Robots have been present in films for years, but the more specific element of these mechanized beings that is often highlighted in these films is what makes them tick (so to speak), or what makes them think. This, more often than not, is artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, or A.I., has been a driving force in multiple films that examine human nature, technology, religion, man’s desire to play God, and the dangers inherent in advancing the limits of engineering and science.
With a theme that give us so much to explore, why is it that we seem to follow in the footsteps of previous titles as if this broad sub-genre only is doomed to repeat itself?
Trope 1 – The Learning Curve: “Why can’t I feel this thing you call love?”
Among the many plot devices in sci-fi and movies about A.I. is the learning curve that comes with being an intelligent machine and yet not understanding emotion. Sometimes it’s used as a comedic component, other titles use this trope as a driving point in the stories’ narrative. It’s a driving device in recent titles such as Ex Machina. For comic relief it’s hard not to crack a smile when a young John O’Connor is schooling the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) on slang and style in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a scene that clearly influenced Blomkamp’s latest film Chappie when Ninja and Yolandi are teaching the titular robot how to be “gangsta”.
With a film like Chappie, it’s frustrating to examine and discuss its merits and shortcomings. Many have labeled it as an unfocused sci-fi, and I am inclined to agree. Neil Blomkamp exhibits some brilliant ideas, and the thought of a gangster robot sounds like field day, but the result was more of a polarized remake of Robocop (1987) that played tug of war with its own themes. Although this trope can give way to laughter, I think the biggest sad sack in modern sci-fi would be David (played by Haley Joel Osmet) in the Kubrick/Spielberg production of A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
These similar motifs can be found again and again from hard R action fare such as Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop, to John Badham’s comical Short Circuit, and many more. It’s comedic, serious, and a consistently revisited component in films about A.I..However, at this point it’s familiar territory for viewers.
Trope 2 – Sexual A.I.: “Are you a Pleasure Model?”
However disappointing, if you consider our fixation on sexualizing, well, everything it’s not a surprise that films featuring A.I. sexualize man-made machines. It’s sometimes hinted at in classic films such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner with Daryl Hannah’s character Pris, who is introduced by M. Emmet Walshas a “basic pleasure model”. Our imaginations need not wonder what that title entails; she’s designed with a lower intellectual level – when you have beauty what use are brains – a testament to man’s warped fixation on the feminine physique. Luckily this is not a centrifugal plot element in Blade Runner.
A recent film in which A.I. sexuality plays the lead is Alex Garland’s hit film Ex Machina. It poses some interesting questions and explores some compelling elements of human nature, including its protagonist’s sexual proclivities. After Caleb (Dohmnall Gleeson) begins the Turing Test (test administered to determine if an artificial beings ability to comprehend information as well as a human) we learn that the brilliant recluse engineer Nathan (Oscar Isaac) has designed the A.I. after researching Caleb’s porn history. The more Nathan discusses his creation, he sounds less like an engineering savant and more like a high-tech pimp. Of course, his creation is in the shape of a beautiful, slender woman. The narrative of Ex Machina literally objectifies women; is Ex Machina a feminist allegory, or yet another example of men and their warped desires regarding the female physique?
Ex Machina has a lot of desirable qualities, but it left me wondering why we keep returning to the same juncture of sexuality in science fiction.
Despite the less than desirable remake in 2004 by Frank Oz, the original 1974 film of The Stepford Wives stands as a thrilling sci-fi that carries a pointed social critique. Based on Ira Levin’s novel and directed by Bryan Forbes with chilling clarity, The Stepford Wives conveys the startling realization that some men would be happier with a soulless automaton that functions only to be sexually satisfying, cook and clean. Social satire and A.I. had never been so relevant in portraying male chauvinism.
Another recent title that’s hard to ignore is Spike Jonze’s Her. The “sex scenes” are thankfully limited, and while the film focuses more on social alienation, it does point out another interesting and contrasting side of man’s relationship with artificial intelligence.
A.I. sexuality might seem like just another recurring trope in the sci-fi genre, but just look at one of the earliest sci-fi films, Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis. This film depicts cinema’s first machine-human (or Maschinemensch in German) called Maria, who performs sexually suggestive dances. The symbolic nature of Metropolis merits an article of its own, so for the sake of consistency let’s just point out that this theme of sexuality in A.I. is consistent over time.
