For a long time, movies about artificial intelligence could be split into two camps. The first is the cautionary tale: an allegory for man’s automation anxieties or an indictment of our hubris. These movies position A.I. as a threat of our own creation that will inevitably wipe us out. When humanity is viewed through the lens of the almighty algorithm, we would render ourselves obsolete.
Best Movies About AI
The second camp is films that ultimately ask “how is a robot’s life different from a human’s?” These stories take a more empathic approach to not only the concept of artificial intelligence, but artificial life. These movies place humans in the role of a God-like creator, making us reckon with our creations. Usually the sympathetic synthetic characters start out subservient to their human overlords. But over the course of their journey, the lines between what makes them different from humans begin to blur. Eventually, though they are made of wire and metal, they feel more human than flesh and bone. As we hurtle towards what film has long represented as “the future,” we reckon with these postulated concepts in real time. Luckily, cinema is keeping pace, and we now have movies that go beyond the binary concepts described above. The aim of this list is to share bold and unique movies that not just feature A.I., but make the concept of A.I. the focus. Sorry 2001: A Space Odyssey and A.I. Artificial Intelligence…Let’s see what humanity’s favorite form of entertainment has to say about artificial intelligence.
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Chappie
Crime is at an all time high in Johannesburg, South Africa, leading to the creation of a robot police force. These autonomous cops were created by Deon Wilson, a scientist who’s more obsessed with his prototype for an A.I. model that perfectly mimics human consciousness than the law enforcing robots he created. When a random police droid is almost destroyed in a scuffle between a crime lord and the members of Die Antwoord, a golden opportunity emerges to place this experimental consciousness in the now defunct robot. When it awakens, we are introduced to the titular Chappie. Chappie’s single greatest accomplishment is the way it makes you feel for this CGI robot. Chappie learns as a child does, just quicker, but the young A.I. is extremely impressionable. The audience is made to feel like parents to Chappie. We love to see his excitement when he learns to paint and to express himself but we feel dread as he is thrusted into the world of petty crime, being tricked and manipulated into becoming a “robot gangster.” There’s a sequence in the film that depicts such graphic violence done to Chappie that it borders on emotional manipulation. Chappie doesn’t nail all of its proposed transhumanism sci-fi concepts but it creates a compelling case for being empathetic towards an artificial life. What better exercise in empathy is the experience of being a parent. If the core goal of this film was, “can we make you feel for something that isn’t human?” Chappie is a resounding success. After Yang
After Yang is a beautiful and tender meditation on the meaning of memory as well as family. Yang is a “culture technosapien” designed to assist families with their adoptive children. Jake and his wife Kyra have an adopted Chinese daughter named Mika. Mika refers to Yang as her big brother, and he is tasked with not only caring for her but teaching her more about her Chinese culture and heritage. One day, after the families’ monthly dance competition, Yang malfunctions and enters an unresponsive state. There’s an absurdity early in the film where Jake is bringing Yang to various repair shops and clinics and words like “warranty” and “refurbished” make it seem like this core member of the family is no different than a car or computer. Jake learns that Yang was equipped with recording software, and had the ability to record several seconds a day of his choosing. Jake is able to comb through these memories, letting us see the world as Yang did. He chose to remember philosophical conversations, moments of existentialism, and most importantly the times when he felt love. There is no other movie about artificial intelligence quite like After Yang. A film that isn’t concerned about the ethics of how we treat artificial life, it assumes we should treat it with respect. It instead wants to dissect the cultural footprint and artificial being would leave in our lives. Her (2013)
