10 Sci-Fi Movie Concepts That Shouldn't Work But Do
7. Her
From the cover and title of Her I would’ve guessed it was colourful romcom about a romantic Parisian man. The actual concept however lands just south of that.
A lonely man named Theodore, who recently went through a breakup, falls in love with his AI assistant, Samantha. However, unlike Ex Machina, she’s not a cute robot lady; Samantha is literally just a disembodied voice, which I think is what makes this difficult.
It’s hard to imagine a film where you get to know and love two central characters, where only one of them has any physical presence. Just as Theodore falls in love with Samantha as only a voice, the audience has to as well. Which has some serious potential for failing.
Looking at the concept on paper, I’m surprised it didn’t get laughed out of the pitch. ‘Man falls in love with phone, slash, robot, slash, unattainable woman’ is such a simple, overdone idea that you can probably find replicas of it in about a million student films. But they pull it off!
Bit by bit, we get to know and love Samantha, just to experience the same simultaneous heartbreak as we realise there’s no way this could ever work.
They’re not gonna have their moment where they run into each other’s arms - she has no arms. And no legs. And no body. You get the idea.