The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Robots are machines that are independently mobile and capable of actions. They have some capacity for independence, which can range all the way from mere programmed functionality to speech and the ability to respond to verbal commands to fully-fledged Artificial Intelligence.
Machines that are built to resemble human beings are referred to as Androids – all androids are also technically robots but for the purposes of discussion here, robots that resemble human form are discussed on the Androids page and less human-like and more mechanical robots are listed here.
The first screen robot was the android Maria in Metropolis (1927). Thereafter the serials of the 1930s and 40s could be counted on for an assortment of clunky men in tin suits. The 1950s brought an assortment of robots aiding alien invaders of the era but also the fan favourite of Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956), the first robot to follow Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
The next major development came during the era of Star Wars (1977), which introduced the ‘droid’ and showed that robots had become a familiar and everyday part of the world. Numerous films in the aftermath took such an approach. The era also introduced an assortment of cute and cuddly robots.
The Terminator (1984) popularised the killer android and in the spate of killer machine films that followed, there were a good many lethal and hulking non-humaniform robots on the attack.
The major development of the 2000s was Transformers (2007) and sequels, featuring vast shape-changing machines battling it out in colossal displays of mass destruction. The late 2010s brought an upsurge of real world developments in Artificial Intelligence, including a number of works dealing with robotics.
There have been some impressive works about A.I. in the last few years. This plays out as Ex Machina by way of Training Day and is only notable in its ridiculous implausibility
The gratifying pleasure of a solid conceptually-driven science-fiction film – all based around the premise of “what if a cryogenic sleeper woke up halfway through a deep space voyage?” and the moral choices he must make. Strong, intelligent character-driven science-fiction and possibly the best designed film of the year
Early anime from Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame about a police squad set up to deal with giant robots gone amok. All of Oshii’s visuals and fascinating play of ideas are present
Soviet-made science-fiction film about a mysterious female alien visitor. The set-up intrigues for a time but the directorial delivery is dull and prosaic, while the mystery about who the alien woman is sidetracked by a long-winded interplanetary adventure in the second half
An oddity from the heyday of the serial that has singing cowboy star Gene Autry discover the doorway to an underground kingdom on his ranch Made with a crude pulp vigour
A one-gag animated film that essentially reverses the plot of E.T, and has a human astronaut stranded on a planet of aliens and adopted by one boy. More likeable than it has a right to be.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with its ridiculous rubber monsters and dementedly over-the-top acting as one of the key pop culture phenomena of the 1990s. The question is what audience do producers possibly think that there might be for a dark and gritty cinematic reboot?
Film spinoff from the Mighty Morphin Powers Rangers tv series that became a fad in the 90s. All the same rubber monsters and shrieking over-the-top acting is preserved intact
Cheaply made and frequently unintentionally hilarious variant on UFO conspiracies that wheels out all the usual cliches – alien implants, the Men in Black, recovered memories etc
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
Slight but colourful animated film for the very young based on the popular series of Hallmark cards and Mattel toys about a magical horse
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
Steven Spielberg adapted Ernest Cline’s book about a massive virtual treasure hunt through 1980s pop culture trivia. The film winds up the pop culture references by a factor of ten, but misses the book’s compulsive readability
Film about robot boxing that leaves no sports movie cliche untouched, nevertheless works effectively on all the right emotional cues. Capably made, with good effects and the cute kid steals the show
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
One of a spate of scientifically grounded Mars movies that came out in 2000, featuring a space mission crew stranded on the planet
Almost forgotten Disney-made sequel to The Wizard of Oz, this takes a far darker outlook than the version you knew
Japanese SF film that makes a rather enjoyable magpie collage out of a Terminator time travel action plot married to John Woo and Matrix action stylistics
Modestly effective film with an amnesiac soldier trying to make his way across Africa in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Featuring some fine and well staged effects
Part of the fad for gonzo Japanese splatter films we had in the late 00s, featuring absurdly over-the-top splatter effects and demented action sequences.; Concerning cyborg-enhanced geisha who wade into battle going through a deliriously silly range of bio-mechanical transformations
A popular hit that spins the cyborg cop theme through a Cyberpunk future, while director Paul Verhoeven piles on excesses of violence and black humour. A darkly funny satire of Reaganite America, this is an entertainingly slick comic-book of a movie
I have to admit despite all the bad feeling for this, I liked it. While what went on in terms of the man inside the machine was cut and dried in the original, this has been shifted to give us a “the soul of Robocop” story . Moreover, the original’s biting satire of 1980s corporations and politics has been smartly updated to tackle some big 2010s issues
