Classic Robot/A.I Movies: Best to worst
by J_Frank_Parnell | created - 24 Feb 2023 | updated - 1 month ago | PublicAndroids, Cyborgs, Synthetics, Skin-Jobs, Automata, A.I, Machine Learning, Artificial Intellegence, Cybernetic Organism, Bots, Mechanical Man, Machine-Man, Bionic Man
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1. The Terminator (1984)
R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield
Votes: 923,949 | Gross: $38.40M
2. Metropolis (1927)
Not Rated | 153 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Director: Fritz Lang | Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Votes: 185,479 | Gross: $1.24M
3. Blade Runner (1982)
R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Votes: 822,909 | Gross: $32.87M
4. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
TV-MA | 83 min | Animation, Action, Crime
A cyborg policewoman and her partner hunt a mysterious and powerful hacker called the Puppet Master.
Directors: Mizuho Nishikubo, Mamoru Oshii | Stars: Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Akio Ôtsuka, Kôichi Yamadera
Votes: 156,837 | Gross: $0.52M
5. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
Votes: 1,173,724 | Gross: $204.84M
6. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
G | 92 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
An alien lands in Washington, D.C. and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
Votes: 85,747
7. WALL·E (2008)
G | 98 min | Animation, Adventure, Family
In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.
Director: Andrew Stanton | Stars: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard
Votes: 1,200,143 | Gross: $223.81M
8. The Iron Giant (1999)
PG | 86 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
A young boy befriends a giant robot from outer space that a paranoid government agent wants to destroy.
Director: Brad Bird | Stars: Eli Marienthal, Harry Connick Jr., Jennifer Aniston, Vin Diesel
Votes: 227,354 | Gross: $23.16M
9. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
PG-13 | 146 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become "real" so that he can regain the love of his human mother.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Sam Robards
Votes: 322,965 | Gross: $78.62M
10. RoboCop (1987)
R | 102 min | Action, Crime, Sci-Fi
In a dystopic and crime-ridden Detroit, a terminally wounded cop returns to the force as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories.
Director: Paul Verhoeven | Stars: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox
Votes: 283,018 | Gross: $53.42M
11. Alien (1979)
R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright
Votes: 950,255 | Gross: $78.90M
12. Hugo (2011)
PG | 126 min | Adventure, Drama, Family
In 1931 Paris, an orphan living in the walls of a train station gets wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Lee, Ben Kingsley
Votes: 336,795 | Gross: $73.86M
13. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
PG-13 | 105 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
The solitary life of an artificial man - who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands - is upended when he is taken in by a suburban family.
Director: Tim Burton | Stars: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall
Votes: 523,693 | Gross: $56.36M
14. Patlabor: The Movie (1989)
Unrated | 100 min | Animation, Action, Crime
The screwball cops of Special Vehicles Section 2 Division 2 must investigate and stop a spree of rampaging construction robots.
Directors: Mamoru Oshii, Kôji Sawai | Stars: Toshio Furukawa, David Jarvis, Doug Erholtz, Mîna Tominaga
Votes: 5,616
15. Interstellar (2014)
PG-13 | 169 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
When Earth becomes uninhabitable in the future, a farmer and ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, is tasked to pilot a spacecraft, along with a team of researchers, to find a new planet for humans.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy
Votes: 2,098,909 | Gross: $188.02M
16. Ex Machina (2014)
R | 108 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.
Director: Alex Garland | Stars: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno
Votes: 589,059 | Gross: $25.44M
17. Short Circuit (1986)
PG | 98 min | Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi
Number 5 of a group of experimental robots in a lab is electrocuted, suddenly becomes intelligent, and escapes.
Director: John Badham | Stars: Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton
Votes: 66,317 | Gross: $40.70M
18. Moon (2009)
R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw
Votes: 376,658 | Gross: $5.01M
19. Giant Robo the Animation: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1992–1998)
TV-PG | 339 min | Animation, Action, Comedy
A super-hero organization battles a super-villain organization that is bent on destroying the world by using a recently discovered perfect source of energy named the Shizuma Drive, which powers the entire planet.
