You know you love them -- all those sci-fi human heroes and villains with a little bit extra where it counts. Get your minds out of the gutter, I’m talking about cyborgs! Part human, part machine, and ready for action! Oh, never mind…
Before we begin, it’s best to clarify our criteria for this list. Having co-written entire books about various film genres (Zombiemania, Cinema and Sorcery), I’ve learned that it’s extremely important to let your readers know why you’re selecting the films you’ve chosen to include; even if they wind up disagreeing -- and they will -- then at least you’ve demonstrated your thought process. And in this case, we need to know precisely how we’re defining a cyborg in order to justify these character choices. We’ll go straight to Merriam-Webster, which defines “cyborg” as:
“a bionic human; a person whose body contains mechanical or electrical devices and whose abilities are greater than the abilities of normal humans.”
Works for me! Let’s begin, and in no particular order…
Show: The Six Million Dollar Man
Actor: Lee Majors
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 3 out of 5
I can’t pretend not to be really biased here, since Steve’s exploits were some of my earliest exposure to sci-fi action storytelling. Adapted from the Martin Caidin novel Cyborg and following some early stories that skewed much darker, the Six Million Dollar Man television series gave us a super-cool bionically-enhanced secret agent that leaped and punched and squinted his way through classic encounters with gangsters, an alien robot Bigfoot, a malevolent Russian Venus probe, Fembots, and much more. The Bionic dynasty expanded to include The Bionic Woman and continued into several reunion TV-movies, as well as comic and TV reboots. But the original Steve is still better… stronger… faster!
Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road
Actor: Charlize Theron
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 2 out of 5
She may not seem like a cyborg at first, but she qualifies with her mechanical arm -- just how did she lose her real arm anyway -- and her death-defying spirit! She’s also risen to the level of genre icon after just one film appearance to date, and with Theron’s take-no-prisoners performance seared into fans’ minds, Furiosa is a furiously popular addition to the annals of augmented adventuring humans.
Movie: Jason X
Actor: Kane Hodder
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 4 out of 5
No one making Friday the 13th movies ever had much illusion about what they were contributing to our collective culture, but by the time the tenth installment of the Voorhees slashfest rolled around, it was clear that tongue was planted firmly in cheek -- and the tongue was cybernetically enhanced (that was bad, but I tried). Having been frozen in the present, the hockey-mask wearing zombie killer (he was one ever since the sixth film) Jason Voorhees awakens on a spaceship where he’s eventually rebuilt by medical nanotechnology into a black-and-chrome terror that will surely go on to slaughter plenty of teens on Earth Two.
Movies: The Star Wars Saga
Actors: David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Sebastian Shaw, Hayden… oh, go look it up
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 5 out of 5
Undeniably one of the most important and iconic cyborgs in cinema history, the villainous Vader is burned into the collective psyche with a shining black silhouette that echoes World War II shapes and captures a cold and calculating evil like nothing else we’ve ever seen before. Anakin Skywalker is trapped forever inside a cybernetic suit that turns this former Jedi into a Sith force to be reckoned with… but somewhere deep inside, his humanity may hold the key to his salvation. Eh, you know all this already, you’ve seen these movies a million times!
Movies: The Robocop Franchise
Actors: Peter Weller, Robert John Burke, Richard Eden, Page Fletcher, Joel Kinnaman, Dan Hennessey, David Sobolov
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 5 out of 5
Police office Alex Murphy patrols a dystopian Detroit and pays the ultimate price for his dedication to justice, but that’s just the beginning of the story when he’s rebuilt and revived as the greatest law enforcement hero the world has ever known! After some very cogent social commentary in the first film, the series devolved into action over meaning, but Murphy’s saga became hugely popular all the same. The franchise spawned not only two movie sequels, a live-action TV series, and a feature film remake, but a TV miniseries and two animated shows! Clearly, plenty of people bought that for much more than a dollar!
Show: Star Trek: Voyager
Actor: Jeri Ryan
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 3 out of 5
Her sprayed-on costume and late arrival to the show may have irked some Voyager fans and sparked controversy, but former Borg drone Seven of Nine (Annika Hansen in her former human life) quickly became a beloved mainstay of the series and the Star Trek franchise in general, especially as she played such a huge role in ongoing tussles with the Borg leading up to the show’s finale. Her rediscovery of her humanity also put her in a similar position to “commentary characters” like Spock and Data before her.
Movies: Captain America Films
Actor: Sebastian Stan
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 1 out of 5
Formerly Bucky Barnes, Steve Roger’s closest buddy in World War II, the Winter Soldier suffered over the years as an enhanced but brainwashed agent for the Russians, and even had a direct hand in the death of Tony Stark’s parents! But look at the guy -- despite his metal arm and deadly fighting skills, he has that puppy dog look and teary eyes, not to mention very well-conditioned bouncy, floppy hair. Maybe his follicles are also cybernetically augmented? Nah, probably not.
Movie: Death Race 2000
Actor: David Carradine
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 2 out of 5
This guy has seen better days, but thanks to his near-fatal experiences as a hell-bent race car driver in the dystopian world of Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000, “Frankenstein” has been rebuilt and patched up into something that still vaguely resembles the human being he once was. There’s a bit of a Phantom of the Opera vibe in his choice of face mask, but while he seems foreboding, Frank is alright as he tries to strike a blow against the regime while dodging death from rival drivers like Machine-Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone!).
Movie: Spider-Man 2
Actor: Alfred Molina
Cyborg Circuitry Rating: 4 out of 5
It took me a minute to think about this one, but yes, when Otto Octavius is linked with his arms, he qualifies as a cyborg even if those mechanical monstrosities tend to have minds of their own… well, one mind anyway. The best villain in the Sony Spider-Man series, Alfred Molina’s performance in particular marks this as one of the more sympathetic and humanized cyborgs we’ve ever seen. Extra points for director Sam Raimi’s nod to his own Evil Dead series with the point-of-view shots in the “arms awaken” sequence.
This isn’t the end of the conversation, of course. Head on down to the comments and let us know if you think we missed any important cyborgs of film and TV past and present!
Find Arnold T. Blumberg on Twitter at @DoctoroftheDead.
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