Trope 3 – Assassins and Killing Machines: “Sarah Connor?”
Arnold Schwarzenegger obviously embodies what we think of when the term “murderous cyborg” comes up in conversation, even though he was only murderous in the first Terminator film. The image of Schwarzenegger with shades and a gun is beyond iconic. The T-800 isn’t the only man-machine out for blood, of course there’s the T-1000 from Terminator 2, ED-209 from Robocop, the MARK13 from Hardware, the chilling monotone of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the avenging slave replicant Roy Batty from Blade Runner. Some of these characters have more personality than the others, but the one thing they have in common. Whether it’s a malfunction, programming glitch, having to protect pesky humans from mucking up an assignment, or developing feelings of their own and decide to wreak vengeance on their makers: these murderous machines have been exciting and scaring us for years.
Before Schwarzenegger became a friendlier protector of John Connor, he was an unstoppable, humorless cyborg who would stop at nothing to kill Sarah Connor in the first Terminator film. Although the franchise has made him more of a media darling, the unstoppable homicidal robot in Cameron’s first installment is one of the most chilling killer robots in cinema history. Some robots with A.I. kill due to programming, but what if their programming ignored Asimov’s three laws of robotics?
“This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it” says the eerily monotone HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s not that HAL wants to dispatch his crew, it’s just that humans are just too damn foolish to realize how crucial their mission is. Stanley Kubrick’s cunning direction always proves to err on the dark side, and HAL 9000 is one of the cinema’s most chilling foes despite being just a blinking red light.
Other A.I.s kill out of a desire to understand the nature of their existence. Against a ticking clock, the derelict replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner return to earth to meet their maker in a race against time (they have a four-year lifespan). However, this isn’t childlike curiosity as these cyborgs have superhuman strength and have no problem obliterating anyone who should have the misfortune of getting in their way. By the end of Blade Runner, the gang’s leader Roy Batty (a pivotal role for Dutch actor Rutger Hauer) delivers a most moving speech and suddenly we start to understand the lethal replicants – which is some brilliant character development.
Westworld is notable for being the first film to host 2D digital imaging effects (aka CGI) from the point of view of the malfunctioning killer cyborg played by Yul Bryner, who’s known only as “The Gunslinger”. There are many precursor elements in Michael Crichton’s directorial debut, and you can see traces of The Terminator regarding the gunslinger’s relentless drive for killing tin horns.
Other homicidal A.I. characters include Ash from Ridley Scott’s Alien, the robots (especially Sonny) in I, Robot, Max from Flight of the Intruder, ED209 from Robocop, Agent Smith from The Matrix trilogy, just to name a few. If we are fixated on anything as a society it’s definitely sex and violence, so maybe these tropes are just writers relating to what desire most. A fortunate sociological conclusion is the phrase “stereotypes exist for a reason”, and it could be that our caricature of ourselves needs the distance of artificial intelligence in order to make our existential turmoil more palatable.
Trope 4 – Guardians: “Come with me if you want to Live.”
Once again I turn to the Terminator films. I’m not criticizing James Cameron’s massively entertaining Terminator films, but merely observing some of the tropes that these films could have reinforced over the years. He made the interesting choice to make his timetraveling murderous cyborg, the T-800 (Schwarzenegger), a guardian of John Connor against the technically superior but less charming T-1000 in Judgment Day. Schwarzenegger, whose meteoric career was at full thrust, was cast as a more friendly A.I. this time around – perhaps due to Schwarzenegger’s appearances in more cuddly roles like Twins and Kindergarten Cop, Cameron thought it best have the T-800 be more friendly.
And this isn’t the first time Cameron applied this trope to a sci-fi/action sequel, like in his sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, Aliens. When the traitorous Ash (Ian Holm) left Ripley with a less than favorable view of droids, Cameron introduces us to Bishop (Lance Henrickson), who reassures us that “The A-2’s were always a bit glitchy”, and proves it by saving the orphaned child Newt from the queen alien. Good thing those A-2’s were out of commission.
