Robots on Screen

Artificial intelligence in a century of cinema

As AI and robotics advance, we face questions about their impact on society and on screen. Robots on Screen explores this through striking visuals and film history.

Early 2027 sees two significant cinema anniversaries: the 100th of Fritz Lang’s eternally influential Metropolis, and the 50th of Star Wars. The famous golden robot in the second movie owes its origins directly to the first, but Metropolis was the first time that an entity that we’d recognise as a “robot” first appeared on screen. Ever since Lang’s Maschinenmensch (“machine person”) first stunned audiences with its elegant aloofness, film makers have shown a tremendous appetite for cyborgs, androids, replicants, and all manner of human-like robots. The idea of machines in our image has fascinated and appalled us in equal measure. Now that science fiction in cinema and on TV has shaped our view of the future, we assume, without question, that humanoid robots or androids will be joining us soon. 

Our quest to build machines in our image could be dangerous, yet we seem compelled to try, both in screen fantasies and in the real world. Now we live in an unsettling era where robots and artificial intelligences genuinely are about to transform our lives in ways we can’t yet predict. Will robots help us or threaten us? Will machine intelligences deserve rights? Will electronic minds become smarter than our own? Will AI take our jobs? And what of us? Will the next stage in our evolution involve a fusion of flesh and machine?  Across the last century, film makers have been exploring these urgent existential questions: Robots on Screen tells that story with over 200 stunning images and film stills.

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