Even though these two films seem diametrically opposed in terms of content, I, Robot and Detective Pikachu share some common themes that bind them together. I, Robot premiered back in 2004, and Detective Pikachu was only released in 2019. They both dwell in the realm of science-fiction, which is why there are some aspects they share despite the difference in tone, subject matter and age. I, Robot focuses on the nature of artificial intelligence and what that means for humanity, while Detective Pikachu features the world of Pokémon and their complicated relationships with humans.
The biggest thing they have in common are protagonists — for I, Robot it is Del Spooner and for Detective Pikachu it’s Tim Goodman — that are untrusting of the non-human creatures. Because of a past trauma directly involving robots, Spooner has good reason to distrust them. Goodman also has a negative experience with Pokémon, though it wasn’t directly caused by them. As such, the protagonists struggle to trust their counterparts in the films, which promotes character development.
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After the films’ initial setups, wherein audiences discover the protagonists don’t like the creatures they’re supposed to, we start to see other similarities between the movies. Immediately, there is a conspiracy in both, setting up the quest that the protagonists will go on. In I, Robot, Detective Spooner is left a trail of breadcrumbs by his old friend and scientist Dr. Alfred Lanning after his death, which leads him from clue to clue to discover what really happened to him. In Detective Pikachu, Tim teams up with his missing dad’s police partner, Pikachu. They set off to track down his missing father and solve the mystery of Pikachu’s missing memory. Both protagonists get caught up in an initial mystery that they must solve, which is another blatant tie between them. Both films also have holograms that lead and mislead the protagonists on their way to solve their respective mysteries.
The suspect in both mysteries is a non-human creature — intelligent robots and Pokémon. Setting up the protagonist to work alongside these creatures while also investigating them, makes for a cool dynamic that challenges the protagonists and forces them to either change their perspective or give up their quests. In both films, the protagonists overcome their negative feelings for their partners, Sonny and Pikachu, and are left feeling altogether better about the creatures as a whole by the end of the story.
The final twists in both films are also strangely similar. The protagonists unravel the original mystery only to find that the real issue was something completely different. In I, Robot, Spooner thought that Lawrence Robertson, the CEO of USR, was behind the demise of Dr. Lanning. In fact, the artificially intelligent VIKI system that is integrated throughout USR was behind the whole fiasco. In Detective Pikachu, the film sets up Mewtwo as the main antagonist, and similar to I, Robot, this is a misleading assumption that is corrected at the climax when Tim realizes that Howard Clifford is actually the villain.
In terms of plot organization, both films are incredibly similar. But in terms of content and style, they blatantly differ. Science-fiction films, especially in the mystery sub-genre, tend to share a lot of the characteristics that both of these films have: reluctant protagonists, strange creatures and a conspiracy theory that was wrong the whole time. As a result, the DNA of these films are similar, but upon closer inspection, I, Robot and Detective Pikachu have a lot more in common than one would think.