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]

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.