Imagine if a national lampoon Vacation The film ended with Clark Griswold and his family having to save the world from a fleet of autonomous robots developed by a company similar to Amazon. This is essentially what Sony Pictures Connected East.
Produced by Spider-Man: in the Spider-Verse directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Connected tells the story of a family going to a college across the country where their eldest daughter will go. It’s an emotional affair, especially for his father who accepts that his daughter is growing up and moving. Everything is going well for the modern family – which means that everyone is on their phone or tablet at all times – until they see an ad for a new line of autonomous assistance robots. Then everything goes to hell.
Connected does not shy away from the possible horrors of living in an always connected world. The company that makes the fearsome autonomous robots, PAL, seems to be based on Amazon. The logos are strangely similar. Just like Pixar Wall-E, Connected takes a deep look at the world people live in today, tackling the problems that can arise from using stand-alone technology.
Now, Connected is far from the first film to examine what could go wrong if autonomous robots suddenly become dangerous killing machines. The Iron Man 2 famous on the same idea after Justin Hammer decided to try to outdo Tony Stark’s Iron Man designs with his own fleet of machines. There is no Justin Hammer in Connected, but if we play with logic – since Justin Hammer commissioned the machine designs in The Iron Man 2, and a fake Amazon is responsible for the machines Connected – you could say that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the Justin Hammer of this universe.
I’m not saying I dispute it, just this one could.
Connected, directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe and starring Olivia Colman, Maya Rudolph, Abbi Jacobson and Danny McBride, will hit theaters on September 18.
