Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Macbeth: Something Robotic This Way Comes

CGI Macbeth. Dir. Daniel Gallagher. Perf. Kevin McLeod and LibriVox. Bright Red Productions, 2011.
The alternate title for this post is "Do Androids Dream of Daggers that They See Before Them, the Handles Toward Their Hands?" The second alternate is "I, Robot Macbeth."

A new version of Macbeth may be coming, and I owe my knowledge of it to Shakespeare Geek. The twist this time involves an all-robot cast. Shakespeare's text will be retained, though the setting will be altered to "a Cyber Scotland," according to Daniel Gallagher, its creator.

Perhaps I'm particularly interested in this because I recently spent some time on "Foul Whisperings, Strange Matters," a Macbeth-related location in Second Life—and I didn't care for it very much. CGI Macbeth will provide a more interesting, much more complete virtual Macbeth.

But it's also possible that casting the play with robots provides a commentary on the play itself. Does this provide us with a "Six Robots in Search of an Author" scenario? Or does it comment to a greater degree on the way in which the characters are bound to their fates? Although the preliminary trailer (see below) provides us with a glimpse of the witches, the way they're used isn't yet clear. What if they were portrayed as computer programmers?


The project does need funding in order to get off the ground in earnest. If you're feeling particularly philanthropic—or just pro-robotic—head to the Kickstarter.com page for the project. With as little as a ten dollar donation, you can receive a copy of the film once it reaches its completion.
Links: An article on the project. The project's funding page at Kickstarter.com.

Update: The film was made!

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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