The fifteen Best Robot Movies of All Time

Photo: Maya Robinson and Photos by Pixar, Warner Brothers, Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images, Yoshikazu TSUNO/Getty and Paramount Pictures

So, Neill Blomkamp'sChappie opens this week, and past the look of information technology, it appears to be a mix and match ofShort Circuit,Robocop,E.T.,A.I.,Commune nine, and a Die Antwoord music video. (Total disclosure: I haven't seen it yet.) Merely one thing seems certain: It will be yet some other demonstration of the movies' fascination with robots. Ever since the early on years of movie theater — even before the term "robot" was coined, in fact — the movies have been obsessed with them. They symbolize so many of our neuroses — our queasiness nigh technology and the unknown, our wonder at what it means to be human, our fear that, ultimately, we might be replaceable. So, we thought it might be fun, in honor ofChappie (or every bit a cosmetic to it … you make up one's mind), to rank the best robot movies in movie history. However, a note: Nosotros specifically focused on movies that are essentiallywell-nigh robots — not, in other words, movies thathappen to have robots in them, likeConflicting(due south) orInterstellar orForbidden Planet. We also avoided films that were specifically solely about computers — and so, no2001: A Space Odyssey. (ButThe Matrix makes it in, because it'south actually full of robot creatures.) And, as e'er, just one film per franchise.

1. The Terminator (1984)
For many years the robots that threatened u.s.a. in sci-fi movies looked like actual robots. They were made of metal and gears and spinning doodads and spoke similar machines. Merely when James Cameron cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as the killer robot from the future in the firstTerminator movie (which, to be off-white, owed a lot toWestworld) he not just helped realize our deepest fears about robots (that they would be better, more powerful humans than fifty-fifty humans themselves) but he too found the perfect part for an Austrian behemoth with limited range and drone-like delivery. Years later, with the sequel,Terminator 2: Judgment Mean solar day, Cameron revolutionized the civilisation yet once again: This time, he helped plow a politically ambitious Schwarzenegger into an most cuddly, family-friendly effigy, and he also used state-of-the-art CGI to give us the T-thousand, whose "polymetal alloy" existence was closer to magic than to mechanics.

2. Metropolis (1927)
In Fritz Lang's crazy, visionary 1927 masterpiece, a mad scientist creates a female robot version of his late beloved. But subsequently, he turns this robot woman into a false version of the movie'southward heroine, a charismatic revolutionary named Maria, to try to quell an insurgence. Robot-Maria so proceeds to utilise her magical, nefarious powers to archway the populace of this dystopian order. There'southward no science behind this robot, of course; her powers are basically fantastical. (The motion-picture show at times seems to be more nigh the threat of sexuality than about the threat of mechanization.) But in her embodiment of the potentially monstrous ability of science, Maria — and, by extension, the film — presents a prescient cautionary tale most the forces that the 20th century would shortly unlock.

iii. WALL-Eastward (2008)
From its nearly wordless commencement half to its hilarious slapstick finale, from its heartrending portrait of an environmentally devastated World to its biting vision of humanity grown alarmingly pudgy from condolement and stasis, this is ane of Pixar's greatest films. And it'due south the rare film that manages to put a not-humanoid robot at its center, complete with his non-humanoid robot love involvement.

4. Blade Runner (1982)
For all its revolutionary design and its status every bit an iconic sci-fi film,Bract Runner at times feels more like a philosophical exploration than a vision of the future. The replicants in the film — they're not the metallic androids we've grown to know and beloved, merely they're biomechanically engineered nonetheless, so I'one thousand counting them every bit robots — are only detectable due to the answers they give to certain seemingly mundane questions. Plus, they can dice — often in surprising, poetic ways. In other words, they havesouls. And among the questions the films asks is whether one blazon of soul is more valid than another.

v. The Matrix (1999)
The great fear underlying artificial intelligence movies is the notion that after a certain point, the globe won't need us anymore.The Matrix gives that idea one of its most resonant portrayals: In this future, humans are used as batteries for giant robot creatures while their minds are kept busy with a virtual reality simulacrum of the world. Thus, it brings together the technological fear inherent in most robot stories with a Zen questioning of the nature of reality. Years later, it'due south nevertheless fantastic.