Paul Verhoeven’s irreverently funny, and robustly violent action classic Robocop features A.I. in a different form: law enforcement. Imagine a cop who is fearless, incorruptible, and (nearly) indestructible: Robocop is the answer. He’s a fusion of flesh, steel, and kick-ass whose penchant for fighting crime is unstoppable. That is, unless his human remains take over and send him on a quest to avenge the bad guys who “killed” him, as well as to uncover corruption in the police force. Over-the-top action and humorous political allegory is the name of the game here, and Paul Verhoeven is the only director audacious enough to do it so well.
On a lighter side of this theme, we can get a laugh from the clunkier robots featured during the classic sci-fi era of the 1950’s.
The most prominently featured would be none other than Forbidden Planet’s famous Robby the Robot, one of the screen’s first robots with functioning A.I.. Easily one of the first robots to get star status in a feature film, Robby the Robot would enjoy a lengthy career as a celebrated icon of sci-fi, appearing in multiple films, several television shows (including Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, The Adams Family, and The Man from UNCLE) and commercials. As a tool for helping the human astronauts in Forbidden Planet, Robby would be a fixture in the imaginations of many as the quintessential robot.
It is somewhat of a grey area when you think about Gort, the robot who accompanies Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Since he’s a part of an intergalactic police force, one might think he’s a guardian figure, but that depends on who he’s protecting. His presence is imposing, and he does have that head laser, but it only disables other weapons, so maybe Gort’s penchant for non-violent confrontation is…progressive?
Trope 5 – Companions & Servants: “Directive?”
Robots that serve as a utilitarian function are often rudimentary and sometimes even comedic. Another one of those functions is companionship. Howell in Doug Trumbull’s Silent Running had his pals Huey, Luey and Duey on his ship while, being the only human on-board, the three pint-sized robots are an ironic silent Greek Chorus and make for some surprisingly heartbreaking moments in this 1970’s classic.
On the subject of existential sci-fi with A.I., at its core, Pixar’s Wall-E is hard to ignore. Wall-E has enough heart to carry this poignant little picture, and its narrative has a way of bending your emotions to feel for an inanimate object. But when it’s expressed so well, is it fair to give a figure such as Wall-E a reductive title?
Kevin Spacey applied his talent to voice acting as the A.I. companion/crew member Gerty in Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon. Gerty turns out to be the only companion to the protagonist Sam (Sam Rockwell), and Spacey’s channeling of Douglas Rain, (who was the voice for HAL 9000) pays off wonderfully, it’s recognizable without falling into imitation. And as we watch the film, Gerty turns out to be one of the most fully fleshed out A.I. in modern sci-fi.
Perhaps the timing was wrong, maybe the pairing of Kubrick and Spielberg calibrated audience expectations but A.I. met with mixed critical acclaim in the States while doing better in countries abroad. It is a cerebral and dark deliberation of human emotion, familial loss, alienation. Told through the doughy-eyed naivete artificial intelligence David (Haley Joel Osment, after an Oscar-nominated performance in The Sixth Sense) who is on a quest towards a better understanding of the nature of humanity (especially love). He becomes part of a family, only to be deserted, and has to run away with other derelict A.I.’s and machines. Osment is so wide-eyed and cherubic it borderlines on manipulation, but A.I. has enough of Spielberg’s trademark imagination to make this journey a worthwhile exploration.
Servants and guardians designed by man to protect man often turn out being man’s worst enemy. Another cruel irony we seem to consistently arrive at. Perhaps our absence of camaraderie is what makes these creations so appealing in fiction, or is it our moral vacancy so apparent that we can only rely on machines?
A.I. Here to Stay
It’s not very often we see the protagonists holding hands with a robot walking off into the sunset – Johnny 5 from Short Circuit was likable, The Tin Man was cool in The Wizard of Oz, and Paulie’s robot SICO from Rocky IV was, well weird?
Robots, A.I. and cyborgs are staples in the sci-fi genre. The stories sometimes fall into redundancy, but thankfully, sometimes we see something new. Regardless, the presence of artificial intelligence is a genre within a genre, and it’s here to stay as history has shown that it is enduring. Even if they go out of fashion every so many decades, they are always bound to return. As the Terminator would say…
What are some other tropes regarding artificial intelligence in movies you can think of?
(top image: Ex Machina (2015) – source: Universal Studios)
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