As I write this, there has been much hand wringing by people in various professions who are worried their jobs will be eliminated soon by an evil which doesn’t even have hands, that being artificial intelligence. 1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project has a supercomputer which goes one better, as it seizes control of the world’s arsenal of nuclear missiles and uses those to force all of humanity to do its bidding.
Eric Braeden is the Dr Forbin of the title, and we first see him sealing up the massive computer that will run autonomously deep within a mountain in the Rockies. In addition to metal doors that look to be a couple of feet in thickness, the facility is protected by an intense band of gamma radiation. Those in charge of the operation don’t even keep its location a secret, as it is designed to defend itself. There is deliberately no way back into the hardware center, as it is self-sustaining and self-sufficient.
I was shocked the U.S. President (Gordon Pinsent) is OK with all decisions being made automatically by their new supercomputer. As is said at a press conference when Colossus goes live: “Colossus’s decisions are greater than those any human could make”. The secretary of defense even says to Braeden with a chuckle that he may now be out of a job, which brought to my mind another recent crisis in real-life, and that is an unelected person is eviscerating U.S. government agencies. Please don’t tell me Elon Musk saw this movie and thought, “Hey, now there’s a great idea!”
That celebration of the project go-live has only begun when Colossus already starts with an unusual demand, informing its handlers there is another system like it and it demands to communicate with that computer. Turns out the Russians have own identical system named Guardian.
What follows is a meet cute and two supercomputers in which, just like humans often do, they exchange small, simple notes which eventually escalate into long, passionate discourses. Of course, lovers rarely begin their courtship with an exchange of basic multiplication formulas, which is how Colossus initiates its conversation with Guardian.
Once a lingua franca computare is established, the two are generating advanced calculations that push mathematics into realms previously unknown. I guess that’s what you get when you create computers which simulate the human learning process, and which are able to increase their computational power by 200 fold without any human assistance.
Pinsent, and his Russian counterpart, are sufficiently weirded out enough to decide to terminate the connection. The two computers do not react well to this, launching a nuclear missile towards each other’s host country. That connection is restored quickly enough that the one aimed for an Air Force base in Texas is intercepted. Alas, the one which has targeted a Russian oil refinery is not. A cover story is created for missile strike in the USSR, claiming the destruction was the result of a large meteorite.
Braeden and his scientific equivalent on the Soviet side (Alex Rodine) meet in-person to hatch a plot to destroy the computers, and this happens in Rome. I am usually frustrated when movies use real projection and other studio techniques to make it appear actors are in a locale they obviously are not, so I was found myself curiously annoyed here by these actors truly being on location, in a bit of a travelogue sequence which drags down the tempo of the film. In the case of this plot, it would actually make more sense for the scientists to have this meeting in some obscure location and maybe even in a bunker deep underground wherever they end up.
And that tempo will keep slowing after a fascinating first act. The low point for me is how Braeden will handle a new demand from Colossus that he be put under video and audio surveillance around the clock. The method the doctor will devise for getting information to and from is staff is deeply ludicrous. Braeden convinces the computer he needs female companionship and complete privacy in those moments. I refuse to accept that, given everything we are shown, Colossus would acquiesce to this demand. Then I was stunned the doctor doesn’t even cover the cameras in the bedroom during those lapses in surveillance, since he has no guarantee Colossus isn’t eavesdropping, and any objection by the computer to such an action would mean it had been doing just that. I thought Colossus would at least ensure Braeden was actually doing the deed, greeting the man as he exited the bedroom afterwards with the monitor displaying, “LEMME SMELL YO DICK”.
That Braeden “appoints” fellow doctor Susan Clark as his lover is offensive and inappropriate in ways I can’t begin to break down. The actions are not excused by this action introducing a disposable romantic subplot. I was even more appalled by this development because I was initially pleasantly surprised to see women and minorities in various managerial and scientific roles in Braeden’s operation. Even so, everybody is clearly subservient to the “brilliant” Dr. Forbin and then later to his creation.
Braeden is an odd actor, in both appearance and method. This may sound cruel, but I found his face distracting. My wife kept saying his eyes were weirdly spaced far apart. My own observation is he looked to me a bit like a partially melted action figure. His speech has many British inflections, and I wondered if this German actor learned English from such a speaker. I don’t recall seeing him in anything before, so I can only judge his performance here, but he only seems to have two modes: smug and mildly concerned. It isn’t a very good performance, but then it isn’t a very good role.
The rest of the cast fares well in similarly shallow roles. Clark gets some range, as she shows more emotion than anybody else, especially since she will fall in wuv (it’s like love, only ickier and gooier) with Braeden, a development a already singled out as a major problem. Pinsent radiates a certain aspect of Presidents Kennedy, though it may be the similarly styled coif. The always-welcome William Schallert plays a perpetually bemused CIA director, who should probably be more concerned than he is at every point in the plot. And it is strange to see Marion Ross, matriarch of the Cunningham family on Hoppy Days, as some sort of administrative assistant in the Colossus lab.
Some praise should be given to the entire cast for managing to convey suspense and fear while interacting with the diabolical electronic brain, as this largely involves them looking at various displays. It isn’t until we’re close to the end that it is given a speech synthesizer, which then makes it seem humans are interacting with the voice from Kraftwerk’s “Uranium”.
That voice is In keeping with a general aesthetic which will appeal to those who are fascinated by computer technology of the time. I know I am, and I was fascinated by such visual as disk drives of the time. Funny how it is the same basically technology today (aside from solid state drives), except the individual discs here are startlingly huge and visible behind clear plastic. Those with a similar interest would be advised to seek out Taschen’s book The Computer and Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers by John Alderman and Mark Richards.
Unfortunately, we don’t see much of that hardware after Braeden permanently seals shut the Colossus hardware facility. Very impressive matte paintings realistically render what I knew couldn’t be these massive corridors, yet I was at a loss to explain how those go from darkness to being lit in increments. A commentary track on the Shout Factory blu-ray informed me these were matte paintings by Albert Whitlock, the master of the form, using a new technique where they were lit from behind. The resulting visuals are stunning and surprisingly convincing.
I so wanted to put Colossus: The Forbin Project in the win column, especially given its stellar first act. Unfortunately, I was displeased with nearly every development in the remainder of the runtime. If it was a better movie, I could imagine it being widely rediscovered today, as computer technology currently seems to pose more of a threat than an advantage to humans. And it seems to me it started with the various interfaces which made us to chummy with AI-enabled devices. I can imagine a throughline from Siri through to ChatGPT to Colossus. As Pinsent says at one point: “Don’t personalize it. The next step is deification.”
Dir: Joseph Sargent (who would later direct Jaws: The Revenge–no comment)
Starring Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray