Tag Archives: android

Alien (1979) | Ridley Scott

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The story begins in the year 2122, onboard the commercial towing vessel, the Nostromo. Its mostly blue-collar crew, five men and two women, are awakened prematurely while still in deep space from their cryogenic slumber en route back to Earth.  The reason for their early disturbance has to do with the company’s policy to investigate potential alien life forms, so when what appears to be an SOS signal is being transmitted from a moon in their relative vicinity, their overriding primary mission is changed to checking out the situation.  Upon landing on the desolate planet, the scientists discover what appears to be eggs containing another form of life, one of which hatches and latches itself to one of the crew.  Unable to remove the creature, it is brought back on board the Nostromo, where it grows at a rapid pace to become one of the deadliest killing machines humankind has ever faced. Alien would make a star out of Sigourney Weaver, and Ridley Scott one f the most sought-after directors in Hollywood.

Blade Runner (1982) | Ridley Scott

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The date is November 2019. The city is Los Angeles. Earth has undergone massive population explosions in the urban areas, the city landscape is a mish-mash of every culture, and almost everywhere you go there are advertisements. The most prominent of these advertisements is floating space-barge advertising the Off-World colonies, offering excitement and adventure. It appears there’s much excitement to be true, when six replicants (android-like creations that resemble humans in nearly every possible way, with the exception of enhanced agility and strength, constructed to work as slaves in off-world colonies) commit mutiny and escape to Earth, where they have been outlawed under penalty of death, to find a way to increase their four year lifespan, causing a Blade Runner named Deckard (Harrison Ford), a special LAPD task force whose job is to kill any and all replicants, to come out of retirement. This visionary sci-fi masterwork is directed by Ridley Scott.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) | James Cameron

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Linda Hamilton returns as buffed out Sarah Connor, the mother of humanity’s future savior, now holed up in a mental institution for her claims that the world is going to end in an apocalyptic nuclear war instigated by a sentient advanced computer system.  That savior, John (Edward Furlong), is a rebellious teen living in foster care who soon learns his mother isn’t a crackpot after all after being chased by a cop who is actually a T-1000 model Terminator – a shape-shifting, liquid metallic artificial entity (Robert Patrick) – sent from the future to kill him.  John’s own savior is a T-800 cybernetic organism (Arnold Schwarzenegger) identical to the one sent to kill Sarah years before, only this time, his future self reprogrammed one of them to send back and protect the boy and mother.  However, the older model is barely a match for the nearly indestructible, futuristic killing machine, and a chase ensues that sees Sarah and company trying to stay alive while destroying the path to humanity’s downfall, the advancements learned through the finding of the chip and hand remnant from the previous T-800 machine. James Cameron co-writes and directs this big-budget smash.

The Terminator (1984) | James Cameron

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The simple premise: A killer android (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back to 1984 to assassinate the mother (Linda Hamilton) of a resistance leader of the future. A soldier of that resistance (Michael Biehn) is also sent back to protect her from harm, but the killer android is virtually unstoppable in its mission. This classic science fiction/action/horror/thriller represents the best in all of those genres that the 1980s has to offer.  James Cameron put his name on the map with this action masterpiece.