Movies robots aren't just mindless automatons. They can often be metal marvels with their own charismatic personalities. TIME looks at cinema's long tradition of smart silver screen machines.
ROBOTS: Almost every wife in Stepford, Connecticut QUOTE: “I won’t be here when you get back! … There’ll be somebody with my name! And she’ll cook and clean like crazy, but she won’t be me! … She’ll be like one of those robots in Disneyland!”
—Joanna Eberhardt, a new arrival to Stepford, trying to explain her conspiracy theory to a psychiatrist.
Robot movies often terrify, none perhaps in the manner of The Stepford Wives, which explored a man’s ideal mate and a feminist’s worst nightmare. This film introduced a completely new robot concept to the big screen: a human reproduction equal parts Doris Day and Playboy Bunny. For female moviegoers still reeling from Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, these household sexbots are the ultimate enemy, wholly consumed by vanity, cleanliness, cooking and pleasure. What’s worse, these robo-Barbies look so realistic their own children don’t even notice the difference.
Imagine the horror of liberated mother and wife Joanna Eberhardt, who reluctantly leaves Manhattan to settle down in suburban Stepford, Conn., with her husband and two kids. Joanna blames water contamination for the hyper-domestic behavior until she watches one of her neighbors malfunction — freakishly repeating the same household task over and over again (while eerily simulating the tedious repetition of domestic chores).
But the Stepford robots are not the real enemy, men are the true problem — the Stepford husbands to be exact. While the men belong to the Stepford Men’s Association, the women belong nowhere. In this film, if you’re a woman (human or otherwise), you’re doomed.
ROBOTS: C-3PO and R2-D2 QUOTE: “It wasn’t my fault, sir, please don’t deactivate me. I told R2-D2 not to go, but he’s faulty, malfunctioning. Kept babbling on about his mission.”
—C-3PO to Luke Skywalker after R2-D2 escapes to search for Obi-Wan Kenobi and deliver Princess Leia’s message.
While many robot tales aim to instill robo-phobia, the first installment of Star Wars treated audiences to a softer and completely humorous side of their mechanical personalities with the quaint and quirky relationship of the ‘droid’ characters R2-D2 and C-3PO. At first glance, they are an unusual pair — the robot equivalent of Bert and Ernie. With a spindly gold body and the gait of a toddler, Threepio plays the anxious prude complete with prissy, butler-esque speech, while Artoo, a squat, blue and silver barrel, is the robot’s robot, a courageous fixer who talks in a digital symphony of chirps and whistles.
It’s chatterbox vs. music box, and this dynamic provides comfort and comic relief throughout the Star Wars films — their constant bickering reminiscent of our own delightfully dysfunctional relationships. When a badly damaged Artoo is rescued in the film, Threepio pleads with Han Solo: “You must repair him, sir! If any of my circuits or gears will help, I’ll gladly donate them.” Threepio is willing to give up his virtual kidneys for Artoo — now that’s love.
