cinema peaked, it will never get better

Robots is a 2005 American animated science fiction adventure comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Chris Wedge and co-directed by Carlos Saldanha from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, based on a story conceived by Lindsay-Abaire, Ron Mita, and Jim McClain. It stars the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Robin Williams. The story follows an ambitious inventor robot named Rodney Copperbottom (McGregor), who seeks out his idol Bigweld (Brooks) to work for his company in Robot City, only to discover a plot by its new owner Ratchet (Kinnear) and his mother (Jim Broadbent) to cheat older robots into buying expensive upgrades.

Development on the film began in 2000, when Wedge and children's author William Joyce failed to adapt Joyce's 1993 children's book Santa Calls, thus scrapping the idea and instead doing a story on robots.

Robots premiered at the Mann Village Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles on March 6, 2005, and was released in the United States on March 11. The film received favorable reviews from critics, who praised the film's humor and creativity, but generally deemed its story and characters to be somewhat unoriginal and forgettable.[4] The film was commercially successful, grossing over $262 million worldwide against a $75–80 million budget. A sequel was discussed, but never produced due to the studio's heavier focus on its flagship franchise, Ice Age.[5]