In the midst of our excitement for this week’s release of Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” (which is fantastic and reviewed here), it hit us: 2015 is teeming with artificial intelligence movies. The Singularity is not far off and this swell has practically come out of nowhere, with last year’s awesome Disney hit “Big Hero 6,” the disastrous Johnny Depp vehicle “Transcendence,” and 2013’s British indie-sleeper “The Machine” amounting to most of what the subgenre has had to offer in the decade so far (though not all, as we’ll mention). As a way to compensate for this human error, 2015 is going to be much more artificially and intelligently inclined, with the theme replete in a variety of mainstream and indie sci-fi films.
We’ve already seen “Chappie” (or, we’ve seen it so that you don’t have to, though some of us found it unnecessarily humiliated by the critics). This week comes the aforementioned Garland movie, and coming soon is Joss Whedon’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Don’t forget that “Terminator” is back this year, with ‘Genisys’ coming to theatres in the summer. Not enough? The theme will have appropriate representation on the small screen in the form of Jonathan Nolan’s “Westworld,” premiering on HBO later in the year.
It’s as good a time as any to talk about some A.I. films we deem essential viewing in the sub-genre’s library. Note that this article is about A.I. films, not A.I. characters, so all you fans of C3PO, Ash, Data, Gunslinger and so forth should curb that Internet rage. Perhaps one day in the not-too-distant future we’ll talk about our favorite A.I. characters.
In the meantime, we invite you to download this list of 10 essential A.I. films into your mainframes and input your thoughts in the designated section.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
Some things in life really are impossible. Discussing A.I. movies without mentioning Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is up there next to sneezing with your eyes open. An obvious choice way before this feature even entered embryonic stage, ‘2001’ is believed to be the quintessential sci-fi film by just about anyone with knowledge of the subject. The film is divided into four distinct acts, and the third one is the narrative nucleus and which that concerns us here. It finds astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) on a mission to Jupiter aboard a spaceship controlled and monitored by sentient computer HAL 9000 (voiced in impeccable monotone by Douglas Rain). Of all ‘2001’s’ grandiose themes concerned with human evolution and the spiritual dimensions of the universe, the one that’s mired in as little ambiguity as possible is the theme of man’s design and relationship with artificial intelligence, iconicized in the deep red glare of HAL’s lip-reading camera eye. Every scene featuring HAL is an archetypal blueprint for every single A.I. to appear in movies after 1968. Its design and computational incapacity for compassion broke new ground thanks to Kubrick’s perfectionist direction and supervision by the film’s co-author Arthur C. Clarke, who made sure the science made sense. Today, HAL is the number one model of authentic A.I. depiction in film, and so deeply entrenched in culture, not even Apple could ignore it. Go on, ask Siri if she can open the pod bay doors.
“A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001)
From one realized A.I. -themed Kubrick project to another. Though “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” never ended up getting realized by Kubrick himself. The history of the production is as familiar as including a film called “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” in an article about A.I. movies is obvious: decades of tinkering with the project and waiting for special effects to catch up ended with Kubrick handing the reigns to his good pal Steven Spielberg in 1995. After Kubrick’s death, Spielberg made good on his promise by successfully directing the picture with Haley Joel Osment in the role of David, the Pinocchio-like A.I. who wants nothing more in life than to be a real boy for his mom (Frances O’Connor). Equal parts family melodrama and fairytale adventure, Spielberg kept his signature saccharine injections to a minimum with ‘A.I,’ directing a film that in its design and overarching theme of anthropomorphizing machines is very much a Kubrick production in spirit. But with family separation as its core emotional pulse, ‘A.I.’ is very much a Spielberg film as well; one that is passing the test of time with flying colors. Characters like David (most likely to remain Osment’s greatest performance), Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), and that adorable Teddy (voiced by Jack Angel) are some of the most fleshed out A.I. characters of all time. Full of unforgettable scenes, such as David’s emotional activation or the anti-Mecha Flesh Fair that plays out like a dystopian gladiator show, ‘A.I.’ is secured, alongside the preceding entry and the one following, to always be a part of this conversation.
“Blade Runner” (1982)
Where ‘2001’ pushes cerebral buttons and ‘A.I.’ pushes emotional ones, here’s a film that goes for both and blurs the line between man and machine in haunting ways: Ridley Scott’s neon-noir sci-fi “Blade Runner.” The retrofitted production design of Los Angeles circa 2019 (not too far along now) is today the stuff of legend, tirelessly replicated by scores of sci-fi films, TV series and video games. Its massive cult following got a recent boost when the long-awaited sequel was officially announced earlier this year, reigniting interest in the familiar dystopian world. Deckard (Harrison Ford) and his attempts to hunt down “illegal” Nexus-6 Replicants led by the existentially burdened Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). Gaff’s (Edward James Olmos) mysterious origamis, the Voigt-Kompff empathy test, and that Asian lady plastered all over the billboards and blimps as the face of multi-cultural consumerism. Everything that makes “Blade Runner” a landmark A.I. movie has been permanently downloaded into popular culture. It introduced Philip K. Dick’s work to a much larger audience (the movie is an adaptation of Dick’s short story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), inspired the second greatest A.I. death/deactivation in cinema history, and wired thematically deep ideas of mortality, memory, and emotion with a cryptically believable evolution of A.I. . Soul-searching more than dreaming, “Blade Runner” is what happens when film noir and sci-fi merge to unforgettable effect.