80 Years Of Robots In Hollywood Options

[noorie]

The Eyes of the State
Metropolis (1927)

ROBOT:Maria

QUOTE: "There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator."
—Maria, the leader of the underground world of the workers, calling out to her followers.


Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Metropolis.

Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece set many of the ground rules for the sci-fi epics to come, not just in the way it depicted a dystopic future, but also the way it dealt with mad scientists and of course, their creations.

Depicting a world in which the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are literally divided by the Earth's surface — the elitists living above ground and the workers living in the dark, dank caverns beneath the surface — Maria is a robot used by those in power to pry their way into the workers' world. A silver machine created in a secret lab, Maria takes on the face and characteristics of the female leader of that underground world, the one who the workers trust and rally around. By controlling the robot, the surface-dwellers manage to control the underground populace, turning Maria's words of uprising into words of reassurance: Get back to work, and be happy.

One of the very first big-screen depictions of a robot in this, the first great sci-fi film, is that of a mole and an imposter; of an enemy that can't be defeated, much less identified. For so many of the movie robots to come, Maria was the defining transition from the robots of sci-fi literature to the artificial intelligence of the sci-fi movie.

[noorie]

Misunderstood Visitor
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

ROBOT:Gort
QUOTE: "For our policemen, we created a race of robots... In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us... At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor."
—The alien Klaatu, describing his robotic companion.


Gort the alien robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Call it the Alien vs. Predator of its day; a sci-fi movie that took three of the most tantalizing sci-fi concepts — flying saucers, aliens and robots — and fused them all together in a movie about the planet brought to the brink of destruction in a single day.

Landing in Washington, a mysterious spacecraft holds two occupants: Klaatu, an alien, and Gort, a robot. As the ship opens its doors, Klaatu flees, determined to hide among the people in hopes of learning about the human race. Gort, meanwhile, stands guard — a silent, silver sentinel. The American military approach him with fear and suspicion because — surprise, surprise — they believe these creatures came to hurt humans and that the spacecraft can mean nothing but doom for all. Considering Klaatu the enemy, the military opens fire when the alien returns to the spaceship, and Gort responds to the attack by firing a death ray before Klaatu intervenes.

Released shortly after the end of World War II, in the midst of America's Cold War tensions that would influence so many sci-fi films to come, the message of The Day the Earth Stood Still is steeped in a fear for the future of our own species and destructive earthly ways. As for Gort, he is a peaceful alien who is misunderstood — but when provoked, he is not above protecting his own, even if that means killing us all.

[noorie]

Just One of the Gang
Forbidden Planet (1956)

ROBOT: Robby the Robot
QUOTE: "Sorry, Miss. I was giving myself an oil job."
—Robby the Robot, explaining to his master's daughter, Altaira, why he did not answer the bell when she called him.


Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet.

Forbidden Planet became a cult classic for its pioneering special effects and a satisfying combination of 1950s cheesiness and sexual innuendo, not to mention a young (and serious) Leslie Nielsen. But the real star of the film is a hilariously smug robot named Robby. While his predecessors had all the personality of a toaster, Robby behaves like a deadpan Shakespearean clown (the film's characters and theme found an unlikely inspiration in The Tempest). He is pompous yet clumsy, domineering yet still willing to get drunk with the crew. More advanced than humans could create, Robby was constructed by a man named Dr. Morbius who used plans from an alien computer system.

Robby is not just a charmer, he also has heart, following the same robot morality introduced by writer Isaac Asimov in his 1940s and 50s I, Robot stories. Because he is programmed to follow three basic tenets: obey human orders, protect his own existence and never injure humans, Robby faces a philosophical dilemma when he is ordered by a human (Dr. Morbius) to kill a human (Dr. Morbius) in order to save his own life.

To date, Robby is the first and only movie prop to receive "star billing" in a film, perhaps because he cost so much to make — a reported $125,000 in the 1950s, the equivalent of a gazillion dollars today. He later re-appeared in TV shows like The Twilight Zone and inspired countless robots after him, most notably Star Wars' C-3PO.

