Let’s face it, whenever we are watching a sci-fi movie or TV show, or reading a sci-fi comicbook, there is one thing that gets most of geek culture off, and that one thing is, of course, the robot. Well, okay, it is probably more often the hot, scantily-clad, green or blue skinned space babe, that gets most of our attention, but that is another tale for another day.
Right now, we are here to talk about robots, robots, robots.
There have been things we would consider robots since time immemorial. Fictional characters such as Talus from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene or Olympia from Hoffman’s The Sandman, could both be construed as robots, even if the word did not even exist yet. Even beings such as Judaism’s The Golem or Finnish mythology’s Kalevala, and its women bathed in gold, have robotic qualities to their tales.
Then again, characters such as Tik-Tok from L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, were what we think of as robots, but truly, the robot came about in, of all places, Eastern Europe of the 1920’s.
In 1921, the Czech novelist and playwright, Karel Capek, put on a play called R.U.R. The title was an acronym for Rossum’s Universal Robots, and the play is important in the science fiction pantheon, for being the first to coin the term robot.
In hindsight, Capek’s robotic characters were more akin to the more modern term of cyborg, just proving how far ahead of his time the Czech writer truly was.
Later that same year, the world saw the release of the Italian sci-fi film, The Mechanical Man. It was silly and quite ridiculous, but it did start the so-called ball a-rollin’.
A few years later, the iconic German filmmaker, Fritz Lang, would move the idea of the robot even further, and dare we say, made them a bit sexier, in his classic film, Metropolis. With his golden calf, the robot Maria, played by Brigitte Helm, Lang took the robot to a whole other level.
Robots would be a major part of most of the sci-fi serials of the 1930’s and 1940’s, including Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and even Superman, but it was the 1950’s, the veritable hey day of science fiction cinema, that would catapult the cinematic robot to new heights.
The 1950’s would bring two of the most iconic robots ever on screen.
Gort, from 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Robbie the Robot, from 1956’s Forbidden Planet, would make any self-respecting sci-fi geek’s robotic “best of” list.
The decade also saw the release of Robot Monster, considered one of the worst films ever made.
1968 would bring around one of the most charming, yet most terrifying robotic visions.
HAL 9000, from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, is easily one of the best robots in film history.
Robots also found the way into other mediums. TV saw such characters as The Jetsons‘ Rosie the robot, Hymie the Robot from Get Smart, and Astro Boy himself. In the comic world, there have been such characters as Marvel Comics original Human Torch, Ultron, and The Vision, DC’s Metal Men, Brainiac, and The Red Tornado, and any slew of Doombot or Micronaut or Transformer or Sentinel or what have ya. You can always toss in Dr. Who and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, while you are at it.
Then 1977 happened, and a whole new version of robots were created – the droid.
With the advent of Star Wars, droids, obviously short for androids, were born. C-3PO and R2-D2 are two of the most famous robots in cinematic history.
After this we got everything from The Terminator to Alien‘s Bishop to The Iron Giant (actually based on Ted Hughes’ 1968 novel, The Iron Man) to the Cylons to Lt. Commander Data to WALL-E to Futurama‘s Bender, to even K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider. Yeah, that’s right.
In 2003, The Robot Hall of Fame was opened.
It houses both real-life robots such as the Mars Rover and Sony’s pet dog, AIBO, and fictional robots such as Gort, C-3PO & R2-D2, WALL-E, and HAL 9000.
I could go on and on, almost forever, mentioning such notable robots as Hector from Saturn-3, Mechagodzilla, the bots from Westworld, and Huey, Dewy & Louie from the 1972 film, Silent Running, but time is short, and robots are many.
What are your favorite robots in pop culture?
For ideas, check out Total Film‘s 50 Best Movie Robots.
