Historical movie robots we like better than Chappie


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HOLLYWOOD — “Chappie” is hitting theaters this weekend, introducing a new child-like robot protagonist into our cinematic trivia banks.

Unfortunately for film-lovers, the movie is pretty terrible. At its best, it’s a dramatic interpretation of “Short Circuit 2.” At it’s worst, “Chappie” confirms the suspicion of many sci-fi fans — that director Neill Blomkamp is exactly the wrong guy to trust with the “Alien” franchise.

But instead of getting caught up on some tangent about the future of “Alien,” let’s try and focus on the positive here. “Chappie” reminds us that Hollywood has delivered on some amazing robots in the past. No, Chappie isn’t one, but Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” is, and we all know Chappie was just ripping that guy off.

So, in honor of “Chappie’s” best efforts, here’s a list of just five of the great cinematic robots.

Gort

Although a minor player in the 1951 sci-fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” Gort is the character people remember well into the 21st century.

He says nothing, only leaves his spaceship for a few scenes, but audiences knew all that stood between Gort and total world annihilation was the phrase “Klaatu barada nikto.” Gort represents the strong quiet types in the robot encyclopedia, and somehow kept audiences sympathetic with his cause, even as he threatened to annihilate the human race.

Hal-9000

"Star Wars" robots R2D2 and C3P0 at the Academy Awards with Mark Hamill who also starred in the movie as Luke Skywalker shown April 3, 1978. (AP Photo)
"Star Wars" robots R2D2 and C3P0 at the Academy Awards with Mark Hamill who also starred in the movie as Luke Skywalker shown April 3, 1978. (AP Photo)

I absolutely loved Douglas Rain’s Hal-9000 from “2001: a Space Odessy.” Long before anyone knew of Siri, Rain captured the voice of a lifeless, uncompromising computer in one of the most terrifying scenarios imaginable. As much as I wanted to add additional robots to this list, like Kevin Spacey’s GERTY from “Moon,” in large part their success is directly related to what Stanley Kubrick and Rain accomplished back in 1968.

The Terminator

This pick might get some guff because of how audiences received later films in the franchise, but if you think back to the first two movies, time traveling robot assassins made for a lot of fun at the movies. The design, makeup effects, and overall execution of the early films made the Terminator a standout villain, and a character we’re still talking about 30 years later.

The Iron Giant

This was a tough one. In the world of animated robots, do you go with WALL.E or the Iron Giant?

I’m sure everyone will have their own opinion on the matter, but at the end of the day, I’d rather hang out with the Iron Giant for a few hours than the cute, lovable WALL.E. That, and a creative team involving both Brad Bird and Harry Connick Jr. is simply too much for even Pixar to compete with. Though, for the record, I really do love Wall.E… and Pixar. And both films are infinitely better than “Chappie.”

Fine, we’ll call this a placeholder for both robots. Because really, both capture those childlike traits we like to imagine young artificial intelligence would embody before ultimately taking over the world.

R2-D2 and C-3PO

While we’re doing two-in-one list items, who could possibly decide between R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Involved in every single “Star Wars” film, and always bickering like an old married couple, R2 and 3PO are the thread that tie the Skywalker story together. These are robots with purpose, who act as mechanics and hackers and translators when our heroes need them most. These are not throwaway metal, toneless stand-ins. Han, and Leia and Luke owe their lives to these droids, and we can all show them a bit of gratitude as well because without them we would have never made it to “The Empire Strikes Back” which we all know was the best film of the six.


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About the Author: Travis Poppleton ----------------------------------

Travis Poppleton has been covering movie news, film reviews and live events for Deseret News and KSL.com since 2010 and co-hosts the FlixJunkies podcast. You can contact him at tspoppleton@gmail.com.

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