[noorie]

The Psycho
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

ROBOT: HAL 9000
QUOTE: "The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, fullproof and incapable of error."
—The HAL 9000 computer answering a question about his vast abilities in an interview.


Hal 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey.

In Stanley Kubrick's epic sci-fi classic, HAL 9000 is the central computer in control of every aspect of the spaceship. HAL gets into a power struggle with the ship's captain, Dave Bowman, after making a tiny little computing error. HAL, a model of artificial intelligence, claims to be so immeasurably perfect that any mistake on his part weighs heavy in the eyes of the crew; they come to believe that their onboard version of the world's most perfect computer is actually a lemon. It's when they plot to disconnect him that they get a full display of crazed emotion from the big brain of the ship. Speaking in his signature monotone, HAL explains his mutiny to Dave: "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."

HAL's AI-gone-awry was just the beginning of the computer as villain. Decades later, HAL's fingerprints can be found on films from Strange Brew to The Matrix. Now that's reliable.

[noorie]

Perfect Neighbors
The Stepford Wives (1975)

ROBOTS: Almost every wife in Stepford, Connecticut
QUOTE: "I won't be here when you get back! ... There'll be somebody with my name! And she'll cook and clean like crazy, but she won't be me! ... She'll be like one of those robots in Disneyland!"
—Joanna Eberhardt, a new arrival to Stepford, trying to explain her conspiracy theory to a psychiatrist.


Katharine Ross in The Stepford Wives.

Robot movies often terrify, none perhaps in the manner of The Stepford Wives, which explored a man's ideal mate and a feminist's worst nightmare. This film introduced a completely new robot concept to the big screen: a human reproduction equal parts Doris Day and Playboy Bunny. For female moviegoers still reeling from Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, these household sexbots are the ultimate enemy, wholly consumed by vanity, cleanliness, cooking and pleasure. What's worse, these robo-Barbies look so realistic their own children don't even notice the difference.

Imagine the horror of liberated mother and wife Joanna Eberhardt, who reluctantly leaves Manhattan to settle down in suburban Stepford, Conn., with her husband and two kids. Joanna blames water contamination for the hyper-domestic behavior until she watches one of her neighbors malfunction — freakishly repeating the same household task over and over again (while eerily simulating the tedious repetition of domestic chores).

But the Stepford robots are not the real enemy, men are the true problem — the Stepford husbands to be exact. While the men belong to the Stepford Men's Association, the women belong nowhere. In this film, if you're a woman (human or otherwise), you're doomed.

[noorie]

The Odd Couple
Star Wars (1977)

ROBOTS: C-3PO and R2-D2
QUOTE: "It wasn't my fault, sir, please don't deactivate me. I told R2-D2 not to go, but he's faulty, malfunctioning. Kept babbling on about his mission."
—C-3PO to Luke Skywalker after R2-D2 escapes to search for Obi-Wan Kenobi and deliver Princess Leia's message.


C-3PO (L) and R2-D2 from Star Wars.

While many robot tales aim to instill robo-phobia, the first installment of Star Wars treated audiences to a softer and completely humorous side of their mechanical personalities with the quaint and quirky relationship of the 'droid' characters R2-D2 and C-3PO. At first glance, they are an unusual pair — the robot equivalent of Bert and Ernie. With a spindly gold body and the gait of a toddler, Threepio plays the anxious prude complete with prissy, butler-esque speech, while Artoo, a squat, blue and silver barrel, is the robot's robot, a courageous fixer who talks in a digital symphony of chirps and whistles.

It's chatterbox vs. music box, and this dynamic provides comfort and comic relief throughout the Star Wars films — their constant bickering reminiscent of our own delightfully dysfunctional relationships. When a badly damaged Artoo is rescued in the film, Threepio pleads with Han Solo: "You must repair him, sir! If any of my circuits or gears will help, I'll gladly donate them." Threepio is willing to give up his virtual kidneys for Artoo — now that's love.

[noorie]

The Mole
Alien (1979)

ROBOT: Ash
QUOTE: "I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."
—Ash, science officer of the commercial starship Nostromo after being exposed as an 'artificial person,' expressing the crew's odds of survival against the creature.


Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm in Alien.

