Robot Overlords is not so much disappointing, as laughable and disappointing. One hoped for better — or, at least, different — solely on the basis of its British origin. After all, American science fiction film no longer even pretends to originality: it’s a marketing product pure and simple, endlessly re-packaging the same paranoiac power-fantasy tropes— the loathsome incomprehensible Other beaten to a pulp by the superhuman-yet-average-joe hero in glorious special-effects-laden technicolor.

(Lest someone bring up the triumphant Sixties liberalism of Star Trek, that charming mindset of yesteryear is limited to the television episodes of its happy cultists; recent Trek films tend to follow the same sad modern American pattern: opaque subhuman bad guys engaging in vile visually spectacular genocide, overthrown by borderline-superhero good guys engaging in positive life-affirming visually spectacular genocide.)

It’s a given that American science fiction film is now a branch of the American war industry. One would think that European and world film would have declined to join in the ringing of this particular Pavlovian bell, but wherever there is money to be made, junk follows as twilight follows bedtime.  Is this perhaps because only junk can be produced en masse?  To bend truly and highly individual work to the most common denominator is to square the circle.  Far easier to replicate pap than to boldly go where no hack has gone before.

The ways things worked in the olden days of mid-list publication is that publishers took a statistical view: publish ten individual works, and nine might misfire, but one would hit a strong enough chord with the public to underwrite the rest.  The winner would appeal to several crowds, the losers to one or two niche crowds.  But a quality work might well be swept up in the net with the fiscal losers. Heinleins would always flourish, but even the occasional Colin Wilson or Keith Roberts would survive.

But then the replicants took over: the new publishing strategy was to find a bestseller, extend it indefinitely into trilogies and series, and/or rewrite or simply re-label it. Heechee into Xeelee, Fomalhaut into Eridanis, Robocop into Iron Man: rip off, rinse, and repeat.

The problem with all this Xerox duplication is that not simply that the image degrades (though it does).  Yes, an irresistible Lord Of The Rings becomes an unappealing Desolation Of Smaug, but, more importantly, work of low quality casts its tachyonic shadow backwards, degrading even worthy earlier work, duly tarnished by association with its degenerate offspring.  Equally sad is that fact that in an age of globalization the same sort of trashy commercial approach replicates at an increasing pace and across borders. Sensing reward, studios and producers everywhere, like Skinnerian rats, press the same lever over and over again waiting for the cash reinforcer. And so, Robot Overlords:  Britain’s entry in the rodent sweepstakes.

Most lousy science fiction contains at least a ghost of the decent science fiction it might have been. Robot Overlords contains the seed of a potentially decent drama along the lines of Sartre’s No Exit. Its thesis is that a star-faring robot civilization arrives at Earth, defeats it, and takes control. It is here to study humankind, and intends to leave once it has done so, but has one rule for humanity: stay inside! This unexplained and somewhat idiot restriction — why leave mankind inside and out of sight where they can conspire when one can watch them outside 24/7 with GPS? — might have resulted in some interesting social sci-fi speculation: what would happen to a humanity constantly forced to live indoors? How would food be delivered, communications be handled, industries survive? Would a tunneled underground resistance — indeed society — emerge?  No need for robots, either:  simple further corrosion of the environment could render ultraviolet light from the sun toxic.  This film might well have been a timely and salutary warning, as well as an interesting thought experiment.

But thought is nonexistent in Robot Overlords. Noble mankind chafes at not being allowed to go outside and play, and constantly sneaks out, where passing saucers and CGI anime-derived mecha stand about neighborhood corners waiting to blow jaywalkers away. These elephantine Robocops are not enough to ensure that humanity is grounded:  tracking devices are further inserted into all the pesky humans’ heads to keep ensure they stay in.  The off-screen cream of humankind’s remaining scientists don’t seem to be able disable them, but — surprise! — the plucky teen stars of the movie do, and run riot at night. A select group of collaborators give the kids grief for such partying, for the collaborators (incidentally ensuring food, relative peace, and a residential status quo implausibly resembling pre-invasion conditions) serve the evil Bots, and teens going wild at night is as little acceptable to them as to generations of earlier Bobbies.

The leading collaborator is played by the able and unfortunate Ben Kingsley, much fallen from playing the likes of Gandhi. The poor bastard must have ferocious creditors to be driven to act in tripe like this. Unlike the rest of the cast, Celtic as snow, Kingsley is disturbingly made up so as to be swarthy, sweaty, lined and Semitic throughout. Whether this is to cater to America’s anti-Muslim animus or to Europe’s increasingly anti-Jewish one (or both) is moot. Cunning, crafty but homely untermenschen Kingsley drools for the Nordic flesh of lovely but resistant Gillian Anderson throughout, in shots creepily reminiscent of Jew Suss. She endures his unwelcome interest politely but of course prefers to pine chastely for her equally Nordic hubby, and swarthy Kingsley salivates in vain.  Eventually, frustrated, he opts to kill her and her entire little clan as they go on the run.  Love may be a many-splendored thing, but a job’s a job.

Ah, but for reasons known only to the scriptwriters, Gillian’s son Sean has A Mysterious Power that lets him interface with the robots and command them. Initially he surfs around the sky on one of their visiting imperial starships, ostensibly to go do battle with other bot ships for a bit of CGI fun, but really to look kewl. Since Sean is even dumber than  the starfaring galactic Overlord mechano-superintelligences, it takes him a while to realizes that instead of mixing it up in battle all he really needs to do is just tell them all to blow up. He does.  They do. Happy ending. Mankind parties. All except Sean who looks darkly up at the sky waiting for the approach of more metal malefactors, so as to set up the inevitable sequel, Really Pissed Robot Overlords Come Back For More.

Stupid? Well, yes. But also sad. Living outside the American social framework, one likes to think that the Brits can think outside cliched American perspectives too. Apparently not. Like so many other science-fiction films and novels nowadays, Robot Overlords is merely one more round of Starship Troopers, another case of Us versus The Bugs, set somewhere in Yorkshire as opposed to Proxima. That genuinely competent figures like Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley should put their hand to it is yet one more confirmation of the power of money to prostitute talent, and of the contempt the creators of junk film have for the public.