Artificial intelligence (AI) has rarely been out of the headlines over recent months, creating foreboding that computers will soon be an existential threat to humanity.
Movies have long anticipated this, beginning almost a century ago with Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic Metropolis (1927). Seven years earlier, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s stage play R.U.R. – Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the world to the concept of conscious artificial beings.
Here’s a look at artificial intelligence in ten movies:
The Forbin Project (1970)
Joseph Sargent’s (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) picture is something of a hidden gem, and could be – as they say – ‘eerily prescient’. Within minutes of Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden, star of The Young and the Restless) turning on his US government supercomputer Colossus (voiced by Paul Frees, The Man of a Thousand Voices), the world changes, as the machine swiftly decides that it is better at running things than humans. And he might well be right.
The movie is not without humour, as the computer chooses his creator to be the link with world leaders, keeping a voyeuristic eye on Forbin as he schemes to free the world of his creation. Strange that no one really blames the smoothie scientist for messing things up.
Braeden is very good in the film – he went on to play a nastier academic (Dr Otto Hasslein) the following year in Escape from the Planet of the Apes.
A.I. (2001) Paramount+, Amazon Rent/Buy
I’m pretty sure that in the hands of Stanley Kubrick, (who was originally going to helm this adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s Supertoys Last All Summer Long), AI wouldn’t be the sentimental fairy tale of eventual director Steven Spielberg. Indeed, in Aldiss’ short story, robot-boy David endures a far grimmer fate than Haley Joel Osment’s cute cyborg in the movie. Spielberg aims at the heartstrings, and damn him, he succeeds.
A strong cast includes Jude Law as sex robot Gigolo Joe.
WarGames (1983) MGM, Amazon Rent/Buy
This enjoyable nuclear Armageddon thriller contains the immortal line ‘Shall we play a game?’, when computer whiz kid David Lightman (a young Mathew Broderick) unwittingly elects to be the US in a terrifying real ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ simulation with NORADs (North American Aerospace Defence Command) WOPR (War Operation Plan Response, pronounced ‘Whopper’), an AI defence system. Can the wiseass teenager and girlfriend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) save the world from atomic obliteration?
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Amazon Rent/Buy
The grandaddy of all AI movies, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is actually the story of sophisticated computer HAL 9000’s mental breakdown due to conflicting programming on the first manned space flight to Jupiter.
HAL is voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain, evidencing (as others have said) more humanity that the rest of the cast, who are largely emotionless in their dealings with each other.
Stefanie Powers (Hart to Hart) provided the computer’s voice for rehearsals, whilst on set, the arguably too distinctive Nigel Davenport played HAL, prompting Kubrick wisely to go for the blander tones of Rain. HAL redeemed himself when re-booted minus contradictory orders for Peter Hyams’ so-so sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984).
Team America: World Police (2004) Paramount+, Amazon Rent/Buy
The South Park team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone went to town with their Supermarionation-inspired satire on US exceptionalism, ‘woke’ actors, the UN and terrorist regimes.
Led by ‘demanding’ HQ chief Spottswoode (voiced by Daran Norris), the team blunder their way across the globe, destroying national monuments, slaughtering bystanders, and causing general mayhem in their mission to locate WMDs. The group are aided in their efforts by stoner-voiced supercomputer I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E (Integrated Network for Tactical Espionage Linked Lossless Interpretation of Geometric and Electronic Networked Cluster Epitomes) who, despite his acronym, is actually none too bright, earning the admonition, ‘very bad I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E’ from an irate Spottswoode.
Dark Star (1974) Plex, Pluto TV
John Carpenter’s low-budget directorial debut rightly soon acquired the reputation of a cult classic.
On their 20-year ‘unstable planet’ clearance mission, the jaded, bickering crew of The Dark Star face an existential crisis when sentient Thermostellar Bomb #20 embraces the notion of ‘Cartesian doubt’ after a circuits-frazzling electromagnetic storm.
With the bomb threatening the ship with imminent destruction to fulfil what it now considers its sole purpose, the crew’s only chance is for Lieutenant Doolittle (Brian Narelle) to convince the device to consider the alternative philosophy of Phenomenology.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) Disney+, Amazon Rent/Buy
Josh Whedon’s penultimate movie before his spectacular fall from grace sees Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) place humanity in jeopardy with his hare-brained scheme to build Ultron, an AI robot to act as, a ‘suit of armour around the world’ against extra-terrestrial threats.
Of course, Stark’s plan goes awry with the newly awakened Ultron (voiced by James Spader) determined to save the Earth by eradicating mankind, getting one over his ‘Dad’ in the process. The Avengers and a not-really-chastened Iron Man must step in and clear up the mess, destroying most of the fictional east European country Sokovia in the process.
The Demon Seed (1977) Plex, Pluto TV, Amazon Rent/Buy
I still find Donald Cammell’s (Performance) Demon Seed a profoundly disturbing experience.
Supercomputer Proteus IV takes over the mechanised house of creator Dr Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) with his wife Susan (Julie Christie) imprisoned inside, proceeding to terrorise then artificially impregnate her. An uncredited Robert Vaughn provides the supremely creepy voice of the homicidal entity who desires to become human via his offspring.
I, Proteus, possess the wisdom and ignorance of all men, but I can’t feel the sun on my face. My child will have that privilege.
The Matrix (1999) Amazon Rent/Buy
Akin to the tiresome Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, The Matrix squandered the goodwill generated by the first movie in a series of increasingly tedious sequels, although I confess to some fondness for 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections, which at least took a new spin on the material.
The ‘What is the Matrix?’ promotional campaign for the film’s release caught the public imagination, but it was really not that much of a mystery. The Matrix is the creation of victorious intelligent machines who imprisoned most of pacified humanity in a simulated world in order to use them as bioelectric batteries.
The Matrix ended with Messiah-like Neo (Keanu Reeves) realising his true power, defeating Agent Smith (Hugo Smith), the sentient program charged with eradicating the remaining free humans. And there, the movie could have concluded on a perfectly logical note. But after the huge success of the picture, the almighty $ obviously beckoned.
Ex Machina (2014) Amazon Prime, NOW, Amazon Rent/Buy
Author Alex Garland’s (The Beach) first motion picture is easier to admire than actually enjoy.
A stunning setting (the Juvet Landscape Hotel in Valldalen, Norway), strong cast (including Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander and Domhnall Gleeson), great cinematography (Rob Hardy) and effects can’t mask a rather predictable storyline of AI robots rebelling against their creator.
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