The 10 best films about artificial intelligence

Revolutionary improvement of life? Scourge of humanity that will kill jobs, decimate the environment, and impede creativity? Meteoric advancements in artificial intelligence don’t lend themselves to soft opinions. Cinema has been skeptical of AI since 1927’s Metropolis, when a robot took on the guise of a seductive woman to manipulate the working class into doing the bidding of their masters.

That fear and suspicion was echoed through successive decades of cinema that produced evil-doing robots and malevolent computers. Blade Runner and The Terminator were more nuanced takes that posed weighty questions of what defines a human being. Films like Her (2013) and, two years later, Ex Machina, would have been unfathomable in the 1960s, back when the HAL-9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey was refusing to open the pod bay doors for his flesh-and-blood colleagues.

These are the 10 best, according to me.

10. Westworld (1973, dir. Michael Crichton)

This science-fiction outing has evil robots terrorizing amusement parks—and it’s way worse than Disney World’s Hall of Presidents could ever imagine. Writer-director Michael Crichton seems unsure whether this is a comedy, satire, or thriller, but he makes the most of his concept. James Brolin and Richard Benjamin are city-slicker pals visiting Westworld, an adult-themed amusement park where guests indulge Old West fantasies. There are sheriffs, rogue gunslingers, and even ladies in bordellos, all astonishingly realistic robots to enhance the Western experience. But machines malfunction, and the denizens of Westworld, Medieval World, and Roman World turn deadly. Shootouts and swordfights are no longer vacation-friendly. Yul Brynner is menacing as an unstoppable gunfighter who would later inspire James Cameron’s Terminator. Westworld is cheesy, sure, but it’s a tasty cheese.

9. Companion (2025, dir. Drew Hancock)

The feature debut of Drew Hancock gets into familiar territory with its robot-as-companion premise, but the science-fiction-thriller-comedy hybrid brings a fresh take and some unexpected turns. Set in the near-future, Companion stars Sophie Thatcher as Iris and Jack Quaid as Josh, a young couple off for a weekend getaway with friends in the country. The relationship contains some troubling power dynamics that come to the fore, primarily that Iris is, as Josh later says tersely, “an emotional support robot that fucks.” To be sure, the premise proves to be a nifty vehicle to satirize bro culture. For Iris’ part, she is devastated by the revelation that her entire life experience, even her meet-cute with Josh, is the result of programming by a company called Empathix. Thatcher is terrific in a performance that glides seamlessly between comic and poignant. There are snappy twists I won’t spoil here; discover it cold if possible.

8. M3GAN (2022, dir. Gerard Johnstone)

This fiendishly dark horror-comedy has a lot to say about parenting and addiction to technology, but its cutting social observations are neatly packaged in the 4-foot frame of its eponymous character, a walking, talking doll as adept at dispensing life lessons as she is singing Taylor Swift. The Model 3 Generative Android—or M3GAN—is the latest AI companion for children. Its creator, star engineer Gemma (Allison Williams), ill-advisedly uses M3GAN as a buddy for her 9-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), after the deaths of the girl’s parents. Cady and M3GAN become inseparable, but this titanium-plated pal is protective to a fault. Can parenting be successfully outsourced to a machine with a very bad temper? M3GAN isn’t predisposed to passivity. When a neighbor’s dog bites Cady, the doll takes notice. And when a boy bullies Cady during a class field trip, let’s just say the doll is all ears. M3GAN suggests that corporate-manufactured childcare has its limitations, especially when the nanny in question can rip appendages from bodies.

7. The Stepford Wives (1975, dir. Bryan Forbes)

The cultural legacy of The Stepford Wives was so considerable, it all but overshadows what a damn fine slow-burner the movie is. Amid the social revolution of the 1970s, screenwriter William Goldman adapted Ira Levin’s bestseller that exploited male fear and paranoia in the wake of the women’s lib movement. Joanna and Walter Eberhart (Katherine Ross and Peter Masterson) leave New York for the suburban hamlet of Stepford, Connecticut. Walter finds an immediate social circle with the town’s exclusive men’s association, but it’s a different story for the intelligent, independence-minded Joanna. She doesn’t jibe with Stepford’s glamorous but vacant wives who are preoccupied with baking, housecleaning, and satisfying their husbands’ every sexual want. Joanna and another recent Stepford transplant, the sassy Bobbi (Paula Prentiss), investigate why the housewives act like obedient androids. Turns out that’s exactly what they are. Director Bryan Forbes incorporates suspense into the satire, a blend decidedly more successful than the broad comedy of a loud and lumbering 2004 remake.

6. Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970,  dir. Joseph Sargent)

Surprisingly forward-thinking and sadly underseen, Colossus: The Forbin Project was a box-office dud upon its initial release. That might have been partly a matter of timing, coming on the heels of science-fiction heavyweights like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes. But time has vindicated the film, as the fears of tech overreach stoked by director Joseph Sargent and screenwriter James Bridges resonate more than ever in the 21st century. Colossus is the supercomputer created by Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) to fully control the U.S. defense system, thereby eliminating human error from nuclear decision-making. “No human being can touch it,” Dr. Forbin boasts when Colossus is unveiled to the world. But Forbin and company barely have time to pat themselves on the back before Colossus has identified and joined forces with Guardian, the Soviet Union’s newly operational supercomputer. The computerized super friends, quickly surmising that they know what’s best for earthlings, resolve to help—read: control—humankind. Among the picture’s more charming traits is how its AI prescience is offset by a dated production. From the space-age font of the opening credits to Colossus’ chunky mainframes, blinking lights, and reels of tape, Colossus: The Forbin Project is a groovy blast.

