The top 20 artificial intelligence films - in pictures

Since Fritz Lang gave us ‘false Maria’ in 1927’s landmark sci-fi film Metropolis, robots have terrified and fascinated moviegoers in equal measure.

With the release of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, Michael Hogan picks his top 20 films (in no particular order); including Star Wars, The Terminator, Star Trek and Blade Runner; that star A.I. beings who have challenged what it means to be human.

• Ex Machina director Alex Garland will discuss his directorial debut at an exclusive screening of his film for Guardian members on 20 January

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Thu 8 Jan 2015 07.29 EST Last modified on Tue 20 Oct 2020 05.57 EDT

  • Ex Machina

    2015‘There is nothing more human than the will to survive.’ Alex Garland’s chilling directorial debut, out 23 January, sees young coder Domhnall Gleeson win a week’s holiday at his reclusive boss’s mountain retreat – only to find he must participate in a strange experiment by evaluating the human qualities of a breathtaking new breed of AI, housed in the body of beautiful robot girl Ava, played by Alicia Vikander. Human-like rating: 8/10;

  • The Day the Earth Stood Still

    1951‘Klaatu barada nikto!’ In this classic slice of black-and-white sci-fi, alien Klaatu and his super-robot Gort visited Earth with a warning: humans must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets. Made of greenish metal, silent, near-motionless and firing energy rays from beneath his visor, Gort was played by 7ft 7in Lock Martin, an usher at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Human-like rating: 3/10;

  • A.I. Artificial Intelligence

    2001 Adapting Brit sci-fi author Brian Aldiss’s short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long was an unrealised project of Stanley Kubrick that he passed on to Steven Spielberg. David (an unblinking Haley Joel Osment) is a prototype ‘Mecha’ advanced cybertronic humanoid capable of projecting love. A Pinocchio parable followed, with Spielberg adding trademark sweetness to Kubrick’s bleaker vision. Human-like rating: 9/10;

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey

    1968‘The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. We are all foolproof and incapable of error.’ So says HAL in Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke’s visionary epic. Discovery One is on a manned-mission to Jupiter with most of the craft’s operations controlled by the sentient computer, HAL, who speaks in a soft monotone – even while killing the crew. ‘I’m sorry, Dave.’Human-like rating: 5/10;

  • Metropolis

    1927Fritz Lang’s expressionist sci-fi epic has influenced everything from Superman to Blade Runner, while ‘false Maria’ – the robot double of the peasant girl prophet in Berlin 2026, which unleashes chaos among the city’s workers and is ultimately burnt at the stake as a witch – was the first robot depicted on film and inspired the art deco look of C-3PO in Star Wars. Human-like rating: 8/10;

  • Interstellar

    2014Christopher Nolan’s epic saw the astronauts about circular ship Endurance joined by quadrilateral robots TARS (pictured) and CASE – lookalikes for the monolith from 2001. TARS sacrificed itself to collect vital data but was rescued and reunited with Matthew McConaughey, with whom it shared a man-machine bromance. Well, with McConaughey’s chiselled looks, who wouldn’t? Human-like rating: 2/10;

  • I, Robot

    2004Inspired by the Isaac Asimov short story collection of the same name, this Will Smith blockbuster was set in 2035, where a technophobic Chicago cop suspected that an anthropomorphic servant droid called Sonny had gone rogue and pushed its owner to his death from a 50th floor window. A full robot uprising soon resulted. Any resemblance between heartless, blue-eyed, blank-faced Sonny and PM David Cameron is purely coincidental. Human-like rating: 7/10;

  • The Matrix

    1999‘Never send a human to do a machine’s job.’ The Wachowskis’ cyberpunk action classic was set in a grim future where intelligent machines had enslaved mankind, keeping us subdued with a simulated reality called the Matrix. Dark-suited, sunglasses-sporting ‘Agents’ – actually powerful, sentient AI programmes – patrolled the Matrix, led by Hugo Weaving’s snarlingly villainous Agent Smith. They suppressed human rebellion by dodging bullets and punching through concrete. Human-like rating: 8/10;

  • RoboCop

    1987Police officer Peter Weller was murdered by a criminal gang but revived by malevolent mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products as a superhuman cyborg law enforcer. Inspired by Blade Runner and Judge Dredd, with a steel suit modelled on ice hockey gear, he clumped around dystopian Detroit, cleaning up the streets – but was haunted by buried memories from his human life. It’s a fair cyber-cop, guv. Human-like rating: 6/10;

