Tropes - Automatons (Robots)

 From the Bronze Age to the Page and Stage

Handmaids ran to attend their master,
all cast in gold but a match for living, breathing girls.
Intelligence fills their hearts, voice and strength their frames,
from the deathless gods they've learned their works of hand.

The Iliad Homer

Translated by Robert Fagles

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

In tales of the heroes of bronze age Greece, we might find the word "automaton". Its meaning is "self-willed", and will is what defines these entities. Perhaps Homer's description of the handmaids of the smith god Hephaestus, cast from gold but otherwise self-aware, are literature's first automatons, dating from around the 8th century BC. These are among several such artificial lifeforms produced in Hephaestus' forge.

Journeying home from the far side of the world, Jason and his ship of Argonauts arrived at the island of Crete. Here, a man of bronze, Talos, threw rocks at their vessel, the Argo. Some say Talos was the last survivor of the mythical prehistoric race of bronze men, but others credit Hephaestus with his creation. He was tasked with guarding the coast of Crete from piracy, and thrice daily would run the whole of Crete's shores. He was constructed of metal, but had sentience. In 1963, the stop motion techniques of the great Ray Harryhausen brought him to the big screen as a gigantic metal man in Jason and the Argonauts.

Hephaestus' legacy echoes through the ages. Objects that might otherwise be assumed inanimate, but which actually have agency, turn up in folktales. When Jack steals the harp from the giant's castle, he may have been somewhat surprised that the harp itself raised the alarm, calling to its vertically gifted master. It may have been less shocking to him were he Jewish, and familiar with the legend of the clay golem animated by mystical means. The idea of artificial life fascinates us. Inevitable it is, then, that we would eventually ask the question, "What if a person, not a god, turned their skills to building automatons?"

The answer, when it comes in the form of fiction, is usually cautionary. Because, of course it is.

E. T. A. Hoffmann's short story Der Sandmann (1817) has a young man fall in love with a female automaton that had been passing as a human, with tragic results. In 1886, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam takes the notion further in The Future Eve. Here, Thomas Edison himself builds an artificial fiancée for his friend. But Mary Shelley crafted the blueprint for exploring the dangers of creating artificial sentience in Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus (1818). Frankenstein's unwillingness to take responsibility for the being to which he'd given intelligence and emotion proves his downfall. Although a gothic horror novel, few works have had a greater influence on science-fiction. Humanity was asking itself over two hundred years ago a question that's never been more immediate than it is today with the rise of artificial intelligence; how life-like and autonomous do our creations have to be before they're actually intelligent life?

One familiar word has so far been missing from this overview, but that's about to change. In 1920, Czech writer Karel Čapek penned a play that became internationally successful in the following years. It concerned a future world in which synthetic, but organic and human-like, workers are inexpensively mass-produced, leading to a rebellion. The title of the play, taken from the name of the company manufacturing the underclass of artificial workers, is R.U.R., which stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, translated into English as Rossum's Universal Robots. In Czech, the word "robot" has implications of forced labour, but its arrival in the English language gave us a simple, versatile way to refer to mechanical beings. The use of the prefix "robo-" (robocop, roboadviser, robomaid) or the suffix "-bot" (chatbot, nanobot, fembot, killbot) immediately implies something mechanical or artificial, designed to do work with automated efficiency, replicating or exceeding human processes. Thankfully, we appear to have abandoned the once common pronunciation of ROE-butt for Roe-Bott. Who might be described as having a nano-butt? What type of rubbish are you talking if you're described as a chat-butt? What have you eaten to give you a kill-butt? Etc...

The Man Machine on the Silver Screen

The Iron Man (1930)

One human innovation would allow us to tell stories more vividly than ever before, and mechanical people were there from early on to take their place in silent movies alongside human characters. The mechanical men from the silent films The Clever Dummy (1917) and The Mechanical Man (1921) are remotely controlled, not thinking beings operating under their own volition. The Harry Houdini starring film serialThe Master Mystery (1918) features a mechanical man with total autonomy, carrying within it a human brain, and it's every bit the clunky, lumbering machine we'd come to be familiar with from future movies.

The wealthy industrialists who run the city in Fritz Lang's groundbreaking film Metropolis (1927) have no use for robot workers; they already have a literal underclass of workers living beneath the city. But the workers are questioning the status quo, influenced by a young woman called Maria. Seeking to control the situation, the city's master, Joh Fredersen, has Maria replaced by an automaton. Initially, it's a sleek, metallic machine, until its inventor, the marvellously named Rotwang, gives it Maria's form. With billionaire-funded chatbots in the guise of humans tasked to manipulate online public discourse in the modern world, it's clear Lang's vision failed to predict only the virtual arena in which this drama would play out a century later.

Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis has been hugely influential on science-fiction cinema, not least because of its striking visuals, including the machine human. When artist Ralph McQuarrie did conceptual artwork for Star Wars (1977), his illustration of robot C-3PO clearly shows the influence of Metropolis, which was carried through to the final design.

"Robots", gifted with various limited levels of automation, began to appear to the public. In 1928, Eric opened the Exhibition of the Society of Model Engineers in London, standing in for the absent George VI, then Duke of York. Eric was able to stand, bow, and project a radio-received address to those present. With a shiny, tin-man design, Eric would bring to life the look of many fictional robots; boxy or built of cylinders of metal, inorganic, emphasising how human-like they are while simultaneously being very not human.

The early 1930s saw a slew of mechanical beings in the medium of animation, in the cartoons of Farmer Al Falfa, Bosko, and, of course, Mickey Mouse, and others. The robots of these animated shorts are certainly livelier than can be seen elsewhere, as would be expected of a cartoon robot compared to a man in a restrictive outfit or an actual mechanical device designed for exhibition.

Elektro, build by Westinghouse Electric Corporation, appeared at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and could walk to a fashion, and respond to voice commands, if they were spoken precisely enough into a microphone. Simple by today's standards, the seven feet tall titan must have prompted some visitors to ask what would happen if such a thing ran amok, or was set to nefarious purpose by its human controller. Here, again, we have a question that's more relevant now than ever; to what malevolence can artificial intelligence be put, and to what malevolence might it choose to put itself? Cinema, of course, had already provided the answer.

The comical looking robot assassin in film serial The Vanishing Shadow (1934), the Juggernaut, is ostensibly on the side of good, but there's no doubt that the purpose for which it was built is sinister. Its power of menace is somewhat ameliorated by its beaked face and aerial-like "ears". "What do you suppose that goofy thing was?" asks one of the bad guys after his first encounter with the Juggernaut, probably mirroring the thoughts of the audience.

The Vanishing Shadow (1935)

Unfortunately, as special effects of the time required most portrayals of robots to be performers in costumes, "goofy" would be a word applicable to cinema's mechanical men for many years to come, as actors who could hardly see from within their faux-mechanical cocoons would clumsily shuffle about.

Robots of the cinema are presented in what might be their clunkiest with the "walking trashcan" Volkites of Atlantis in Undersea Kingdom (1936), a design similar to the robot of later serial, the Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940). Mysterious or not, one thing about which you can be sure is someone going by the name of Doctor Satan is not going to employ trashcan robots to do chores for the elderly for free. With their heavy duty metal pincers instead of hands, these robots are war machines. They're fine for pulling leavers and grabbing the arms of opponents, but you wouldn't ask them to pour a glass of sauvignon blanc or wash the dishes after dinner.

Undersea Kingdom (1936)

Science-fiction and horror are frequent companions, and film serial The Phantom Creeps (1939) includes a robot that combines both genres. The robot is tall, with a huge head, gurning down at humans with a permanent grimace. It's the creation of scientist Doctor Zorka, played with dramatic camp by the incomparable Bela Lugosi. 7'4" actor Ed Wolff gives life to the robot.

On rare occasions, robots would find themselves part of the arsenal of extraterrestrial invaders or advanced civilisations, but mostly they would continue to be a favourite tool of Frankenstein wannabe mad scientists in the cinema of the thirties and forties. In the early 1950s, as flying saucer sightings were making the newspapers, wary eyes looked beyond the skies more than ever. What some may have fancied they saw, and others merely feared, cinema manifested.

When mysterious alien Klaatu descended in his flying saucer in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), his companion was mute robot Gort, able to disintegrate anything with a beam that flashed from his single eye. Gort looked unlike any robot seen on screen before. Still clearly metallic and inorganic, like the saucer in which he arrived he was almost without features, apart from action man/G.I. Joe style moulded underwear, and a visor to hide his basilisk gaze. His exterior was a pliable metallic "skin". 7'7" tall Lock Martin was the actor fortunate enough to be inside the costume of one of cinema's most famous alien robots.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Lumbering man-made robots continued to grace the screen. Special mention goes to Tobor of Tobor the Great (1954), a wonderful robot design in a fun movie. But cinema goers had developed a taste for visitors from distant worlds, and Gort was followed by more walking death machines from outer space. 1954 gives us Chani, the companion of Martian Nyah, in Devil Girl from Mars, as well as a Venusian army of invading robots in Target Earth. Both Chani and the Venusian invasion robots shoot death rays from their faces, just like Gort, yet you feel Gort would swat these bulky automatons like gnats. This is especially true of the Venusian robots, who fail to take advantage of their numbers; only one robot costume was made for Target Earth, so you only ever see one robot at a time.