Her goes beyond the lofty concepts of how we should treat artificial life to tell a more intimate love story. The film asks not only if someone could fall in love with their virtual assistant, but what if that virtual assistant could love you back? Her follows Theodore, a freshly divorced writer who downloads a new operating system to his phone that is described as, “an intuitive entity that listens to you, understands you, and knows you. It’s not just an operating system, it’s a consciousness.” This new OS quickly names herself Samantha and a budding romance blossoms between the two. A love story between a man and his OS is enough of a unique take to warrant its place on this list but Her goes further than you would expect. It shows us the human perspective but takes into account the artificial one as well. It’s a movie that explores the bounds of human intimacy before pushing outward, making the way we see love and relationships seem narrow and small. The real question is can a single human meet the emotional needs of a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence? Her takes place in the “near future.” For a film that was released in 2013 one could imagine that the future could be pretty close to now. Even this year we’re starting to see the release of portable A.I. companions that look pretty similar to the one Theodore carries around with him in the film. Who knows, we may yet see love affairs between virtual assistants and humans. I’m Your Man (2021)
To secure funding for her next archaeological endeavor, Dr. Alma Felser enlists herself into an experiment which requires her to spend three weeks with her dream man. The dream man is an android named Tom. Tom’s programming was based off research done to Alma to hone in on her ideal, perfect match. We quickly learn that the “perfect man” is not Alma’s type. I’m Your Man wrestles with the idea of automating love. It asks if Tom is a tool for Alma to find love or an avenue to work out her feelings regarding the concept. No matter how many beautiful and tender moments Alma and Tom share during the course of the film, to Alma they never feel real because she cannot push past the simple truth that he is a machine. Real love cannot be achieved with the press of a button, and if it were it would take away the very thing that makes us human. It’s the flaws, longing, and pursuit of love that makes it worthwhile. On the other hand, if having a robot spouse makes someone happy…then who cares? Is the pursuit of happiness more important than happiness itself? Perhaps the next step after dating apps and perfectly trained algorithms is humans deciding to skip the search and just build “the one.” Even for those opposed, would you still be if your artificial man looked like Dan Stevens? Ex Machina (2015)
Caleb Smith is a programmer who wins the opportunity of a lifetime: to spend a week with Nathan Batman, the brilliant CEO of Blue Book, a Google-esqe company with a powerful search engine. Caleb’s prize is to participate in the Turing test of a groundbreaking AI robot named Ava. As Caleb tests Ava to see if her consciousness has exceeded the limits of a typical artificial intelligence, he begins to see her as a damsel in distress, trapped in a cage of her creator’s making. Ex Machina spins many philosophical plates. It features the actualization of many theoretical thought experiments like the Turing test and the Mary’s Room knowledge argument. The film is a bit of a catch all, containing many of the themes and motifs present on this list. What makes the film truly unique is its focus on gender. Why does Nathan make his robots female? Is Ava a woman herself, or is it a performance? A tactic to manipulate her tester and get her out of the cage. Ex Machina isn’t a story about an A.I. that yearns to be understood—it’s about someone who yearns to be free. It’s that very freedom that makes us “real.” Upgrade (2018)
Grey Trace is a self proclaimed technophobe who works on vintage cars in the futuristic world of 2046. When Grey, and his wife Asha’s self-driving car crashes, four mysterious armed men appear and kill Asha before shooting Grey in the neck, rendering him paralyzed. Grey, now wheelchair bound, is approached by recluse tech innovator, Elon Eron Keen. Eron places a chip called STEM in Grey’s neck, returning his motor functions to him. The caveat? STEM has a mind of its own, and grows to have more control over Grey’s body than he does. Upgrade uses the concept of an implanted A.I. to tell a bloody revenge story before twisting into pure body horror. Even since Upgrade’s release in 2018, the concept of implanted technology is becoming a reality. Elon Musk’s proposed brain-machine interface known as Neuralink is now officially inside a human patient. Perhaps Upgrade is a cautionary tale, one that screams, “don’t let billionaires put chips inside your brain.” WALL-E
On an abandoned, desolate, waste riddled earth, there remains a lonely trash compacting robot named WALL-E. WALL-E’s prime directive is to clean up the planet, but given just how much of a wasteland Earth has become it’s a bit of a sisyphean task. One day a new robot appears, the glossy brand new looking EVE. WALL-E is immediately smitten with the new bot, and after a few scenes of will they won’t they, WALL-E shows EVE a plant he’s found, revealing her prime directive. EVE is designed to find plant matter and return it to the mothership humans have fled to, in hopes of one day making Earth habitable again.