The alien may have created the suspense in Ridley Scott's Alien, but it was the robot that caused the suspicion. Alien revisited the fears of 2001 and further advanced the idea that the real nature of robots, if left to their own devices, is to destroy humankind.

The crew of an outer space mining colony ship figures that out the hard way. Already coping with a 9 ft. acid-bleeding angry E.T. onboard their ship, they learn that disguised among them is an 'artificial person' named Ash, sent along by the mission's financiers in the event of just this sort of close encounter. Ash's top secret instructions are to study, preserve and return the lifeform at all costs, even at the risk of the crew.

Hollywood's view of robots in this movie is that we don't yet know how to program something as unquantifiable as our humanity, and, no matter how advanced robotics gets, we probably never will. Of course, the creature leaves you frightened, but to leave you feeling deeply disturbed this movie taps into our fears of finding out that our human-like inventions have no real humanity at all.

[noorie]

The Romantic Interest
Blade Runner (1982)

ROBOT: Rachel
QUOTE: "Replicants are like any other machine — they're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit it's not my problem."
—Blade runner Rick Deckard speaking with Rachel before either realized the truth about her.


Sean Young in Blade Runner.

Very often robo-plots go like this: A group of humans discovers that an artificial look-alike lurks among them and they have to determine if it's dangerous, trustworthy or lovable. (see Alien, Terminator, Stepford Wives). But in the Los Angeles of 2019 created by director Ridley Scott, the characters face the opposite scenario. The humans know who the robots are, but the robots themselves, called replicants, are the ones kept in the dark. Admired by their inventors but neglected by the rest of the world, replicants are deemed unfit for society, declared illegal and targeted to be "retired" by special cops called blade runners.

The replicants' Dr. Frankenstein is Eldon Tyrell and his Tyrell Corporation; the stiff but beautiful Rachel is Tyrell's latest and greatest experiment. Her makers implanted her brain with a lifetime's worth of memories — memories that in reality belong to Tyrell's niece. She also falls for none other than the blade runner assigned to kill her, raising questions about the human element of love, and the love element in humans.

[noorie]

Indestructible and Unstoppable
The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

ROBOTS: Terminators
QUOTE: "I'll Be Back."
—One of the Terminator machine's few but most memorable conversational utterances.


Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2

Before The Terminator, movie robots, while almost always our enemy, had distinct limitations. They could always disguise themselves as humans and avoid detection, but they were often clumsy, cumbersome and slow-moving constructs — not all that unlike the slow-moving bloodthirsty zombies of horror films.

But in The Terminator, with the awesome body-building barbarian Arnold Schwarzenegger, director and co-writer James Cameron gave us something we'd never seen before. As an indestructible machine sent back from the future, the Terminator did not need to eat or sleep but existed only to fulfill one solitary mission: to kill you.

In 1991, Cameron took that concept even further in Terminator 2, where another robot with the exact same mission was not built out of steel but of liquid metal, capable of shifting shapes and almost impossible to destroy with conventional weapons.

In the process, Cameron, Schwarzenegger and co. gave us a new way of seeing robots, as machines that would one day overrun humanity, and travel back to the past with a relentless and unstoppable quest of destroying their masters. Unlike puny humans, who must sleep and eat and feel fear and exhaustion, these Terminators have no needs, no wants, no remorse — only an objective. For millions of moviegoers, the idea of the robot was brought into the modern realm, into the computer age, with a vengeance.

[noorie]

Can They Be Trusted?
I, Robot (2004)

ROBOT: Sonny
QUOTE: "I am unique."
—Sonny, upon realizing special features his creator included in his own design that made him slightly more advanced than all other NS5 robots.


Will Smith in I, Robot.

Adapted from the Cold War-era stories by Isaac Asimov, I, Robot feeds from our worst fears and asks: what would happen if robots controlled every aspect of our lives, from commerce and public safety to handy housework? Yes, they'd work more efficiently than humans, but they would also lack our values, logic and reasoning.

These fears are harbored by a troubled and bigoted cop, Del Spooner. Spooner hasn't trusted robots since one plucked him out of dangerous waters but let a little girl drown. The robot had calculated that Spooner had a higher chance of survival. In Spooner's view the honorable choice would've been to save the child. "A human being would've known that," he says.