Gort was charismatic in a "strong, silent type" kind of way, but to really become a robot celebrity, one needs more of a personality. For Forbidden Planet (1956), art director Robert Kinoshita designed one of cinema's most endearing and enduring robots. Although Robby the Robot was billed as being played by Robby The Robot (one wonders whether he ever signed his name as Robert T. Robot), the real internal workings of Robby were mostly biological, originally in the form of stuntman and actor Frankie Darro, and were fuelled by martinis, allegedly as pain relief due to malaria Darro contracted in World War II. When an inebriated Darro almost toppled the expensive prop, he was replaced by Frankie Carpenter. Marvin Miller provided Robby's voice.

With Forbidden Planet, MGM was one of the first studios to take science-fiction seriously, and give it a budget to reflect that. Robby became a celebrity in his own right, although he was more of a famous prop that continued to appear in films and on TV for decades.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Robby was an incredible design, with a glass domed head and rotating antennas. When Leslie Nielson's character, Commander Adams, says, "This is no offence, but you are a robot, aren't you?" one's immediate thoughts are, "What gave it away?" But while obviously not human, Robby is still fundamentally humanoid. He has a torso, a couple of legs, a couple of arms and a head, in a recognisably human configuration. From early representations, it had largely been assumed that robots, especially those designed to be workers or household servants, would be better at their tasks if they were the same shape as the evolutionary peak of perfection; humans. People thought that, perhaps, their vacuuming would one day be performed by more or less human-shaped autonomous machines, rather than the disappointing wheeled discs that scoot around the homes of some people today. But, even before Robby or Roombas, a robot design appeared on screen that challenged the humanoid assumption.

Form Follows Function

In Gog (1954), two robots named Gog and Magog, controlled by a central artificial intelligence called NOVAC, help maintain a secret subterranean space travel research facility, when they're not on a murderous rampage. These twin machines run on caterpillar tracks, and while they sport something like conical torsos topped by spherical heads, they possess multiple appendages. These robots were operated from within by actor Billy Curtis. Robots such as these are the forerunners to Huey, Dewey and Louie from Silent Running (1972) and, of course, R2-D2 from Star Wars (1977). Both these examples involved actors inside the props. Actor Kenny Baker was inside R2-D2. The charming robots from Silent Running were controlled by amputee performers, Mark Persons, Steve Brown, Cheryl Sparks, and Larry Whisenhunt. Such robots give the impression of devices designed around specific kinds of tasks, not intended to emulate human form.

Gog (1954)

Eventually, some cinematic robots were created entirely or largely through means of puppetry and remote control. These include V.I.N.CENT, B.O.B. and Maximillian from The Black Hole (1979), Hector from Saturn 3 (1980), the killbots from Chopping Mall (1986), and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit (1986).

Enduring Popularity

But vaguely humanoid robots would proliferate in the cinema and, increasingly, on television through the sixties and beyond. This may partly be because it's easier to create a robot suit for an actor that way. Notable examples include the robot from the TV series Lost in Space (1965-1968), who shared with Robby designer Robert Kinoshita, and the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979). As special effects techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, of course, the appearance of robots on screen is no longer limited to what can be achieved with a performer in a suit or puppetry. There is another approach to portraying artificial people on screen, though, that avoids even bulky costumes for actors. If the thought of metallic, autonomous beings is unnerving, those that are entirely or almost indistinguishable from humans are a threat to the very value of human beings. Androids, cyborgs, synthetics, simulants, replicants, are all a story for a future post.

Conclusion

Lost in Space (1965-1968)

In order to guide its humanoid frame about in our world to judge and hunt humans, a robot needs to be able to see and hear. That technology has progressed at such a pace that we now have cameras and microphones everywhere, including in our pockets, but artificial intelligence is still in its fledgling stage. The artificial intelligences now being created don't need to be given physical presence in the world to track us and spy on us, but they can be given form if necessary. The fears of the past are more pressing than ever. What purpose will artificial intelligences be used for? How can they be used to oppress us? What might they choose for themselves? Who is really in control?

Whether it's an alien invasion or, more likely, a corrupt government, we're likely going to be confronting artificial intelligences soon.

Nebuleena's Thoughts 

"I really need a robot companion. A cute little one that beeps when it talks. And shoots death rays."

All screenshots taken by me for purposes of review. Contact  ptbyrdie@gmail.com if you dispute the fair use of any of the above images.