Colossus: The Forbin Project

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Image:Colossus The Forbin Project, Movie poster.jpg

Colossus was a fictional computer featured in the 1970 apocalyptic science fiction movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project loosely based on the 1966 novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones. Jones wrote two Colossus sequels The Fall of Colossus (1974) and Colossus and the Crab (1977). More detail on this film can be found at IMDB.

Contents

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Dr. Charles A. Forbin is the chief designer of a secret government project. They've built a fantastically advanced supercomputer, called "Colossus", to run all of the United States and Allied nuclear weapons systems. When it is put on-line, all runs smoothly, except Colossus warns in a print-out: "there is another system".

It's revealed that Soviet Union has a very similar project; a supercomputer called "Guardian" runs the Soviet nuclear weapons. Both computers insist that, for the world's safety, the two computers must be able to communicate with each other. A link is set up, and the computers start exchanging simple messages through mathematics, as the scientists and officials of both sides monitor the communication on video screens. Very quickly, however, the computers learn to communicate better and better, and data is exchanged faster than any of the scientists can follow. This alarms the President of the United States, who has the link disconnected. Colossus and Guardian both launch one of their nuclear missiles, and demand the link reconnected or they'll let the missiles destroy their targets, and threaten more to follow. At the last moment, the humans agree. The link is restored, just as one of the missiles destroys a Soviet oil complex. The scientists and officials watch helplessly as the two computers exchange all of their information. They computers then announce they've joined, and become a single, even more powerful computer, taking the name Colossus.

The humans attempt to fight back, first by attempting to overload Colossus, and then by secretly disarming the nuclear missiles, one by one. Colossus proves too smart; the attempts are easily thwarted by Colossus, who kills thousands in retaliation. People are now too afraid to do anything but obey. Colossus demands and gets ever greater power, taking over more and more of the Earth's systems. It announces it will soon establish complete control of the planet, ruling far more effectively and efficiently than mankind could ever hope to do.

To work on the original main computer, Colossus will only allow a single person, which can only be Dr. Forbin, as he designed it. Dr. Forbin realizes it's up to him, alone, to outsmart the supercomputer he designed to be the ultimate intelligence.

Cast

Colossal trivia

  • This movie could be seen as an influence on the Terminator films. It has been rumored that director James Cameron is a big fan of this movie.
  • Colossus provided the inspiration for the track "Obey" by UK Manchester centred band SkinjoB
  • The logo for Colossus, a blue triangle with a C in the middle, with an atom in the middle of the C. the Triangle represents the mountain that colossus was inside of, C was colossus, and the atom was the nuclear reactor that ran colossus. Has a resemblance to the old AOL symbol.

See also

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project.html"


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