Robots, androids, and artificial intelligence have been a staple of science fiction ever since the earliest days of the genre, and you won’t have to travel too far to encounter one of the aforementioned forms of sentient technology in either books, comic books, video games, movies, or TV shows.
As a perennial staple of futuristic storytelling, robotics has provided incredibly fertile ground for creative minds and filmmakers, even if you’re just as likely to find a sci-fi stinker as you are a calculated classic. That’s the beauty of it, though, the core concept of synthetic life can be twisted any which way anybody likes, such is the broadness of the canvas.
Focusing on a more positive argument to be unfolding across the vast blackness of the internet for a change, Redditors have been gearing up for August 4’s Robot Pride Day (which is apparently a thing) to put forth their candidates for the best robot movies ever made, and things are kicked off by a pair of titles that hold a special place in the heart of many.
The Iron Giant, Wall-E, and Big Hero 6 instantly enter the chat, underlining that animation is among the best methods of telling a robot-infused story. Given the title, don’t be shocked when you discover that the scarily prescient I, Robot has been gaining traction, while the established icons of the genre are all present and accounted for, including James Cameron’s two Terminator movies, Blade Runner, and Ex Machina.
Moving into full-blown cult classic territory, Shawn Levy’s Real Steel gets a deserved shout-out, but the scope is so vast that you could literally name upwards of 100 worthy contenders, and nobody would really have much of an argument to make against them.