With a script co-written by Frank Miller, this sequel comes in as a leaner work that abandons the campier excesses of its predecessor while expanding on its ideas with considerable ingenuity
The third Robocop film killed the series off with a disastrous decision to go for a PG rating and pair Robocop with a cute kid
A Hong Kong take on RoboCop with Sally Yeh as crimefighting android. Though produced by and also starring Tsui Hark, a very silly slapstick element comes to dominate what are otherwise imaginative action sequences
Another in the fad for deliberately ridiculous shark movies following in the wake of Sharknado. With immensely entertaining regard, this offers up sharks invading Starbucks, swimming through malls, eating Bill Gates and even going on Twitter
Surprisingly warm and genteel story about the relationship between an aging cat burglar and a robot. For once, no cliches about robots becoming intelligent or discovering feelings but simply a credible piece extrapolated from contemporary robotics
One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes
An utterly charming film, all told without dialogue, about a dog living in 1980s New York who purchases a robot as its new best friend
One of the most entertaining bad movies ever made, an alien invader film featuring the famous Ro-Man, a gorilla suit with a diving helmet
While the title sounds like a cheesy faux B movie, this a surprisingly serious work. Taking undeniable influence from tv’s The Tripods , it is a YA work about the fight to free Earth following a machine invasion that proves far more entertaining than anything one expects of it
Micro-budgeted SF film where a nanoswarm is accidentally released, taking over an apartment building and reprogramming technology
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
The title is a massive cheat as there is only a single robot that turns up in a single fight scene. The film has the distinction of being the world’s first Found Footage Cyberpunk film about a mystery box that creates mass insanity when opened
British-made film about an astronaut stranded on a world of robots. Made by a team of three people, this produces effects that rival Hollywood productions but is also a solid work of planetary survival that comes with some jaw-dropping mid-film twists
Rather entertaining film from The Asylum about the machine revolution that overspills with madcap technological invention
Enjoyably likeable animated film from Blue Sky Studios set in a world inhabited by robots. Lots of visual invention and madcap slapstick
Disney are now doing what Lucasfilm did with their novels in the 80s and spinning adventures off from even minor background characters. This is a grittier Dirty Dozen adventure but still recycles the same basic elements
A pneumatically inflated heroine fights the machines amid a standard array of space opera and post-apocalyptic future tropes
Michael Crichton’s books and films are always run through with a fear of technology run amok. Here Crichton makes an enjoyably straightforward directorial outing about a police squad set up to stop runaway robots,
Children’s movie where a Martian dictator abducts Santa, this has gained a cult bad movie status
Ambitious if not entirely successful film with Harvey Keitel building a robot that proceeds to go amok on a moonbase inhabited by Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett
An animated film revival of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This also makes an misguided attempt to build a shared universe among assorted Hanna-Barbera characters
Modest and underrated Philip K. Dick adaptation that builds reasonable atmosphere during its journey across a planet and doubt as to who among the party might be one of a breed of evolving androids
A real what-were-they-thinking turkey where someone had the idea of turning the Beatles’ album into a disco-era film starring The Bee Gees … In trying to contrive a plot around the songs and their surreally psychedelic lyrics, the film frequently makes no sense
A story about the harsh conditions suffered by a family of colonists on Mars
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
A mind-bogglingly bad film that has absolutely nothing to do with H. Rider Haggard and is a post-holocaust film with Sandahl Bergman as an Amazonian warrior. The film is made with a bizarreness that may cause mental damage
A mockbuster take on Sherlock Holmes from The Asylum released the same time as the Guy Ritchie-Robert Downey Jr film. Ben Syder makes for a neurotically subdued Holmes but the film takes a leap off into demented Steampunk territory to emerge as one of The Asylum’s better offerings
Cute robot film that essentially plays out as E.T. with diodes. It gets some laughs and has a some virtuoso effects but as SF this is a film that can only be enjoyed as mindless entertainment
Sequel to the cute robot film pushes the cutsie elements to a nauseatingly anthropomorphished extreme, having it spout smartass colloquialisms and erasing even basic credibility
An anthology of short anime pieces from various directors, including creator Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult creator of Akira. The four episodes vary from historical to fantasy to futuristic warfare and, as with any anthology, vary in quality from the okay to the watchable
Classic SF film from effects man Douglas Trumbull, one that spins 2001: A Space Odyssey with a conservationist bent. Slightly loopy in terms of its science, the design and effects have a grandeur
John Cusack as a super-villain unleashing an army of giant robots against humanity – what’s not to like? Well maybe the entire film, which fails to leave no Machines Amok cliche unturned. Cusack gives a performance through gritted teeth no doubt at the atrocious dialogue he has to utter
Superlative film that recreates an imagined world of 1930s retro sf filled with flyer heroes, giant robots and stunning Art Deco designs.
