The best robots in film

The best robots in film

1.Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, set in a futuristic urban dystopia, features a female robot, Maria, brought to life by a mad scientist. The styling of the robot was later to influence the look of C-3PO.

2.The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Michael Rennie plays Klaatu, a benevolent alien visitor to Earth from outer space, followed out of his flying saucer by his robot bodyguard Gort. The film famously warned against the destructive powers of nuclear weaponry.

3.Gog (1954) Two six-armed experimental robots called Gog and Magog – their names taken from the Old Testament – run amok after enemy agents sabotage a top-secret government facility.

4.Forbidden Planet (1956) Loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Forbidden Planet starred Robby the Robot – the first robot to display a sense of personality and become a major character in a film’s narrative.

5.Westworld (1973) Yul Brynner plays a gunslinging cowboy robot designed to look like his character in The Magnificent Seven. In the way of most film robots, he runs amok.

6.Sleeper (1973) Woody Allen’s ‘nostalgic look at the future’ (as the tagline has it) follows the adventures of a health food shop owner who is cryogenically frozen in 1973. He wakes up in the year 2173 and spies on the government in the guise of a robot butler.

7.The Stepford Wives (1975) Based on Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives sees suburban housewives being replaced with ‘perfect’ obedient androids.

8.Logan’s Run (1976) In a dystopian future where humans are only allowed to live to 30, Logan 5 attempts to out-run his fate. Along the way he encounters Box, an ice cavern-dwelling robot who tries to stop escapees, known as ‘runners’.

9.Star Wars (1977) The most famous film robots of them all, C-3PO and R2-D2 are not only entirely loveable comic relief but essential to the plot. Princess Leia stores the Death Star plans in R2-D2’s memory, triggering the rest of the adventure to destroy the evil empire.

10.Blade Runner (1982) Daryl Hannah plays one of several ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s cerebral sci-fi which poses many philosophical questions, chief among them: what does it mean to be human?

11.The Terminator (1984) Arnold Schwarzenegger had his defining role as a near-unstoppable cyborg in James Cameron’s sci-fi classic. Sent back from a ravaged future, he seeks out the mother of humanity’s future leader in an attempt to win the human-vs-machine war before it’s even begun.

12.Short Circuit (1986) Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg star in Short Circuit, following a military robot named Number 5 who suddenly develops an adorable personality when he is struck by lightning.

13.RoboCop (1987) Paul Verhoeven’s pulp satire stars Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, a Detroit policeman killed in action and brought back as a super-human crime-fighting cyborg. The 2014 remake wasn’t much cop, but the original remains a classic.

14.Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) Parodying the over-sexualisation of James Bond movies, Mike Myers’ international man of mystery finds himself face to face with the fatal Fembots – irresistible female robots with a deadly surprise under their clothes.

15.The Iron Giant (1999) Brad Bird’s animated film, adapted from Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel, tells the story of a lonely boy who befriends a giant iron man from space at the height of the Cold War.

16.I, Robot (2004) Can robots ever deviate from their programming? That’s the burning question at the centre of I, Robot, loosely based on Isaac Asimov’s collection of short stories. Will Smith stars as a robot-hating detective hired to track down an android suspected of murdering its creator.

17.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) A firm fan favourite in all incarnations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin the Paranoid Android is a permanently dour robot with ‘a brain the size of a planet’. In Garth Jennings’ 2005 film, Marvin is a beach-ball-headed robot voiced by Alan Rickman.

18.Transformers (2007) Based on Hasbro’s toy line, Michael Bay brought Transformers to the big screen in one of the biggest franchises in contemporary cinema. Two warring factions of alien robots – the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons – disguise themselves by transforming into cars and other everyday machines.

19.Wall-E (2008) Pixar’s outstanding animation follows a ‘Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-class’ (Wall-E) robot who is left to tidy the Earth when humanity heads to the stars. His solitary existence is interrupted when he finds a small plant.

20.Real Steel (2011) In a futuristic take on Rocky, Hugh Jackman trains fighting robots in Shawn Levy’s sci-fi sports drama. The film is based on Richard Matheson’s short story Steel, which was also adapted as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1963.

21.Prometheus (2012) By far the strongest element of Ridley Scott’s disappointing sci-fi is Michael Fassbender’s turn as sinister Bowie-alike android David. Dangerously curious and conniving, his actions may spell the end for humanity.

22.Robot & Frank (2012) Frank Langella’s elderly ex-jewel thief is initially unimpressed with the robot butler his son buys for him. But it’s not long before the duo becomes a heist team, in this indie comedy-drama.

23.Pacific Rim (2013) Guillermo del Toro’s super-size blockbuster pitches marauding sea monsters against humanity’s last defence: gigantic robots named Jaegers (German for ‘hunter’) controlled by pairs of neurologically-linked pilots.

24.Her (2013) Not a robot in the strictest sense, Scarlett Johansson voices the operating system who becomes the object of Theodore’s (Joaquin Phoenix) affections in Her. A constant companion who speaks to Theodore through an earpiece, ‘Samantha’ is an electronic consciousness with a difference.

25.X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) In the seventh instalment of the mutant comic-book franchise, the villainous Sentinels made their debut proper after a fleeting ‘training simulator’ cameo in X-Men: The Last Stand. These shape-shifting non-metal robots can adapt to kill any and every mutant.

26.BIg Hero 6 (2014) In Disney’s Big Hero 6, the loveable Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit ) is an inflatable robot, programmed to help others.

27.Ex Machina (2015) In Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Alicia Vikander stars as the enigmatic, troublingly attractive robot Eva. Computer coder Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is employed to “test” Eva, to determine whether or not she could pass for human, but soon finds himself out of his depth.

28.Chappie (2015) Sharlto Copley voices Chappie, an ex-police robot who develops thoughts, feelings and a personality, in Neill Blomkamp’s explosive new sci-fi thriller. After being adopted by a trio of Johannesburg criminals, Chappie must learn to fight for himself, come to terms with the violence and danger in the world, and stand up for what is right.