  • Short Circuit

    1986‘Number 5 is alive.’ Cutesy creation Johnny 5 was an experimental US military robot which got struck by lightning, gained a sense of free will and escaped. The child-like, ET-esque machine developed human-like intelligence when Ally Sheedy gave him access to books, TV and other stimuli to satisfy his constant craving for ‘input’. Those tank tracks and camera lens eyes were fooling nobody, though. Human-like rating: 2/10;

  • The Terminator

    1984Arnold Schwarzenegger’s defining role remains the cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to the saviour of humanity. The Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101 has living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, designed for combat and infiltration. He’ll be back in summer’s fifth instalment, Terminator Genisys. Human-like rating: 9/10;

  • Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery

    1997The opening instalment in Mike Myers’ spy spoof trilogy saw Doctor Evil send seven blonde-beehived ‘Fembots’ to seduce priapic hero Austin Powers, before killing him with their breast cannons. He was powerless to resist, despite reciting ‘Baseball, cold showers, Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day…’ But when Powers performed a striptease, it tipped the Fembots over their ‘sex limit’ and made their heads explode. Liz Hurley and Britney Spears fembots featured in the sequels. Human-like rating: 7/10;

  • Blade Runner

    1982Ridley Scott’s neo-noir, based on Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is set in a dystopian 2019 Los Angeles, where bioengineered ‘replicants’ are virtually indistinguishable from humans. They have a four-year lifespan and are implanted with false memories to make them believe they are human. Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and ‘basic pleasure model’ Daryl Hannah are among the androids. But is hero Harrison Ford too? Human-like rating: 10/10;

  • The Machine

    2013In last year’s indie Brit future-noir thriller, we were in the midst of a cold war with China. Computer scientist Toby Stephens created a self-aware, fully conscious cyborg for the Ministry Of Defence. Intended as a super-soldier, smooth blonde Machine turned out to be more human and moral than anyone expected. ‘I’m part of the new world,’ it impassively told its creator. ‘And you’re part of the old.’ Human-like rating: 8/10;

  • Star Wars

    1977‘Don’t call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!’ Thirty-eight years ago two bickering androids played a vital role in George Lucas’s space opera. The golden humanoid and beeping wheelie bin provide comic relief and are the only characters to appear in all seven films so far. They’ll be back in cinemas in December. Human-like rating: 3/10;

  • Star Trek: Generations

    1994A successor to Spock in providing a non-human perspective, Lieutenant Commander Data arrived in 1987’s Next Generation TV series and appeared in four films as a senior officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Portrayed by Brent Spiner, he was an albino-like Soong android with a positronic brain, eventually fitted with an ‘emotion chip’. He even had a pet cat called Spot. Data also blinked weirdly but that didn’t stop him becoming an unlikely sex symbol. Human-like rating: 6/10;

  • Her

    2013Spike Jonze’s sci-fi romcom sees Joaquin Phoenix star as the brilliantly named Theodore Twombly, a lonely writer who falls in love with Samantha – a hyper-intelligent computer operating system with accelerated learning capabilities, personified through a Siri-like female voice (Scarlett Johansson). Romance blossoms, leaving the audience slightly disquieted by our love of gadgets. Human-like rating: 7/10;

  • Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

    2005‘I didn’t ask to be made.’ In the film of Douglas Adams’ comic novel, Marvin The Paranoid Android (voiced by Alan Rickman, with Warwick Davis inside the costume, here seen talking with Zooey Deschanel) was the morose robot aboard starship The Heart Of Gold, depressed because he was rarely given a chance to use his planet-sized brain. The best conversation he ever had was 40m years ago. With a coffee machine. Human-like rating: 4/10;

  • Tron

    1982This Disney CGI milestone sees hacker Jeff Bridges get digitised and beamed into The Grid – the 3D world of a rogue mainframe, where he has to compete in martial arcade games to get back out. Against a backlit setting, characters throw illuminated frisbees, drive ‘lightcycles’ and do all manner of futuristic cyber-stuff. Its special effects were disqualified from the Oscars because in 1982 the academy felt using computers was cheating. Human-like rating: 4/10;

  • Wall-E

    2008Pixar’s lonely robo-hero is a mobile trash compactor unit cleaning up an abandoned, litter-strewn Earth in the year 2805. His name stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class. Reminiscent of Short Circuit’s Johnny 5, he has all-terrain tank treads, binocular eyes and a child-like charm. Wall-E develops sentience, falls in love with fellow robot EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) and follows her into outer space. Aww. Human-like rating: 1/10;
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