An alien invasion film that exists largely as a series of dazzling effects set-pieces, although proves frustrating when it comes to plot or explanatory rationale
Easily dismissed because of its deliberately cheesy title, this is a modestly enjoyable relocating of The Most Dangerous Game on another planet
An hilarious Woody Allen film in which he plays a contemporary man cryogenically unthawed in the 22nd century. This satirisises SF cliches and contains some side-slitting comedy sequences
Another of Quentin Dupieux’s hilariously gonzo comedies made up a series of deadpan surreal vignettes, including a witty parody of the modern superhero film
The second of the Stars Wars spinoff films tells a Han Solo origin story. After a change of directors, it emerges in the hands of Ron Howard who has spent four decades being the world’s most ploddingly sedate director
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
This has an irresistible premise – of doing for 1970s tv SF what GalaxyQuest did for Star Trek – parodying the sets, costumes and cliches. On the other hand, the superb conception fails to ever play out as comedy and the film centres around a series of singularly dull personal dramas
South Korean space opera about a crew of space junk collectors. If the Star Wars series wanted to find a director to create fresh and exhilarating effects scenes, they need look no further than here
Stuart Gordon takes a lame concept – a trucker film set in space – and makes something far more enjoyable than one expected with most of the cast getting into the spirit of the exercise
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
This comes with the unappealing concept of ‘Teenagers Trapped in Orbit in the Space Shuttle’ and vies between cliche and passable treatment
Well produced but otherwise unfunny comedy about a group of bumbling Martian invaders who turn up on Halloween, following a rebroadcast of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio show
Sony, the holders of the Spider-Man copyright, squeeze more out of the property with a madcap animated offering that mixes up a host of alternate takes on Spider-Man in what visually resembles an explosion at a pop art exhibition
Robert Rodriguez revisits his juvenile spy capers franchise after a twelve year absence. Not perfect but it improves over the last couple of sequels
An incredibly cheap ripoff of Predator (and even more so that film’s real source The Most Dangerous Game) relocated to an urban area. Incredibly tatty and dull on all counts
A Star Trek film spun off around Michelle Yeoh and the secret service that appears in the modern revival series
The single most influential science-fiction film of all time, one that created a massive industry of sequels and spinoffs, not to mention copycats, and changed the way that people thought of science-fiction
George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars series after a sixteen year absence and a build-up rivaled only by the Second Coming. Instead most audiences went away disappointed. Lucas has used the interim to push the technology to its heights but the story and characters are lacking
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
I’m not one of the haters on this. It’s the first Star Wars sequel since the 1980s to invigorate the series with fresh action sequences and place more focus on the characters instead of the action
The concluding chapter of the third trilogy of Star Wars films. After the critically divided The Last Jedi, J.J. Abrams opts for a return to the safety of familiarity and nostalgia
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
Theatrical spinoff from the Star Wars prequels, released to introduce the popular animated series. This shows it is time for George Lucas to move beyond recycling something that was successful three decades ago
The first animated film in 3D, a blatant copy of Star Wars that proves occasionally engaging
Christopher Lee called this his worst film. Contrarily it is a ridiculously entertaining effort about a war between telepathic aliens in UFOs from beneath the Bermuda Triangle.
Modestly effective Soviet SF film about an expedition to Venus where the cosmonauts encounter a wild and colourful planet of plants and prehistoric wildlife
Bizarrely uncategorisable film from Zack Snyder that seems a mix of Girl, Interrupted and Inception
James Gunn’s almost completely successful reboot of the cinematic Superman, the first film perhaps that comes with a total confidence in the comic-book source and where Gunn is not afraid to be goofy
An animated film that seems premised on not much more than bringing various obscure DC Comics characters out of mothballs for one giant-sized punch up
Spinoff of the 1990s animated Superman tv series, made as tie in for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns Some good action, negligible use of the characters unlike the DC Universe Animated Original Movies that began the following year, at best a routine episode of the tv series
A condensed animated adaptation of the top-selling DC comic-book of all time The Death of Superman that comes with some massively exciting animated action set-pieces
One of the best among the incredibly underrated animated DC Comics films. A beautifully character-driven venture into the Superman mythos where Brainiac gets a magnificently theatric airing, while Supergirl undergoes some astonishing revisions
This adapts What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?, the highly acclaimed graphic novel that was written as a response to 9/11. Unfortunately, I am not sure condensing the story into a 76 animated film fully does justice to the complex debate of the original
A cheap Spanish-made copy of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film
Alien invasion film made by industry outsiders from South Africa. The plot is like a much better version of I Am Number Four but played out on a much more ambitious scale where the novice filmmakers do sensational things in the visual effects department on a minuscule budget
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Grungy low tech anime that comes out like a sarcastic version of Hello Kitty
An entry from the 1950s alien invader film fad. This starts well with survivors finding themselves in a deserted city but takes a nosedive with the introduction of a clunky robot
This comes with an intriguing central premise – a woman is imprisoned in the house of a mad tech genius where her only hope of escape is befriending his home security A.I. that is hungry for input about the world. An interesting idea alas doesn’t carry it past an ill-informed idea of how an A.I. would behave
One of the 2-3 most influential SF films since 1980. James Cameron creates a barrelling powerhouse of a film, all lorded over by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the relentless killer machine in the role that defined his career