Stars: Kappei Yamaguchi, Michelle Newman, Eva Kaminsky, Sumi Shimamoto
Votes: 487
(not a movie- short anime series)
20. Frankenstein (1931)
Passed | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Dr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, John Boles
Votes: 79,692
Not technically a "robot movie"- But still a direct ancestor to the whole genre.
21. Mobile Suit Gundam I (1981)
TV-PG | 137 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
A teenage boy must fight in an interplanetary war as the only available pilot to a revolutionary new giant battle robot.
Directors: Ryôji Fujiwara, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Eikichi Kojika, Shin'ya Sadamitsu | Stars: Tôru Furuya, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Shôzô Îzuka, Toshio Furukawa
Votes: 2,236
22. Westworld (1973)
PG | 88 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.
Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold
Votes: 62,952 | Gross: $16.06M
23. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
PG | 121 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.
Director: George Lucas | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness
Votes: 1,449,290 | Gross: $322.74M
24. The Matrix (1999)
R | 136 min | Action, Sci-Fi
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 2,052,516 | Gross: $171.48M
25. The Stepford Wives (1975)
PG | 115 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Joanna Eberhart has come to the quaint little town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family, but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.
Director: Bryan Forbes | Stars: Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Nanette Newman
Votes: 19,568 | Gross: $8.72M
26. I, Robot (2004)
PG-13 | 115 min | Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi
In 2035, a technophobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.
Director: Alex Proyas | Stars: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, Alan Tudyk
Votes: 575,229 | Gross: $144.80M
27. Pacific Rim (2013)
PG-13 | 131 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
As a war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot and a trainee are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world from the apocalypse.
Director: Guillermo del Toro | Stars: Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day
Votes: 530,719 | Gross: $101.80M
28. Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
PG-13 | 98 min | Animation, Action, Drama
The fate of the world is threatened by seemingly monstrous entities known as Angels. NERV is an organization set up to counter this threat and it is up to young pilots to protect Earth but exactly what are the real motives behind NERV?
Directors: Hiroshi Haraguchi, Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno, Kôbun Shizuno | Stars: Megumi Ogata, Megumi Hayashibara, Kotono Mitsuishi, Yuriko Yamaguchi
Votes: 27,628 | Gross: $0.11M
29. Upgrade (2018)
R | 100 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Set in the near-future, technology controls nearly all aspects of life. But when the world of Grey, a self-labeled technophobe, is turned upside down, his only hope for revenge is an experimental computer chip implant.
Director: Leigh Whannell | Stars: Logan Marshall-Green, Melanie Vallejo, Steve Danielsen, Abby Craden
Votes: 206,745 | Gross: $11.98M
30. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
PG-13 | 122 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A deactivated cyborg's revived, but can't remember anything of her past and goes on a quest to find out who she is.
Director: Robert Rodriguez | Stars: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali
Votes: 293,642 | Gross: $85.71M
31. Silent Running (1972)
G | 89 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's botany, kept in a greenhouse aboard a spacecraft.
Director: Douglas Trumbull | Stars: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint
Votes: 31,460 | Gross: $0.69M
32. Astro Boy (1980–2004)
TV-G | 24 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
Originally intended to be kept a secret, the Pinocchio-like character becomes a publicly renowned superhero -- complete with devices like laser-firing fingers, uncanny hearing, and ... See full summary »
Stars: Richard Ganoung, Gregory North, Del Lewis, Nicholas Podbrey
Votes: 1,003
(not a movie- animated tv series)
33. Automata (I) (2014)
R | 109 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Human race is at edge of the end. Robot race is at edge of the beginning.
Director: Gabe Ibáñez | Stars: Antonio Banderas, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Dylan McDermott, Melanie Griffith
Votes: 59,389
34. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
PG | 109 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
Director: Garth Jennings | Stars: Martin Freeman, Yasiin Bey, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel
Votes: 208,358 | Gross: $51.09M
35. The Creator (2023)
PG-13 | 133 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
Against the backdrop of a war between humans and robots with artificial intelligence, a former soldier finds the secret weapon, a robot in the form of a young child.
