Robots in Film

Robots in Film
A Complete Illustrated History

Part 10

Introduction: Throughout cinematic history, especially in science-fiction tales, robots have played a primary role. Throughout history and popular culture, robots have reflected the mood, social and cultural issues, and technology of their times. For example, in the Cold War 1950s, robots were generally viewed as threatening forces, but in later years reflected both the conflict and the continuity between man and machine. Robots have also functioned as both servant-helpers or oppressors of humanity, portraying the good and evil sides.

This compilation is not designed to be too strict in its choices of 'robots'. Herein are examples of various films with robotic characters.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star

are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films.

Film/Year Name of Robot	Description	Example
*Judge Dredd (1995)* ABC Warriors	Director Danny Cannon's action film starred Sylvester Stallone as the title character Judge Joseph Dredd, derived from a popular comic-strip character from the British science fiction anthology 2000 AD; in the film, Judge Dredd was a futuristic, unemotional, ruthless, notorious law enforcement officer in a violence and crime-ridden mega-city (formerly New York), located on a dystopic desert wasteland known as The Cursed Earth in the year 2139 AD; he was commissioned to battle an antique collectible robot (with rusting metal), called an A.B.C. Warrior, a war robot designed to withstand 'Atomic,' 'Bacterial,' and 'Chemical' warfare; the diabolical villain Rico (Armand Assante) had re-armed and recycled the robot to be a killing machine
*Screamers (1995)* Mechanical "Screamers" or Autonomous Mobile Swords	This sci-fi horror/thriller noir, adapted from a 1952 Philip K. Dick story, was set on the distant Earth colony/planet of SIRIUS 6B in the year 2078 - it was a radioactive wasteland suffering from a decade of war and strip-mining; murderous cyborgs (or "autonomous mobile swords"), a weapon developed by the Miners Alliance to use against their corporate masters (called the New Economic Block (NEB)), small armadillo-like 'dinosaurs' had razor-sharp saws or blades to cut off arms and legs, and pursued its enemies from underground, squealing or screaming in a high-pitch while attacking; the robotic, reptilian-looking devices had become a highly-advanced killer race that began to dangerously replicate, evolved to look like human beings and mimic human behavior, and was intent on eradicating the human race
*Virtuosity (1995)* SID 6.7	In this action VR thriller from Brett Leonard (known for The Lawnmower Man), the Law Enforcement Technology Advancement Center (LETAC) developed a computer-generated, synthetic android named SID 6.7 (6.66 rounded up, signifying its evil nature); SID stood for Sadistic, Intelligent, Dangerous; the "50-terabyte self-evolving neural network" was composed of the personality traits of 183 serial killers, mass murderers, tyrants and terrorists that were placed into the android, used to test the LAPD in a virtual reality world; then, when the VR criminal SID escaped and entered the real world, he evolved and was "free of any behavioral limits he might have had in virtual reality"; the casually sadistic SID was noted as saying to LA cop Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington), whose family was murdered by one of his own personalities: "Just because I'm carrying the joy of killing your family inside me doesn't mean we can't be friends"
*Wallace and Gromit in A Close Shave (1995)* "Cyber-dog" Preston	In this third film of Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit Claymation trilogy, one character was an evil, Terminator-like robotic bulldog named Preston (named after director Nick Park's home town), owned by local wool shop owner Wendolene Ramsbottom; Preston was involved in a plot to rustle sheep during a period of wool shortage, shear them, and then murder them to manufacture his own brand of dog food; Preston met his end when he was knocked into his own sheep-mincing, dog food processor machine, the Mutton-o-Matic (based on stolen blueprint designs of Wallace's sheep-shearing device the Knit-o-Matic), and was shredded into spare parts.
*Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)* (aka *MST3K*) Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo; also Gypsy	Two robot sidekicks -- red/white colored Tom Servo (voice of Kevin Murphy) and gold-colored, wise-cracking Crow T. Robot (voice of Trace Beaulieu) with a netted headpiece -- helped marooned Mike Nelson (Himself) in providing sarcastic and mocking commentary, from a front-row 'peanut gallery' (the backs of their heads were often seen in silhouette in the lower portion of the picture) on the awful sci-fi B film, This Island Earth (1955) being screened; this full-length feature film was derived from the long-running popular TV series about a mad scientist named Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) who wished to subject the entire world to bad movies - and experimented on this three-some on an Earth-orbiting space station called the Satellite of Love.	(l to r) Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, Mike Mike with Gypsy Tom Servo Crow T. Robot
