Tuesday Couch Potatoes: Robot/Cyborg Movie

Anytime I hear the word Robot specially Cyborg, my mind automatically flips on the images of Terminator and the Robots in I,Robot and I guess Transformers are robots too. Scary! Since I'm scared of those kinds of robots...I just had to pick one which starred my favorite actor of all time... and a movie which made me question or well, made 'humanity' a blurred line.

My pick for my favorite Robot movie is: The Bicentennial Man.

This movie stars my favorite actor of all time: Robin Williams


In this movie, Robin Williams plays Andrew, a robot who was bought to become a housekeeper for a family.
The family is composed of the husband or 'sir', the wife, the kind daughter ' little miss' and the one I'd love to call 'brat'. Andrew is a robot who possesses 'personality' even if his personality chip is off. We see it when he accidentally breaks a crystal horse owned by 'little miss' and he creates another horse from drift wood. He is encouraged by 'sir' and he then sets off to creating more things out of wood and he sells them for money. His passion is in making clocks. Little Miss grows into adulthood and having feelings for Andrew which isn't reciprocated or deemed possible then. Andrew grows curious about the concept of freedom with all the books that he's read. People die in battles for it, so he asked sir for his freedom. Moving on, when he gains his freedom, Andrew decides to spend his money looking for robots like him. Ones with personality without a chip. He finds Rupert - a scientist who specializes in robots like Andrew. He is developing a 'skin' for the robots that would make them look more human. His research is then funded by Andrew. Rupert has a crazy assistant named Galatea who loves to dance but because of her chip. After achieving a face and making incredible progress with regards to organs that can replace those of humans suffering from organ failure and others, Andrew goes back to his family of humans. When he returns, he is surprised to find someone who looks a lot like 'little Miss' but isn't. She's the grand daughter of the original little Miss and her name is Portia.
This time around Andrew falls in love and fights for it. Then, each year, he goes to a federation or a council to ask that he be formally declared a human. In one of the last grand inquisition, he can see for himself that humans have surpassed their normal life spans because of the organs developed through the technology he funded and provided. All that he ask in turn is to become human. The drama is actually in the end,  Andrew Martin is on his death bed, Portia beside him, when the Speaker of the World Congress finally announces on television the court's decision: that Andrew Martin is recognized as the oldest, non-biblical human being in history, aged 200 years old. The Speaker also finally validates the marriage between Portia and Andrew. Andrew dies while listening to the broadcast. Portia orders their nurse, Galatea, now recognizably human, to unplug her, i.e., shut down her life support machine. The movie ends with Portia about to die hand-in-hand with Andrew, as she whispers to him "See you soon"




My second favorite robot/cyborg movie and one you shouldn't have missed too is AI - Artificial Intelligence which starred Haley Joel Osment of "The Sixth Sense" fame.

In the future, artificial intelligence has involved in such a way that a family can now accept a near to life like child. This is exactly what the Swinton family does, but when things get worse for the relationship between the family and this new child, they send it out to survive on its own. With only the name David and a passion to become a real boy, the child becomes friends with Gigolo Joe and sets off to make it become a reality. Written by FilmFanUk

He is Pinocchio, wanting to become a real boy - looking for his own blue fairy.

What's your favorite robot/cyborg movie?
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