20 movies about people battling against technology

Obviously, the entirety of the Terminator franchise is about a battle with technology. The second film is the one considered iconic. It’s also the one where we see a further glimpse of the future of what happens when Skynet goes online, and robots turn against humanity. This time, humans also have a Terminator on their side.

One of the earliest films of this sort is Fritz Lang’s canonical silent film Metropolis. For years, large swaths of it were missing or of poor quality. Then, it got revamped, and more people could see one of the first, maybe the first, full-length sci-fi film. Also, the look of the evil robot in this movie inspired the look of C-3P0.

HAL 9000 is just a red light and a voice. And yet, it is a truly menacing, unnerving character. Unfortunately for astronauts on the Discovery One, HAL turns on them. Those pod bay doors? Yeah, they aren’t getting opened. Stanley Kubrick created so much tension with so little action.

WarGames is a bit cheesy but also a fun throwback 1980s film. Matthew Broderick stars as a kid who mistakes an American military program for a computer game, and in the process, almost initiates World War III. The only way to win is not to play.

A rollicking animated feature of recent vintage, the battle against tech is right there in the title. The Mitchell family faces off with machines led by a Siri-esque artificial intelligence. It’s a little over the top sometimes, perhaps stuffing too much into the movie, but it’s a fun watch regardless.

When Tony Stark created his Iron Man suit, it was a real coup for humanity. His role in creating Ultron, though, didn't go as well. Ultron is another example of a robot with artificial intelligence who decides humanity can’t survive for the planet's sake, but the Avengers disagree. While this film is considered the least of the Avengers movies, it is the one where they face off with tech.

Tomorrowland was a big swing for Disney, but it didn’t hit like Pirates of the Caribbean . The movie has an impressive collection of people who worked on it. Brad Bird directed and co-wrote the movie with Damon Lindelof. George Clooney co-stars. However, the movie barely made back its bloated budget of around $190 million at the box office, before considering all the marketing.

What if technology failed, but it was maybe not that bad of a thing? The titular Ron is a defective robot from the company Bubble, but Barney doesn’t mind. Sure, Ron will attack people occasionally, but is he so bad? Some of the actions of Bubble, on the other hand, are a little dicier.

One of the quintessential “humans vs. technology movies.” Also, one of the quintessential sci-fi movies full stop. You likely know the story. Machines have taken over the planet and placed humans in a fake world. Some, like Morpheus and Neo, are rebelling against these machines. Keanu Reeves revitalized his career. Bullet time became a thing. Movies changed.

What if artificial intelligence was indistinguishable from humans? That’s the crux of Ex Machina , a gripping, disconcerting drama. A tech genius, played memorably by Oscar Isaac, has created an A.I., played by Alicia Vikander. He brings in one of his employees to effectively test whether she can pass for human. It’s unnerving, fascinating, and has several great performances.

Isaac Asimov created the three rules of robotics, and they are at the center of I, Robot . Robots aren’t supposed to be able to hurt humans…but did one kill a human? That’s what Will Smith needs to figure out. Not his best sci-fi film, but maybe his best not involving aliens.

The first hit of 2023, M3GAN is a horror film, but it is a self-aware one with some of its humor. An inventor creates a lifelike doll, the titular M3GAN, who is designed to be there for her human companion. Even if that involves, you know, violence. And dancing.

In the original Child’s Play, a murderer’s soul ends up in a doll. That’s an old-school horror premise. In the 2019 reboot, Chucky is now a high-tech doll who can connect to the internet and absorb information in a way that makes him more dangerous. Also, the doll becomes evil, basically like the Krusty doll in that one "Treehouse of Horror" episode, which is kind of amazing.

While Tron looks very dated now, it looks dated in a fun way. The film stars Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer who ends up inside his own creation. A delayed sequel fell flat, but the original Tron is a cult classic.

Speaking of cult classics, time has been kind to Blade Runner , raising it to the level of being considered one of the most acclaimed sci-fi films ever. Harrison Ford, one of the biggest movie stars of all time, plays a man (or is he?) whose job is to track down rogue replicants who don’t exactly intend to go down without a fight. Its dystopian vision has proven highly influential.

The Net is the quintessential “The internet is scary!” movie. That is owed to the fact it arrived before most people really understood the internet and the hyperbolic nature of the Sandra Bullock feature. It’s basically about people using the internet and computers to do all sorts of crazy things, and the internet is presented as being something of a Pandora’s box. But not in the “hate speech” way it really turned out to be. More the “massive global conspiracy” way.

What if Her was about an unstable A.I. in a phone? And it was more of a wacky comedy? And also wasn’t that good? It's the kind of movie that stars Adam DeVine, essentially. Conceptually, this kind of movie was inevitable. The execution just didn’t quite work.

In 2004, Jamie Foxx starred in Collateral and Ray, winning the Oscar for the latter. The following year, he starred in Stealth, a disastrous movie about an automated plane. Foxx’s presence made it an infamous flop, and the movie made only $79.3 million off of a budget of $135 million.

In the future, at least the future of Minority Report , crimes are stopped before they happen. However, it’s not a perfect system, and suddenly, Tom Cruise’s character is being accused of the pre-crime of murder, and he has to figure out what occurred in the Steven Spielberg movie.

Time travel is a sci-fi staple, and it is a matter of technology, whether it is a DeLorean or the time travel of Rian Johnson’s  Looper. While things don’t go perfectly in Back to the Future or its sequels, in Looper, things are even bleaker. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a hitman who kills people sent back from the future…until he is tasked with killing his future self one day. Unfortunately for him, his future self has other plans.