5. Ex Machina (2015, dir. Alex Garland)

Ex Machina effectively skewers Silicon Valley’s tech-bro culture while playing on AI fears. The story begins with tech firm CEO Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) inviting a lucky employee for a weekend at his secluded estate. It’s a little like Willy Wonka, only instead of chocolate we have Ava (Alicia Vikander), an android built by Nathan. The weekend houseguest, a bright programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), is to assess whether Ava can think independently. But Caleb grows attached to the comely humanoid, who appears to reciprocate his feelings, while he grows wary of his host’s arrogance and cruel treatment of Ava. “You feel bad for Ava? Feel bad for yourself, man,” Nathan cautions. “One day, the AIs are gonna look back on us the same way we look back at fossils, skeletons and the plains of Africa—an upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.” Caleb knows something is not right with this setup, but who can he trust? Nathan? Ava? He certainly can’t trust Alex Garland, making his directorial debut here after a successful screenwriting career (28 Days Later, Sunshine), who keeps us perpetually off-balance in this brilliant and challenging work.

4. Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott)

In the far-off year of 2019, “blade runners” are tasked with tracking down and terminating renegade “replicants,” the pejorative term for androids who no longer serve humans. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a craggy, hard-boiled blade runner who is on the trail of outlaw replicants led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). The film’s four-month shoot was a notorious nightmare. Ford groused that director Ridley Scott seemed more engaged with the elaborate visual design than working with his star. Relations between the British director and his American crew were no better. Scott lamented to a reporter that they paled in comparison to UK crews, adding that British technicians quickly took directives with a cheery “Yes, guv!” After the interview was published, crew members printed T-shirts reading “YES, GUV—MY ASS!” And yet all this acrimony resulted in stunning science-fiction. Based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Blade Runner lays bare the pain of being almost human. “All those moments will be lost in time,” Roy says of his mortality in a largely improvised monologue. “Like tears in rain. Time to die.” The film asks if replicants, programmed with ersatz memories yet certain of their autonomy, are truly any less human than someone like Deckard. And speaking of the blade runner—is he human? The movie’s various editions (theatrical version, director’s cut, etc.) are ambiguous on that count.  
(See more in The 10 best films about memory, The 10 best film dystopias and The 15 best neo-noir films.)

3. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, dir. Steven Spielberg)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is the merging of two disparate sensibilities: Steven Spielberg’s warmth and humanity meet Stanley Kubrick’s icy misanthropy and fascination with technology. Spielberg took on the film after his friend Kubrick, who had worked on the project over two decades, died unexpectedly in 1999. Set in the year 2142, A.I. Artificial Intelligence posits a world of humans and robots, the latter designed to fulfill people’s needs and desires. Haley Joel Osment is David, an 11-year-old child robot who is gifted to Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor) while their son lies comatose from a mysterious illness. The recovery of the couple’s child, however, renders David expendable; the bot that has been programmed to love his mother is abandoned in the woods and left to fend for himself. At the story’s core is Pinocchio for the science-fiction set. David longs to become real and to be loved, presumably as deeply as if he was the product of God or DNA, rather than by his actual maker, a professor played by William Hurt. Osment is affecting in a role that Kubrick assumed would have to be a CGI creation. Knowing his painstaking and lengthy film shoots, the director joked that any child actor would have a beard by the time production ended.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

The humans in 2001: A Space Odyssey often come off as emotionally remote (cavemen excluded). It is no coincidence, then, that the most interesting entity in Stanley Kubrick’s opus is the HAL-9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), the artificial-intelligence system of the Discovery One spaceship headed to Jupiter. HAL, as it is better known, is stuck with the company of two of the most wooden astronauts in the universe, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, respectively). When they spot what appears to be a malfunction by HAL, the pair confer privately in a soundproof pod—or so they think—on how to dismantle it. But HAL discovers their plan and strikes first, killing Poole before attempting to do the same to Bowman. Christiane Kubrick, the director’s widow, told Space Odyssey author Michael Benson that her husband was adamant HAL’s eventual shutdown be depicted as a death. “It was very important to him that the computer suffers when he (Bowman) takes these bits of the brain,” she said, As HAL’s voice slows to a crawl, it warbles “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Build for Two)”—a song learned in its infancy—in an accelerated state of decay. HAL’s demise, incidentally, is the last stop before humankind’s next evolutionary metamorphosis.
(See also The 10 best mindfuck films and The 20 best needle drops in film.)

1. Her (2013, dir. Spike Jonze)

Spike Jonze’s Her is a smart, sad comedy-drama that also happened to be eerily prescient about rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. The idea of a lonely guy falling in love with his computer’s operating system didn’t seem that far-fetched in 2013. But few anticipated how quickly there would be such a blurring between human consciousness and AI that we now have a subculture of people in relationships with chatbots. Set in an unspecified near-future, Her stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a lonely divorcee whose emotional isolation is deepened by the irony that his job entails drafting personalized greeting cards for a company called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com. Theodore’s attachment to his OS (marvelously voiced by Scarlett Johansson), which has named itself Samantha, follows the familiar rhythms of a budding relationship. It is the give and take of two conscious entities learning about each other and letting nature (if that term still applies) take its course. Provocative ideas abound. What is the role of AI? What defines a healthy relationship? Is intimacy strengthened by technology—or weakened by it? What is love? And why does everyone in the future dress so funny?

Honorable mention: After Yang (2021, dir. Kogonada), Alphaville (1965, dir. Jean-Luc Godard), Demon Seed (1977, dir. Donald Cammell), Ghost in the Shell (1995, dir. Mamoru Oshii), The Matrix (1999, dir. Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski), Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang), Moon (2009, dir. Duncan Jones), The Terminator (1984, dir. James Cameron), WALL-E (2008, dir. Andrew Stanton), WarGames (1983, dir. John Badham)