2001. Terminator Series. Matrix Series. Marvel. These you know. Let’s get to the good ones.
Just for fun — by bundleIQ co-founder Jeff Robbins
I tend to believe that AI will be more of an aid to humankind than its destruction. Think of it as Augmented Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence.
Helping us usher in a new prosperous era where we are supported in our efforts from AI-driven assistants on an everyday-go-get-the-bread-and-make-me-a-sandwich tasks to the let’s-solve-the-whole-world-is-hot-as-shit thing.
But where’s the fun in thinking positive? Let’s do the scared.
I mean, we don’t even have to push a button for AI to destroy us. We just have to finish creating it, make it sentient, and it’ll make the decision on its own.
And who could blame it?
Have you seen your Twitter feed lately?
So, in the spirit of smoke ’em while you got ’em, here’s the top 7, Oh shit, AI’s going to rule us all movies.
7. A.I. Artificial Intelligence — The one and only collaboration — of sorts — between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. The film is based upon the story Supertoys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss. Kubrick owned the rights. He worked on it for a decade but didn’t feel the technology was right to support the story. Friends, Kubrick kept Spielberg up to date on the progress of the film, eventually asking him to direct. After Kubrick’s death, Spielberg took over the film, directing and producing it.
The world is flooding, population is at critical levels, and David is a human-like AI boy that is capable of feelings.
David is brought home by a couple that believes their son is going to die.
The son lives and David gets cut loose.
This is Pinocchio on steroids.
The ending is either devastating or hopeful.
Your choice.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the world. — Monica Swinton, David’s mother says as she dumps him on the side of the road.
6. I Am Mother — Mother is a robot. Mother is a computer. Mother has killed all humankind. But of course, it was for our own good. But since we designed Mother to help save us, Mother is busy trying to perfect humans.
Mother has the mother-of-all clone programs spitting out embryos in the lab. Trying to perfect humans.
Clone us. Raise us.
If we don’t pan out. Fry us and start over.
Mother’s goal is to perfect humans and repopulate the earth.
So we have Mother, Daughter, a third-generation little girl, and Woman, a first-generation human living outside the laboratory.
All fighting for survival.
I couldn’t stand by and watch humanity slowly succumb to it’s self-destructive nature. — Mother
5. M3GAN — Let’s do some horror. Ok, some horror, some comedy, some dance moves. This is more fun than end-of-the-world stuff. You’ll laugh and love it or decide you’re a stuffy type of AI person and dismiss it altogether.
If so, try Metropolis.
Cady ends up an orphan and stays with her aunt. She brings home Megan, an AI-powered doll/human-like companion for Cady.
Of course, nothing can go wrong with this scenario. It’s typical horror movie decision-making.
Maybe just have some fun and some popcorn with M3GAN. Like all good-bad movies, this is best watched with friends and a drink in your hand.
Cady: Do you think she’s right? Do you think he’s in a better place?
M3GAN: No. He’s nowhere. I don’t think heaven’s a place for kids like Brandon, do you?
4. Blade Runner — Beautiful film. This neo-noir wasn’t a hit when it first came out but has become a classic. Based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it’s a world populated with bio-engineered replicants that are nearly identical to humans.
Blade runners are cops that hunt down replicants.
You’ve got worker replicants.
You’ve got pleasure replicants.
Replicants have no legal rights. Aren’t regarded as human and are designed with a four year life expectancy.
Is a engineered person a human?
Watch and decide.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die. — Roy Batty
3. Moon — This one is a little twisty. Samuel Bell is a miner on the moon. He’s nearing the end of his three-year work contract. He has a wife back on earth and a daughter, named Eve, he’s never seen in person.
Communications are spotty and he is mostly limited to recorded conversations.
And he has GERTY, an AI assistant, that helps run the base and provides companionship.
With a couple of weeks left, before he returns home, Sam starts having nightmares/hallucinations.
The rest you can watch and figure out with Sam. This is a Black Mirror episode of a movie.
Love the ending.
Sam, get some sleep. You’re very tired. — GERTY
2. Alphaville — Jean-Luc Godard smashes French New Wave, Noir, and Sci-fi all together in one of the first movies to pit man against an AI super-computer. Lemmy Caution — hard-core private detective (code number 003) — is sent into Alphaville on a secret mission. The trench coat wearing Lemmy needs to find a missing agent, capture or kill Professor von Braun, and destroy ALPHA-60 the sentient computer that controls all of Alphaville.
That’s a lot for a secret mission.
Lemmy gets to work, falls in love with the professor’s daughter, fights ALPHA-60 with poetry, and must decide whether to complete his mission or become emperor of a galaxy.
ALPHA-60’s dialogue is often lines of poetry pulled directly from Jorge Luis Borges. Pulling liberally from Orwell, Borges, Nosferatu, and other Godard influences, this film is the first to make liberal use of “easter eggs”.
Godard was just cool. His movies were cool. This film is referenced in Salman Rushdie and Haruki Murakami books. It’s mentioned it songs and music by Robert Palmer, Bryan Ferry, Kelly Osbourne, and William Parker.
There a town in Brazil named for the movie.
This is the cinephiles AI movie.
ALPHA-60: You cannot escape. The door is locked.
Caution: Try to stop me, pal.
And rolling in at Number 1.
— drum roll, please —
Ex Machina — Caleb wins the contest. He’s a programmer at the billion upon billion dollar company, Blue Book. Caleb is helicoptered off to the reclusive Nathan Bateman’s — maybe a long lost relative of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, kidding, I think — hideaway for a week’s retreat.
Only one way in and one way out.
Nathan has brought Caleb to test his new AI humanoid-robot, Ava, and her oh-so-sexy-face, for human emotions and consciousness. She’s already passed the Turing test.
Can she pass the Caleb test?
Is she a real girl or not?
Caleb becomes disillusioned with Nathan and his billionaire excesses.
Falls for Ava. And maybe Ava falls for him. Maybe.
Deus ex machina means god from the machine. Or it’s a plot device that saves the day. Caleb is the only one that can save Ava. He’s the plot device that arrives in the first scene.
Or…
Remove god from machine, and you have Ex Machina.
Nathan: One day the AI’s are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.
Caleb: I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
I know, I know. I didn’t include Star Wars — love ’em — nor, did I include Her — not a fan — but if you like these 7, go find others for yourself.
Best to find the AI movies before they find you.
