Sequel Week Commences

Sequels in science fiction movies are often dreadful. For every Blade Runner and Terminator, there’s a Short Circuit 2 or Robocop 3. A great example of a good film with a bad sequel is Westworld (1973), a wonderful movie with surprising scientific accuracy - see my review here www.roboticsthroughsciencefiction.com/Westworld. It was followed up by the absolutely dreadful Futureworld (1976), which kicks off Sequel Week with my review below. Futureworld does provide an example of the Substitution Myth in robotics. Plus there’s a bonus review of Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049 as an example of good sequel, 35 years later. It has a delightfully realistic use of UAVs (though probably not on the android side of the science). Fortunately sequels in real robots are often better with the 2.0 version more capable or more efficient. This week we’ll look at sequels in movies but also real world robots like the Mars rovers which are getting better and better.