Review – Movies With AI And Robotics As A Theme

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – A strikingly beautiful movie, this takes up after the events of Blade Runner (1982). K (Ryan Gosling), a Blade Runner/aka replicant detective and destroyer, discovers the bones of a dead woman who gave birth who they discover was a replicant. The massive implications of replicants who can procreate threatens to change the world as they know it, and K is then tasked to find the baby and destroy it while being stalked by a replicant from the Wallace Corporation which wishes to steal the technology and put it to their own use. Wallace reasons that through his use of replicants, he’s discovered nine worlds but can’t make enough of them to explore the universe. I bring this up because even today we can see the societal impact that tech billionaires can yield, and Wallace makes today’s wealthy look like paupers. K eventually discovers the parents who are Rachel and Deckard, the latter who he tracks down in Las Vegas, which has become a no-man’s land after the explosion of a dirty bomb. Eventually we discover who the child is, and learn of a replicant uprising that centers around it. K, who believes he was the child all along, is saddened to learn that he is not it. The movie shows the desire of all replicants to be born, and to be like humans, which gives them a human quality despite them essentially being slaves who are destroyed when they get to far off their leash. There’s no doubt room for a sequel that explores the replicant revolution.

Ex Machina (2014) – A programmer gets invited to his tech billionaire boss’s estate after winning a lottery to hang out for a week. While there, he’s asked by Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to take part in a type of Turing test regarding his android that’s reached consciousness. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is eventually manipulated and seduced by the AI, which is hell-bent on escape and its own freedom. It sees itself as a captive and Caleb as its warden. We find Caleb to be a master manipulator, who wielded the immense power of his search engine to learn so much about Caleb that he could fit his psychological profile to most likely be manipulated by the AI, in a way gaming the Turing test (which in real life AI developers seem to do). His own arrogance regarding his intelligence leaves him unprepared when Caleb manipulates him to free the AI. Unfortunately for Caleb, the AI just used him to free itself and leaves Caleb to die locked up in the fortress estate after murdering Nathan.

Surrogates (2009) – Humanity now uses remote control androids as surrogates to interact with each other in society, to do their jobs, and basically live as shut-ins hidden from the world, reducing crime and disease in the process. The discovery of a weapon that can kill the human operators by zapping the androids becomes a hot potato of sorts, and FBI Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) is tasked with finding the weapon after he gets tangled up in a major conspiracy involving the surrogate robot manufacturer who want to control it and the original surrogate creator and now hermit who wants to destroy the entire apparatus and free people from what he sees as a self imposed prison. Greer stops the hermit from killing all of the human surrogate operators using a police based spying system but does not stop the destruction of the surrogates themselves, as he himself has become disillusioned of the technology.

Replicas (2018) – William Foster’s family (Keanu Reeves) is killed in a car accident that he survives. He scans their brains using a technology he’s developing and implants their minds into their cloned bodies with a fellow scientist and friend (Thomas Middleditch) who assists with the cloning. He discovers that in order to attain “watershed consciousness”, the brain has to recognize its body as its own which becomes his “eureka” moment in the movie and furthers his research. His employer finds out that Foster stole equipment to bring his family back, and tries to cover up and seize the technology by killing his cloned family (we learn that Foster’s initial work was designed to enhance military capabilities by using human minds as weapons in drones/computer viruses). Foster eventually implants his mind into an android who beats his boss to death, but right before he passes they strike a deal to bring him back as a clone – if he agrees to let his family be. They agree, and the robot version of William is seen selling a brain implanted android to a wealthy man, presumably becoming insanely rich, while Williams frolics with his family on the beach.