Top 10 Androids in Film - Page 2
#5
SONNY
I, Robot
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#5
SONNY
I, Robot
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No one can argue with the simple fact that Isaac Asimov did more for androids than anyone else. His "three laws of robotics" should be tatooed somewhere on any geek worth his salt, and they are co-opted throughout science-fiction because nobody has ever been able to come up with a better way to program morality into a machine. Even real world A.I. researchers talk about the three laws. The highly underappreciated Alex Proyas adaptation of Asimov's I, Robot, however, explains how the three laws serve more as a leash, as a way of limiting free will. I, Robot features the awesome Sonny, a unique robot built without the three laws because his creator, Alfred Lanning, wanted to free androids to have secrets, dreams, and a soul. Instead of being one of the aforementioned amoral murderbots, however, Sonny chooses to be a moral and compassionate being, revealing that the inherent nature of intelligent life is one of good, not evil. Then again, Sonny is just one data point. Maybe if Lanning made two such robots, the second one would be evil.
#4
ROY BATTY
Blade Runner
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#4
ROY BATTY
Blade Runner
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Speaking of the three laws, it is usually the first law--don't harm a human--that gets all the attention. However, Blade Runner is better thought of as a meditation on the third law, self-preservation. The replicants in Blade Runner are manufactured to be "more human than human" and to do the off-world work that normal people are incapable of doing. However, replicants can only live for five years, which is the source of the film's main conflict. Roy Batty and his crew of replicants have illegally returned to Earth, risking death at the hands of android bounty hunters called Blade Runners, because they simply don't want to die. They can be terribly violent and twisted, but it's hard not to understand their motivation. These are sentient beings with a purpose and an inherent value, which Baty elucidates with his amazing "tears in the rain" death soliloquy.
#3
C-3PO
The Star Wars Franchise
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#3
C-3PO
The Star Wars Franchise
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The first pop-culture android that people truly fell in love with on a large scale (assuming Robbie is just a robot, not an android, of course), C-3PO is the most iconic character on this list. Even people who have never seen a Star Wars movie (and yes, they do exist) know who C-3PO and RD-D2 are. He's got a naÏve charm about him, bolstered by Anthony Daniels' dry British accent and C-3PO's quite literal stiff upper lip. It's ironic to have him (and R2-D2) serve as the proxy for the audience, as the most relatable and fun character who is simply swept along by the action rather than being an active participant in it. Maybe this is why he's such a beloved droid, and why no silly Gungan could ever hope to be in the same league.
#2
GORT
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
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#2
GORT
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
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Before we ever learned to love an android, though, we learned to fear them. Gort is a large, metallic figure who accompanies the alien Klaatu on his mission to Earth with orders to destroy it if it is deemed a threat. Gort does very little and never utters a single line of dialogue, which only serves to make him more ominous and terrifying when he does things like shoot kill lasers from his face. If it weren't for those famous words, "Klaatu barada nikto," Gort would have killed us all, and he would have done it coldly, methodically, and without apology. This vision of artificial intelligence is incredibly disturbing. It rings true to that part of us that wonders if raw intelligence should be paired with absolute power, which is the very question Klaatu is asking about humanity.
#1
DATA
The Star Trek Franchise
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#1
DATA
The Star Trek Franchise
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Though Sonny was a neat take on Asimov's vision for robots, he doesn't hold a candle to Data, who is the embodiment of Asimov's Positronic Man. He is the android who wants to be human, the one who struggles with humor and emotions, the one who writes esoteric poetry about his cat, the one who was put on trial to determine his own sentience and rights as a living being, and the one who strives to be the best possible vision of what an android might be. In Star Trek: First Contact, he is tempted by the flesh but still chooses a moral path. He is what we all hope androids will be, and for that reason, he is the best android ever to appear in film.
-e. magill 4/20/2015
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