Though incredible strides have been made in the advancement of computer and robot technology, it's highly unlikely that we'll be seeing a flying boy robot with butt cannons anytime soon. Astro Boy director David Bowers admits that Astro and some of the other robots in the film are extremely "sci-fi-y." He told Popular Mechanics that he did make a conscious effort to base some of the technology in the movie in reality.
I wanted the technology to be relatable. That's why the cars look vaguely like cars. I wanted people to understand without having to say, "What the hell is that?"
Bowers says that, unlike Astro Boy, many of the other robots in the film are more plausible, with a basis in current or near-future technology.
[The other robots] aren't humanoid, like Astro Boy — they're designed to do a job. I just really love the idea of nanobots, they're very cool. And if you're doing a sci-fi movie, you have to have military tech. You have to have robots with big guns.
Astro Boy's nemesis, Peace Keeper, is a gigantic robot capable of repairing and modifying itself by incorporating raw materials into itself, an idea that Bowers admitted was harder to conceptualize than it was for him to imagine.
When I came up with the idea, I thought, I have no idea how I'm going to achieve this! I wanted Astro Boy to be fighting a robot so huge and powerful that people would wonder how he could defeat it.
Astro Boy stars Freddie Highmore as the voice of Astro Boy and also features the voice talents of Kristen Bell and Donald Sutherland.