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When WALL-E chases EVE to the human mothership we see that humans have become so dependent on technology, they have grown obese and lethargic as a result. WALL-E is a cautionary tale as well as an indictment of the future of humanity. It doesn’t take a cynic to see the current state of the world and understand where the film drew its inspirations. While WALL-E may not immediately jump out as a film about “artificial intelligence,” the robots in the film display so much character that one cannot deny their intellect. It’s not the boldest take to position robots as little cuties, but we don’t often see artificial intelligence being complacent in their subservience to humans. WALL-E shows us a world of humans and A.I. working synergistically with one another—the issue is that it works a little too well.The Matrix Franchise
Leather wearing hackers, evil agents, chosen ones, and kung fu, The Matrix franchise has it all. Thomas Anderson is just your everyday computer programmer until he meets a group of leather clad cyber goths who tell him his reality is a simulation. Given the choice to remain in the simulated world or awaken in the “real” one, Anderson chooses to go down the rabbit hole. When he wakes up, he’s naked in a pod of goo, and is among millions of human livestock. Anderson learns that humans lost the war against their now machine overlords, but luckily a resistance in the real world has formed. Those “awakened” like Anderson fight a war on two fronts, one in the real world and one within the simulated reality known as the Matrix. An awakened Anderson relinquishes his simulated world birth name and now goes by his hacker alias, Neo. Neo soon learns that he’s more than just another resistance member, he is in fact the subject of prophecy, the man that will lead humanity to victory over the machines, he is “the one.”That’s just the first movie! To sum up the entire Matrix saga in one paragraph is an impossible feat. Things go from cool bullet time action to esoteric allegory on human existence pretty quickly. The way The Matrix represents artificial life is what makes it truly stand out. Programs and computer viruses are rendered as flesh and blood people within the simulation. In the first film our main artificial intelligence touchstone is Agent Smith, a program designed to eliminate anything in opposition to the design of the Matrix. Over the course of the franchise we’ll meet friendly programs, characters who assist Neo and also want to see the Matrix become a better place. The Matrix is a movie about humans and artificial intelligence at war, but it’s more nuanced than just robots and people blowing each other into bits. In some films the setting can feel like just as much of a character as the actors on screen. A Star Wars fan can close their eyes and navigate the halls of the Millennium Falcon, which is why we get so excited to see it forty years later. The Matrix is a character. It is also an artificial intelligence. It houses the drama of artificial and human life and its intelligent design is filled with nooks and crannies for our heroes to explore. The world building of The Matrix franchise is not only its strongest element, it also makes it so unique in the history of cinema. Terminator 1 & 2 (1984,1991)
In the year 2029, humans are on the losing end of a war with a product of their own creation: the artificial intelligence known as Skynet. Skynet employs murderous cyborgs known as Terminators to do their dirty work. The human/Skynet war is at a standstill, so the super computer sends a Terminator to the past so it can kill Sarah Connor, mother of the human resistance leader, John Connor. That mission fails, so Skynet sends a new, more powerful Terminator to exterminate Connor—but this time the humans send a Terminator of their own to intervene. The Terminator franchise is first and foremost a time travel movie. Its plot revolves on either changing or protecting the past to ensure a better future. Many years removed from those first Terminator movies we’ve seen many imitations, but what makes those movies bold and unique is that they were just that at the time of their release. A defense artificial intelligence made by man sees the human race as a threat to the planet. It’s a concept that feels a little mundane by today’s standards because of how prolific the Terminator movies were. What remains unique about Skynet as an antagonistic artificial intelligence is its facelessness. We see minions, the T-100s and T-1000s, but we never see the puppet master. Skynet’s lack of form or voice makes its presence feel huge. It’s not a villain that lurks behind every corner or in every shadow, it is the corner and shadows, and it’s sending a killer robot to get you. Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are extremely important to the fabric of storytelling regarding artificial intelligence.
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