Director: Gareth Edwards | Stars: John David Washington, Madeleine Yuna Voyles, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney
Votes: 159,691
36. Spaceballs (1987)
PG | 96 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
A star-pilot for hire and his trusty sidekick must come to the rescue of a princess and save Planet Druidia from the clutches of the evil Spaceballs.
Director: Mel Brooks | Stars: Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman
Votes: 206,497 | Gross: $38.12M
37. Sleeper (1973)
PG | 89 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi
A nerdish store owner is revived out of cryostasis into a future world to fight an oppressive government.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, John Beck, Mary Gregory
Votes: 44,815 | Gross: $2.91M
38. Big Hero 6 (2014)
PG | 102 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
A special bond develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who together team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.
Directors: Don Hall, Chris Williams | Stars: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Jamie Chung, T.J. Miller
Votes: 501,868 | Gross: $222.53M
39. The Machine (I) (2013)
R | 91 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
In efforts to construct perfect android killing machines in a war against China, UK scientists exceed their goal and create a sentient robot.
Director: Caradog W. James | Stars: Toby Stephens, Caity Lotz, Denis Lawson, Sam Hazeldine
Votes: 32,061
40. Bicentennial Man (1999)
PG | 132 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
An android endeavors to become human as he gradually acquires emotions.
Director: Chris Columbus | Stars: Robin Williams, Embeth Davidtz, Sam Neill, Oliver Platt
Votes: 124,660 | Gross: $58.22M
41. Metropolis (2001)
PG-13 | 108 min | Animation, Adventure, Drama
Kenichi and his uncle Shunsaku Ban must find the mystery behind robot girl Tima.
Director: Rintarô | Stars: Toshio Furukawa, Scott Weinger, Yuka Imoto, Kei Kobayashi
Votes: 22,613 | Gross: $0.64M
42. Forbidden Planet (1956)
G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
Votes: 53,181 | Gross: $3.00M
43. I Am Mother (2019)
TV-14 | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
In the wake of humanity's extinction, a teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate the earth. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news.
Director: Grant Sputore | Stars: Luke Hawker, Rose Byrne, Maddie Lenton, Hazel Sandery
Votes: 99,317
44. Demon Seed (1977)
Approved | 94 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A scientist creates Proteus--an organic super computer with artificial intelligence which becomes obsessed with human beings, and in particular the creator's wife.
Director: Donald Cammell | Stars: Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerrit Graham, Berry Kroeger
Votes: 10,002
45. Transformers (2007)
PG-13 | 144 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
An ancient struggle between two Cybertronian races, the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, comes to Earth, with a clue to the ultimate power held by a teenager.
Director: Michael Bay | Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson
Votes: 674,686 | Gross: $319.25M
46. Real Steel (2011)
PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
In the near future, robot boxing is a top sport. A struggling ex-boxer feels he's found a champion in a discarded robot.
Director: Shawn Levy | Stars: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo, Anthony Mackie
Votes: 355,514 | Gross: $85.47M
47. The Black Hole (1979)
PG | 98 min | Action, Sci-Fi
A research vessel finds a missing ship, commanded by a mysterious scientist, on the edge of a black hole.
Director: Gary Nelson | Stars: Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms
Votes: 27,976
48. Chappie (2015)
R | 120 min | Action, Crime, Drama
In the near future, crime is patrolled by a mechanized police force. When one police droid, Chappie, is stolen and given new programming, he becomes the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself.
Director: Neill Blomkamp | Stars: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver
Votes: 269,586 | Gross: $31.57M
49. D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)
PG | 99 min | Family, Sci-Fi
A seemingly normal young boy is found abandoned on a mountain road and adopted by a family who are increasingly amazed by his abilities before discovering the secret behind his real identity.
Director: Simon Wincer | Stars: Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Kathryn Walker, Colleen Camp
Votes: 14,088 | Gross: $7.84M
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