Goodbye, Evil Robot; Hello, Kind Android

May 10, 2004 | Source: New York Times

In the coming months, several movies will feature humanoid mechanisms: androids in “I, Robot”; simulacra of suburban homemakers in “The Stepford Wives”; an army of giant robots in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”; and Dr. Frankenstein’s monster revived in “Van Helsing.”

But artificial entities no longer trouble us. After years of intensive media therapy, our Frankenstein complex seems to have been resolved. A fairly significant segment of the audience has come to identify with machines like the Terminator: programmed for specific tasks, easily replaceable and hard-wired with the simple wisdom of servitude — “never stop fighting.”