SCI FI PI

Since the beginning of human history mankind has been torn between the desire for ever-more-sophisticated technology, and fear of how that technology will change us, or destroy us.

The myth of the Golem, a humanoid made from mud, animated by the aleph, the first sound in the name of God, turning on its masters, as we have turned on God - or on our parents, or on our teachers - is ancient and archetypal.

Zeus destroying the Titans.

Frankenstein’s monster turned on his creator.

These fears and desires are fundamental to being human.

We continue to tell these stories in Science Fiction.

Of course, the current horizon of our technology is computers, robotics, AI (Israel even named its first super-computer “Golem” – how hubristic is that?), and so our imagination plays upon the unknown of that cutting edge, finding there the great theme of the Creator destroyed by his Creation.

It’s this thematic landscape that Steven Spielberg will next be exploring when he adapts the novel Robopocalypse, set in a very near future where machines rise up against humanity.

If you haven’t heard about it click here to find out more.

So in honour of Spielberg, and one of the great SF themes, we thought we would list Sci Fi Pi's Top 10 Robot Uprisings.

Drum roll please... and here they are:



10. Hardware (1990)



Set in a post-apocalyptic 21st Century, Hardware introduced us to the M.A.R.K. 13 – a junked military robot capable of independent intelligence, self repair and the ability to recharge itself using any available electrical source. It was created for one reason – genocide – and once resurrected goes on a bloody killing spree. Sure, it may be just a lone bloodthirsty robot – but the sting in the tail of the film suggests a plague of M.A.R.K. 13s is coming humanity’s way.







9. Android (1982)



The brilliant Klaus Kinski plays Dr Daniel, a mad scientist hiding away on his space ship. creating a beautiful female android, Cassandra 1, at a time, 2036, when androids have been outlawed. Daniel is assisted by Max 404 – also an android – who meets his first non-Dr Daniel humans when three fugitives board the ship. As Max 404 falls in love with a human woman, Dr Daniel tries to use her to further his work with Cassandra, leading to Max 404 malfunctioning with jealousy and rage, and the eventual destruction of the humans. Though B-Grade and low budget, this is a surprisingly effective and overlooked little film.







8. Screamers (1995)



Based on a Philip K Dick story and starring Robocop Peter Weller, Screamers had the credentials but not the class to be particularly memorable. But it did have some scary little critters – the Screamers – a class of robot created to settle an industrial dispute on an offworld colony. To begin with, the Screamers are small, burrowing, circular-saw-tossing mechs, but pretty soon they’re evolving. Eventually they’re mimicking human form, and destroying both sides in the war. And once they’ve absolutely, positively wiped out every motherf***er on the planet? Next stop Earth.







7. Westworld (1973)



A cult classic from the imagination of Michael Crichton (he of Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park fame), Westworld imagines an amusement park of the future with themed “worlds” – RomanWorld, MedievalWorld, WestWorld – peopled by costumed androids where humans can go to roleplay – which pretty much means they kill all the dressed up boy robots and bang all the sexy fembots. But when a computer virus spreads amongst the robots the Black Knight is suddenly hacking people apart and Yul Brynner – who plays the Terminator in a cowboy costume – is singlemindedly hunting down our beleaguered human protagonist (Peter Martin).








6. I Robot (2004)



An intelligent Alex Proyas-helmed flick that introduced the wider public to Isaac Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics. Of course, the thing about laws is they’re there to be broken, and I Robot’s mechs destroy every one of them. Will Smith is the hard-nosed, soft-tissued cop tasked to get to the bottom of the conspiracy to bring humankind to its knees through robot domination.








5. Blade Runner (1982)



Could you really call Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his crew’s quest to be given more life and destroy their Maker an “uprising”? Probably not. But Blade Runner is such a singularly great, complex masterpiece that we’re putting it in anyway. At a time (2019, actually, not far off!) when advances in robotics have meant the difference between human and replicant is almost nil, Harrison Ford plays the blade runner tasked with “retiring” these almost-humans, and struggling with the moral and ethical dilemmas inherent in his job. Rutger Hauer gives his single finest performance as Roy Batty, an android on the same difficult existential quest as every human – going through the five stages of grief, if you will, when faced with mortality. His “tears in the rain” speech to this day sends shivers down the spine and a tear down the cheek.








4. Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)



Though films are traditionally considered the high art to TV’s vaccuous entertainment, the current Golden Age in television is proving that through sheer hours of storytelling, a scale of plot, theme and character can be achieved that film struggles to equal. In taking a robot uprising as its jumping off point, BSG explores themes of identity, exodus, family, government, religion, and of course love, death and birth, and rebirth, and rebirth, and rebirth. All this within a context of a Noah’s Ark of kinds – the Galactica – on a quasi-mystical quest to return to Earth, which may or may not be a myth, pursued by man’s own creations, the Cylons. There’s also awesome space battles, drama, intrigue, surprising character journeys and revelations, and an episode where Apollo and Starbuck beat the holy crap out of each other in a boxing ring because, you know, they love each other. Truly awesome television. Watch all four seasons and the movies if you haven’t already. And if you have, watch it again.








3. The Terminator (1984)



James Cameron, you’re a genius. The film is all about a robot uprising, but we don’t see it because it happened in the future – humanity completely and utterly decimated. But how much would that fricken cost to shoot? No problem. Remember the thing about if you could go back in time and kill Hitler WWII would be averted? We’ll just do that. So a cyborg Terminator arrives in 1984 to kill the mother of the future Resistance leader in the fight against the tyrannous AI. But the forces of humanity send back one of their own soldiers to help protect her, and he turns out to be… the father of the future resistance leader! Can that work in the space-time continuum? Well, it did. An absolute classic in the… hell, we’re going to say it: genre. The robot uprising genre.








2. The Matrix films



Is it a development in the genre, or in our attitudes to technology, that we find more recent iterations of our theme taking place in worlds where our technological creations have well and truly overwhelmed and beaten us? The Matrix takes place some time in the future, when humanity is so subjugated to the AI it created that we are kept asleep, living a digital dream, good only as a power source for the superior intelligence we created. A tainted franchise that fell into the black hole of having to find ever more complicated, literal answers to the grand thematic, philosophical questions the first film posed, The Matrix films nevertheless took the idea of the robot uprising into new, thought-provoking and visually breathtaking territory.







1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)



The great-granddaddy of the modern computer/robot/AI take on our theme and still the king. Genius director Stanley Kubrick laid out the territory he was stamping as his own with the early hominids’ discovery of a “weapon” – the first piece of technology – to kill prey. But soon the weapon is killing fellow hominids, and our relationship with our technology has begun. Cut to millions of years in their future, and the hominids and their technology have evolved together, to where we have astronaut Dr Dave Bowman, and the computer HAL 9000, a piece of AI that becomes self-aware. On the space ship Discovery 1, these two play out the relationship between humanity and its fearsome technology. A beautiful metaphor and one of the finest films ever made – sci fi or otherwise. When HAL decides to take action it's cold, logical and deadly - there is no mercy in his circuit boards, and this, perhaps, is ultimately what makes humans fear the robotic apocalypse so much.







HONOURABLE MENTIONS!

ED 209 from Robocop. Did he malfunction or was he just upset at middle management?

W.O.P.R. in Wargames. One false movie and it's Global Thermonuclear War!



Did your favourite Robot Uprising miss the list? Let us know!