First and foremost, you’ll have to forgive me because the subject of robotics is something I am deeply passionate about. I have conversed with several roboticists and testers in my lifetime as well as people who have built AI’s.
My problem with this movie is pretty simple. We have a character who is not only a lazy roboticist, but he can’t program for shit. The biggest flaw I find with Archive is the fact that we have a man who designs three robots, all of which are supposed to replace his dead wife, who was killed in a car crash, even though if you look at the angle and the driver’s side long enough, you would understand the twist ending and that the death is the other way around. In any case, the ridiculously fictitious plot of Archive is about a man who considers backing up his dead wife’s consciousness inside of a digital storage unit for two-hundred hours until she finally dies. For some odd reason, this is managed with a traditional phone receiver and phone calls. They went the Steins;Gate 0 route at first, but then I guess lost the budget and had to go with an old school telephone.
In any case, the man explains that he had built three prototype robots in which to store his wife’s data (which is actually illegal and infringed copyrights) as part of his position at the Archive corporation, working for a vile woman who is even called a “bitch” by his J2 prototype. You see, J1 is a bulky, slow moving robot that is focused on basic motor functions, while a slightly more human-like J2 focused on the brain up until about fifteen or sixteen. J3, which is what the movie is mostly focused on, is a human-like robot that almost fully emulated his wife’s consciousness. Getting to this point is difficult to explain, but basically he found an analogue response and put it through some pattern recognition software for a few years until it matched his wife. Of course, because our programmer isn’t able to deprogram jealousy or any other emotions that would cause robots to feud and they do (J2 almost considers killing itself three times before it finally walks off into the water to a joyous applause by yours truly – but I’ll admit that I wanted it to jump) most of the film is spent around J2 messing around with J3 as it feels inferior. The guy could have scrapped it and turned it into a robotic dog that talks. Worked for Dr. Light.
Finally, despite insulting my intelligence with what should be a far more advanced VR headset than the bulky one J3 utilizes in order to be able to test her abilities, super-advanced waifu technologies are able to take what is at first a legless (and J1 has no arms because he’s lazy, so I can see why J3’s legs were never added) create a humanoid robot that almost looks cyborg enough for me to believe, but is now clearly the actress who played his wife in the flashbacks. They basically just slopped her up with a bunch of white paint and drew lines on her to look robotic. Did you lose all the funding for this film that quickly? There are better versions of this in Asian cyberpunk photo shoots.
What’s more, is there is a lot of Asian iconography in the film. The robotic house he inhabits is fully Japanese and the city he visits (once, because again – lack of budget) is full on cyberpunk. It’s one of the best scenes in the movie. There’s holograms and even some mysterious old fellow who mentions an accident in Black Mesa where several researchers were killed. Adding to that, we have to add that when actor Theo James puts on his suit and glasses, he looks like the spitting image of Gordon Freeman. Not only that, but the waifu that he creates actually does pick up a crowbar and smashes a large screen with it during the film’s only major action scene. And it seems they rant out of budget for that too, because as soon as I think this gal is gonna go all Major Kusunagi on me, everything just stops. I deserve a damn fight. The film has these giant fascist looking robots with machine guns and the most they ever do during the span of the film is almost raise their weapons. Not one shot is fired throughout the whole movie. There are guns in the film, but they are never used. Even when his waifu points a gun at him because he’s a shitty programmer and she’s not realistic enough (more on that in a minute) for him, not one bullet is fired.
Though now we have to get to the part that made me seethe in anger. Apparently, this guy is such a goddamned simp that he’s not happy with the waifu version of his wife. He has to have the exact 100% thing and even the waifu has to tell him that his wife is fucking dead. She’s fucking dead, move on. I’m sorry, at that point I was willing to come into that film and defend the hell out of her. The character probably would have said “who are you?” and I would have told him outright;
“Sir you are a fucking simp. Your wife is dead and she’s never coming back. It’s also your fault that J2 killed itself, because you keep programming emotions into these things instead of utilizing limited sentience as you don’t understand how robots work. We don’t need robots that think, feel and act because that isn’t their job. We don’t need to replace humans with a race of machines. Robots that are slaves to human emotions fall prey to the same problems that humans have, like making robots experience pain – something I noticed you did as a watcher of the film, but do not think is necessary. There’s no need to make a robot experience pain. I agree with your waifu here and you need to let this bitch go.”
Then I would have taken the gun and destroyed the archive machine. “Now you’re stuck with her. Grow up and be a fucking man. Instead of watching those old cartoons, go watch like Rambo or something. Or better yet, go to Black Mesa, because there’s a better movie that can be made if you change your name to Gordon Freeman and it’ll actually make money.”
There was actually a scene in the film that pissed me off more than anything you can imagine. The waifu he built was laying with him in the bed and she wanted to get close and put her arm around him. But he continued to simp for his dead wife and how their cuddling used to be better. He immediately yelled at her and told her to get out of his bed. Dude. At this point, I am flying through the fucking window and then I’ve got this bastard pinned down.
“You ungrateful fucking bastard.” I’d tell him. “Do you know how many of us doll owners would love it if our dolls did as much as that waifu did to you? Just putting an arm around us? It would be fucking great. Because we’re humble and you’re greedy. Everything has to be the way you want it, you fucking spoiled brat. Why can’t you be happy with what you have done? Why can’t you just be proud of your achievements? Why does it have to be 100% perfect?”
In any case, he dumps the archive into the waifu and gets his wife back in the waifu body. It’s at that point that the waifu calls his dead wife and says that she’ll take care of him. He gets upset at this for some reason, but it’s when he’s told not to pick up the phone by his waifu that he finds out he’s the one who died and she had a baby. She also adds that this is the last time they’ll ever talk, so he should have taken the waifu’s advice. There are still those evil looking robots with machine guns in the Archive complex though.
No doubt I’ve horribly explained this movie but it was much too fucking long for my taste. There were a few scenes that really did very little to enhance the plot if at all. All Archive managed to do was piss me off. I have a good mind to tell writer Gavin Rother that I could write a far better version of this film than he did and I’ll bet I can, because I know what people in the doll and robotics communities want – it’s not this. Go make Half-Life. Get Gabe on board, make sure that Theo James doesn’t age too much and keep the suit and glasses as well as most of the set from this film, you can probably easily convert that into Black Mesa and once again, make a film that people will want to see and Valve would promote the hell out of. The main character even mentions the word “valves” out of nowhere when he’s asked about the construction of the robots. Valves are not seen on any of these machines, so it seems to be another reference to Valve, Steam and Half-Life.
I did manage to catch the fact that the boss bitch at Archive said they were “rounding up Otaku.” Yes, you read that right. Now I’m sure a bunch of anime fans are going to see the film and a lot of shit will be slung at the creators. By the way, none of this is actually mentioned further in the film, so we have no idea who these Otaku are but Gavin Rother needs to leave us weebs the fuck alone and start writing his Half-Life script.
Ultimately, the special effects in the film are quite remarkable and there are some nice practical effects utilized. I wasn’t happy with the fact that all they could think of for the final version of J was to paint her all white and give her a white wig (no color at all?) but for some odd reason, that screamed “robotics” to someone on the production team, who I would love to slap if given a chance. Just a good fucking backhand. I simply cannot recommend this meandering thing, which for the last time, could have been a decent stab at a Half-Life movie.
FINAL SCORE:
