When I saw the trailer for I, Robot a few months back, I thought it looked like a disaster. It looked like a blockbuster dumming-down of a good book by one of my favorite authors and I was worried.

In retrospect, having watched the movie last night, I think the people who made the trailer were very clever.

The trailer seems to suggest that the movie diverges from the themes of Asimov's robot novels and turns it into a SFX craptacular. But the bulk of the people who read the book and liked it are probably going to see the movie anyway, so there wasn't really any need to pitch the trailer to them. The trailer was made to entice the big-budget-blockbuster movie lover into coming. The trailer is indistinguishable from any other SFX-driven action/sci-fi movie trailer.

The beauty of it is that the movie is actually smart, sticks to the spirit of Asimov's robot universe, and having a dumb trailer allows them to not give away any of the secrets. I hate it when I go to see a suspense thriller and it turns out that the surprise ending was alluded to in the trailer. Arlington Road, anyone?

Yeah, so I went into the film expecting somewhat of a let-down. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the film and I had no foreknowledge of the actual plot twists. Well done, 20th Century Fox.