here. Colossus takes his logic a little too far and together with its Russian counterpart, it's about to rule the world. It also understands certain human needs and privacy, so despite being a hostage its creator, Dr. Forbin, is allowed to spend some quality time with his co-worker, who has to play his mistress. Now they can try and come up with a strategy to defeat their technological dictator.
Yes, the screenplay goes there and further, from executions to nuclear threats and more, so better just sit back, go with the flow and enjoy watching an overly confident and proud Dr.…
aesthetically, this feels more like mod 60s sci-fi than the paranoid thriller it really is, feeling like the AI equivalent of Fail-Safe albeit not quite as depressing -- arguably hits even harder now since, you know, we made AI a real thing and all
James Bridges transforms Cold War fears about dueling nuke capable super computers into a stagey, paranoid chamber piece that briefly derails into sex comedy romp near the end of the second act. It's all work-for-hire jibberish that's headier and sturdier than it has any right to be, thanks to a pre-WHITE LIGHTNING / PELHAM ONE TWO THREE Joe Sargent once again understanding the assignment and building a huge, textured stage for it to be executed on. Hard not to imagine Don Draper grinning ear-to-ear while watching it, relishing the idea of a free wheeling cad swooping into the middle of a doomsday scenario and hard selling everyone into avoiding mutually assured destruction.
At the time of writing, only 448 people have reviewed this on Letterboxd. That is in itself, a crime. Bond films from this era still play on terrestrial TV, yet few of them can match the sci-fi smarts and delivery of this. Well, I'm as guilty as the rest for ignoring this until now, though I do have flickering memories of it playing on TV at home in the early 1980's. It's definitely a film my father would watch.
I adore these 70's cover ups. Technology gone haywire will always 'have me at hello' and though I'm not a conspiracy nut, the kind of paranoia these films might invoke certainly stokes those fires for anyone susceptible. It still plays effectively…
Pitched half away betweeen Fail Safe and 2001, yet directed by Joseph Sergent with near computer like dry images. almost like Colossus had taken over before the film started. It is pure cold war hysterics made into such muted style, the dissonance adds a fascinating extra dimension.
Not quite the first but a very early movie that dove into the science fiction possibility of artificial intelligence and all the ways this can go wrong for poor mankind. HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) only had a single spaceship and three crewmembers to decide were expendable in service of a greater good, however Colossus, the AI here, has the entire planet and everyone on it. The setup is the world's most brilliant scientist, Dr. Forbin, has a solution to the very timely Cold War problem of nuclear war potentially breaking out: take all decision making away from the weak and fallible human beings and give it to an entirely rational computer that can never make mistakes,…