Spooner's concerns prove to be well-founded as the NS5s, the newer and more cognitive models of helper bots, rebel against the trusted older NS4s, wreaking havoc on the humans they were created to protect and serve.

Sonny, an NS5 model who was programmed personally by the founding father of all robot technology, manages to develop higher mental abilities such as dreaming and reasoning. In the end, when the good guys, both man and machine, are holding their own against rabid attack bots, Sonny is capable of making a "logical" choice — proving that it's Spooner who may have to reprogram his prejudices.

[Reeth]

Thanks Noorie.......never gave much thought to this aspect of films....

[mmuk2004]

The Eyes of the State
Metropolis (1927)

ROBOT:Maria

QUOTE: "There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator."
—Maria, the leader of the underground world of the workers, calling out to her followers.


Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Metropolis.

Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece set many of the ground rules for the sci-fi epics to come, not just in the way it depicted a dystopic future, but also the way it dealt with mad scientists and of course, their creations.

Depicting a world in which the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are literally divided by the Earth's surface — the elitists living above ground and the workers living in the dark, dank caverns beneath the surface — Maria is a robot used by those in power to pry their way into the workers' world. A silver machine created in a secret lab, Maria takes on the face and characteristics of the female leader of that underground world, the one who the workers trust and rally around. By controlling the robot, the surface-dwellers manage to control the underground populace, turning Maria's words of uprising into words of reassurance: Get back to work, and be happy.

One of the very first big-screen depictions of a robot in this, the first great sci-fi film, is that of a mole and an imposter; of an enemy that can't be defeated, much less identified. For so many of the movie robots to come, Maria was the defining transition from the robots of sci-fi literature to the artificial intelligence of the sci-fi movie.

Thanks Noorie, for the article. What a film, it was released in 1927 and still has the power to capture one's imagination. The images in the film are rivetting, especially those of the "false Maria", the robot who is a replica of the human Maria. Very interesting topic... have seen this one and 2001 Space Odyssey. Another great film that is not really about robots but clones is Ridley Scott's The Blade Runnner(1983) which is situated in the LA of 2019, where human beings have acquired the capacity to replicate themselves as clones and use them for cheap labor. When the clones rebel, a retired Blade Runner(Harrison Ford) is called back to hunt down these mutinous human replicants in a huge and frighteningly bleak city...a chilling image of a futuristic society.

[humble_rafi]

CODE

Perfect Neighbors
The Stepford Wives (1975)

ROBOTS: Almost every wife in Stepford, Connecticut
QUOTE: "I won't be here when you get back! ... There'll be somebody with my name! And she'll cook and clean like crazy, but she won't be me! ... She'll be like one of those robots in Disneyland!"
—Joanna Eberhardt, a new arrival to Stepford, trying to explain her conspiracy theory to a psychiatrist.


Katharine Ross in The Stepford Wives.

Robot movies often terrify, none perhaps in the manner of The Stepford Wives, which explored a man's ideal mate and a feminist's worst nightmare. This film introduced a completely new robot concept to the big screen: a human reproduction equal parts Doris Day and Playboy Bunny. For female moviegoers still reeling from Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, these household sexbots are the ultimate enemy, wholly consumed by vanity, cleanliness, cooking and pleasure. What's worse, these robo-Barbies look so realistic their own children don't even notice the difference.

Imagine the horror of liberated mother and wife Joanna Eberhardt, who reluctantly leaves Manhattan to settle down in suburban Stepford, Conn., with her husband and two kids. Joanna blames water contamination for the hyper-domestic behavior until she watches one of her neighbors malfunction — freakishly repeating the same household task over and over again (while eerily simulating the tedious repetition of domestic chores).

But the Stepford robots are not the real enemy, men are the true problem — the Stepford husbands to be exact. While the men belong to the Stepford Men's Association, the women belong nowhere. In this film, if you're a woman (human or otherwise), you're doomed.

This is a good topic to start with.Noorie have you seen the latest The Stepford Wives of Nicole Kidman?