*Robo Warriors (1996)* Earthbot	This straight-to-video release was another entry in the short-listed giant robot subgenre; it told about life on Earth in the year 2036, when the planet was occupied by an evil alien race of half-human, half-reptile creatures called Terridax that used a giant, towering steel robot called Tsu Garu to subjugate the people; a group of freedom fighters led by the last heroic Robo Warrior named Ray Gibson (James Remar) searched for remains of an older wrecked giant Earthbot, to defeat the oppressive invaders; the film's tagline succinctly told the plot: "Two Gladiators. One Planet. No Prisoners".
*Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)* Fembots	Fembots is short for female robots (played by Cindy Margolis, Cheryl Bartel, Donna W. Scott, Barbara Ann Moore, and Cynthia Lamontagne); they were designed by Dr. Evil (Mike Myers) to conquer Austin Powers (also Myers) - they were the "latest word in android replicant technology. Lethal, Efficient, Brutal. No man can resist their charms"; the Fembots' brassieres were based on the one worn by Ursula Andress in the cult Italian sci-fi movie The 10th Victim (1965); they seduced Powers with: "You can't resist us, Mr. Powers"; but when hairy-chested Powers performed his own sexy mojo dance ("I Touch Myself") before the Fembots, they began to short-circuit with sexual electricity and their heads twitched violently and then exploded; Powers explained how he defeated the fembots with machine-gun boobs: "...the Fembots came by and smoke started coming out of their jomblies. [British slang for breasts.] So I thought I'd work my mojo, to counter their mojo; we got cross-mojulation, and their heads started exploding"; Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley), Austin Powers’ bride, was eventually revealed to be a lethal fembot herself.
*Lost in Space (1998)* Unnamed Cyclops Robot also Biomechanical (CGI) Robot Spiders	Robby the Robot, from Forbidden Planet (1956), was the prototype for heroic, Environmental Control Robot Model B-9 in the Irwin Allen TV series Lost in Space in the mid-to-late 1960s, and in this widescreen film that also featured the robot; the action was set in the year 2058, with a dying Earth threatened by ecological disaster, and the Robinson Family (loosely based on Swiss Family Robinson) traveling into outer space on a mission on the Jupiter II spaceship to find a refuge at a habitable planet called Alpha Prime; terrorist organization Global Sedition's trapped stowaway Dr. Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman) re-programmed and changed the "primary directives" of the "platinum-plated pal" (voice of Dick Tufeld, the original robot's voice), an unnamed, Cyclops-eyed, 8-foot tall robot, to be a destructive fighting machine onboard the ship: "Sixteen hours into mission, Destroy Robinson Family. Destroy all systems", after which Smith stated "Give my regards to oblivion"; Dr. Smith's attempt to sabotage the flight by destroying the ship using the robot's laser rays and killing the crew failed when young boy genius Will Robinson (Jack Johnson) was able to control the robot remotely, although the ship was sent off-course and became 'lost in space'; during their further journey, the family came upon carnivorous, heat-seeking, silicon-based killer spider-crab robots with large fangs, that also spewed blue blood, found on a ghostly, abandoned spaceship Proteus; Dr. Smith was transformed into a giant space spider humanoid after being scratched by one of the Proteus spiders.
*Bicentennial Man (1999)* Robo-servant (Model # NDR-114)	Based on Isaac Asimov's 1883 short story The Positronic Man (only his second writing adapted for the screen), this futuristic robot-related film featured Robin Williams as Andrew Martin, a domestic-household android robot ("appliance") designed to serve humans with the performance of menail tasks; but he craved to become fully human, exhibiting human characteristics of "creativity, curiosity, friendship," bridging the gap between man and machine ("I am the proud owner of a central nervous system"); in the film, he eventually took on android characteristics and turned himself into a prosthetic human - and at the ripe old age of 200 years was allowed to marry the love of his life Portia Charney (Embeth Davidtz) during his final moments; the model number was thought to be a tribute to Stanley Kubrick, who used the lucky number in several of his films, for example Dr. Strangelove: Or... (1964) and A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.