Taking the form of escapism and existential horror before veering into fetish territory, humans have an uneasy relationship with machines. (This might get weird. You’ve been warned.) A recurring and unavoidable theme in allcyborg-themed films, TV programs, and anime is the need or desire to upgrade our inferior or faulty carbon-based limbs with something better. That’s where it starts, but where writers have taken this idea is limited to their most feverish nightmares, demonstrated by the fact that there are three iconic half-man, half-machine characters named “Iron Man” in 20th Century pop culture.Black Sabbath’s songof the same name, funny enough, has nothing to do with Marvel’s favorite billionaire other than appearing on the soundtrack.
Sometimes, the most emotional, philosophical riff on the idea of cybernetic modification comes from the least likely genre: the ones selling a toy line. Most are mere fantasy, as seen in superhero films. Others criticize how we lean on machines to the point of being crippled by our dependence on them. No genre says more about humanity’s hopes and fears than a good cyborg flick. Maybe don’t look up the fan art, though.
We’ve divided cyborg films into three broad categories only to make exploring them easier. Whether steampunk, biopunk, nanopunk, or any number of other genres ending in “punk,” we could nerd out over the classification all day, but it makes more sense to focus on characters not settings.
Fun and Games
Iron Man, yes thatIron Man, is a fun romp that we are clearly not supposed to take seriously, in large part due to the actor playing the titlerole, Robert Downey Jr. His dry humor hides the body horror of getting a synthetic heart, and yet these sorts of cutting-edge technological stories follow in a very old tradition. Edgar Allan Poe strongly hinted at similar themes of technology taking over our lives in his short story “The Man That Was Used Up,” where a once-dashing general is reduced to a husk with artificial limbs and prosthetics.
The 70s TV hitTheSix Million Dollar Man, originally a novel by Martin Caidin namedCyborg, could have easily been an homage or reboot of the Poe short story. This simple concept — the need to redesign a bionic soldier “better … stronger … faster” as in Steve Austin’s case — is universal. Masamune Shirow’sGhost in the Shelloriginally hit shelves as a cyberpunk manga in Japan in the 80s, then segued into an anime series, and ultimately a live-action film starring Scarlett Johansson. This series goes beyond the idea of supplementary augmentation, her entire physical presence nothing but metal and wires, vulnerable to hacking not bullets or punches. Her version of kryptonite predicting a very new kind of security risk for police forces and counterterrorists in the future.
Ghost in the Shellis of note as it is arguably the first hugely popular woman-cyborg character, this despite beingintended for male readers,seinenmanga essentially the Japanese equivalent of American “airport fiction” for lonely, traveling middle-aged businessmen.
Related:The Return of Anime Greats: 5 Masterpieces Make Their Way to U.S. Cinemas
Man or Monstrosity?
Despite someover-the-top effects sequences, funny lines, and soaring 80s music,Robocopis deeply existential. He’s a corporate-licensed weapon of mass destruction with emotional trauma. Our hero, formerly one Officer Alex Murphy, does come to terms with his new identity and his fate, Robocop acknowledging his real name and past with one word, “Murphy,” at the very close of the film. A lot of emotion and catharsis packed into two syllables. Yet Paul Verhoeven’s subversive action flick remains one of the bleakest of the gory, shoot-em-up sub-genre. The sequels couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the character, but that’s typical of sequels, and highlights how well the character arc was completed in the first film, endearing him to viewers.
Similarly, we have the iconic scene of Luke Skywalker getting a new prosthetic hand inThe Empire Strikes Back. Once again, it is hard to discuss cyborgs without getting into the debate over dehumanization. Go too far, and you go full Anakin Skywalker, or should we say, Darth Vader. Luke’s hand is one thing, but Darth Vader could hardly be seen as “real” under all the wiring, tubes, transistors, dials, and respirators. When Vader’s hand is removed, he doesn’t even bleed, only spark as the plastic insulators smolder, Luke staring at his ownprosthetic robot hand, contemplating the difference between an autonomous human and a mechanical pawn. It is one of the most subtle but profound moments in any sci-fi film.
Few sci-fi villains are as disturbing as the Borg fromStar Trek: The Next Generation,infiltrating a species’ bodies by invasive nanoprobes to assimilate them into a mindless minion of techno-organic collective of space zealots. Think of them of Genghis Khan’s Horde, but instead of just raiding your village, they take over your brain, and replace your hand with a circular saw. A colonized specimen is assimilated or placed in a Borg maturation chamber, where emotions are anesthetized, individuality is vacuumed out, and memories are nullified for the greater social good. If there was a better metaphor for social conditioning under a totalitarian regime, it’s hard to think of one. This being one of the more precise social critiques in all ofTreklore. Though fans were more interested in Seven of Nine’s skin tight bodysuit.
Related:Peter Weller Looks Back on the ’80s Classic in Robodoc: The Creation of RobCcop Exclusive Clip
Stuff You Shouldn’t Watch With Your Grandma
Speaking of power tools attached in weird places — The Borg looks wholesome compared to Shinya Tsukamoto’s dark comedy horrorTetsuo. Usually subtitled as “The Iron Man” — no, not thatIron Man—Tetsuois the least sexy exploitation film ever made. Tsukamoto framesthe revenge storyin jittery black and white, back when that look was authentically punk and not hopelessly pretentious.
Pinpointing a precise moral of the 16mm Japanese cult classic is difficult, the final words of our anti-hero threatening to “turn the world to rust.” Though depression and depersonalization in the age of Japan’s booming tech and consumer craze took its toll, this movie was supposedly intended to comment on the AIDS outbreak, humans reduced to cogs amid our armies of machines, transformed into an abomination by a “technological virus.” Today it makes more sense as a commentary on electronic waste. But, hey, great films work on multiple levels.
A worthy companion piece in the mechanical-sexual-body-horror category is David Cronenberg’s 1983 techno-thrillerVideodrome.Filmed on a tiny budget, the movieremains visceral and unnervingthanks to some great practical effects by Rick Baker. The movie manages to be trippy, erotic, but above all else, paranoid. The special effects sell the movie, but despite some magnificent visual imagery, the film is more clumsy in its message, another of Cronenberg’s boilerplate plots focusing on outrageous conspiracies involving technology.
A funny thing happened between 1983 and today, and you may guess what that is because you probably have a smartphone embedded in your hand right now. As we got more addicted to technology, our fear of becoming machines faded as we shifted our fixation to artificial intelligence. If 2014’sEx Machinais any indication, we now are anxious over AI eliminating us entirely, no need for our meager organs. Today we feel obsolete and abandoned, not hunted. For modern filmmakers, a human losing their consciousness is nowhere near as scary as a machine gaining one.