6. RoboCop (1987)
Paul Verhoeven'south masterpiece is a lot funnier than yous might recollect. It's also a lot more violent, as nosotros spend much of the movie watching gentle hero cop Murphy (Peter Weller) slowly edge his fashion towards his inevitable — and inevitably cruel — comeuppance, whereupon he will exist transformed into the futuristic cyborg of the movie's championship. To be fair, that technically makes RoboCopnon a robot — he's part human, afterward all — merely the film is all about this push-pull between Potato's man side and his robot side.

vii. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
When Stanley Kubrick died he left behind this long-awaited project about a young, sentient robot-boy's attempts to become fully human. Kubrick fans will argue forever about whether Steven Spielberg (whom Kubrick had reportedly handpicked to straight the motion-picture show) did justice to Kubrick's vision, but it can't be denied that he poured his heart and soul into this picture. True, Spielberg'south pic is not so much about bogus intelligence and the philosophical question of sentience; rather, it's the moving tale of a young male child (played by so-boy-of-the-moment Haley Joel Osment) looking for acceptance, and learning what information technology means to honey. And it's beautiful.

eight. Westworld (1973)
What the hell did Michael Crichton have against amusement parks, anyhow? Years before he wroteJurassic Park, the author wrote and directed this ridiculously fun sci-fi Western-horror satire about a futuristic park where the android entertainers, master among them a gunslinger played past Yul Brynner (doing a robot riff on his graphic symbol fromThe Magnificent Seven), become haywire and commencement killing the visitors.

9. The Stepford Wives (1975)
Saying thatThe Stepford Wives is a robot motion picture would be considered a spoiler in some quarters, since that's actually the grand reveal — that these mindless, doting, superficial, immaculately coiffed housewives are, in fact, machines. A seminal pic that brings together many of postwar America's great neuroses in i dark one-act: our obsession with class, the suburbs, sexual relations, and technology.

10. The Iron Behemothic (1999)
Brad Bird'south touching animated movie, based on Ted Hughes's children's book, is an underseen curiosity. It marries 2 seemingly opposite concepts: the fact that robots ofttimes symbolize all our fears of unchecked technological progress with the idea that having a robot buddy is the ultimate babyhood fantasy. It'south a wonderful family drama, a great kids' motion-picture show, and an exciting plea for peace. And it'south still got the best performance of Vin Diesel'due south career, every bit the voice of the Giant.

eleven. The Day the Globe Stood Still (1951)
True, Robert Wise's 1951 film is less about robots than it is about aliens and world peace — with Michael Rennie's Klaatu arriving on Earth every bit an interstellar administrator from another planet to exhort us to stop killing each other. But the film's showstopper is actually Gort, a giant robot from an alien race of robot enforcers who take been empowered to destroy humanity if we don't heed their warnings. Sure, the film isn't really grounded in anything resembling scientific discipline, simply it'southward a fascinating time capsule of our attitudes towards unchecked technology and power in the nuclear era.

12. Ghost in the Beat (1995)
Mamoru Oshii's anime masterpiece is ane of the more important films of any kind made in the by 30 years, thank you in role to the way its influence has filtered out throughThe Matrix movies. With its hot female cyborg hero (an empowered female who, alas, comes directly out of a teenage male child's fantasy) and a story in which characters can shapeshift and enter in and out of digital realms, it's a film about the increasingly blurred lines betwixt humanity and engineering science — the fundamental dilemma at the heart of most robot films.

13. Big Hero half-dozen (2014)
Disney's blockbuster blithe film from last year was surprisingly dark; information technology was, ultimately, a movie most how different people cope with loss. And at the center of it was a sensitive human relationship between its young orphan hero and Baymax, the cuddly, puffy medical droid created by his late brother. Equally the boy tried to teach the gentle Baymex to fight, nosotros got a heartfelt exploration of the limits of grief and the value of helping those in need.

fourteen. Transformers (2007)
Okay, forget how much you hated the sequels for a second. Michael Bay's firstTransformers movie was really pretty fun — a peculiar mix of broad sense of humor, badass fighting-robot heroics, apocalyptic CGI, and the director'southward patented war machine fetishism. Permit's too non forget that the idea of a big budget Hollywood motion-picture show based on a 1980s toy franchise — peculiarly one as ridiculous as this 1, which posits an conflicting race of robots that have come to Earth and assumed the power to turn into everyday vehicles and other machines — was by no ways a surefire hit. And even so, Bay pulled it off. Bloat and self-importance would eventually consume the franchise, but this first 1 still holds upwards.

15. Robots (2005)
This star-studded animated pic (Ewan McGregor! Robin Williams! Mel Brooks!) wasn't particularly well-liked when information technology start came out, but it'due south enchanting and beautiful. Set up in a world populated entirely by robots (likeCars, but with robots), it's filled with elaborate contraptions and eye-popping visuals, with an aesthetic that seems to take been borrowed from every era of futuristic blueprint imaginable. Y'all could lose yourself in it for hours.

The 15 Best Robot Movies of All Time