Film / Autómata

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Autómata is a 2014 Science Fiction film directed by Gabe Ibáñez, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Igor Legaretta Gomez and Javier Sanchez Donate. The cast includes Antonio Banderas, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Melanie Griffith, Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster, and Tim McInnerny.

The film follows humanity after increasing solar activity leaves only 21 million people alive on Earth by 2044. With radiation still rising, developments in quantum computers have led to the creation of robots called Automaton Pilgrims to work building massive walls around the few surviving cities and mechanical "clouds" to shield against radiation. Jacq Vaucan (Banderas) is an insurance investigator working for ROC, the sole company that constructs and operates the pilgrims. Vaucan leads a simple life with his wife Rachel (Sørensen), but fears raising their soon-to-be-born daughter in the increasingly desolate city they live in. Things take a turn for the strange when Jacq is called in to investigate the destruction of a robot that was reportedly altering itself... something robots supposedly can't do. As Jacq digs ever-deeper, he learns disturbing new facts and uncovers evidence of a bizarre conspiracy all around him, all the while facing questions about the nature of sentience itself.

This film provides examples of:

• Advert-Overloaded Future: Downplayed as the inhabitants of the city don't have the resources for mass consumerism, but there are giant holograms advertising sex services within view of the window of the apartment where Rachel hopes to raise her child.
• After the End: The world is already half empty, the other half will just take a little longer to empty out.
• Benevolent Architecture: Cleo gets the carload of assassins chasing them to crash into a line of stanchions in the desert, though she also crashes her own car in the process.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: The Clocksmith jumps to its death in the canyon rather than wait to be shot by Conway's men.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jacq, Rachel, and their child escape with their lives while Cleo and the bug-robot leave to help robotic civilization form, but only after a significant portion of the cast is dead, including Robert and the Clocksmith. On a larger scale, Mankind will probably die out relatively soon—the returning oceans give them a slight chance—but will leave behind their knowledge and creations to the robots, who will carry on civilization.
• Blood Knight: Whereas most of the villains are well-meaning enough, Conway seems to just really get off on violence and dominating things, human or robot.
• Bizarre Alien Psychology: A lot of attention is called to the strange ways robots think. Many robots don't understand how humans can be deliberately harmed by other humans, or fear death when it's a natural part of their lifespan. Jacq expresses disgust at the sight of two robots casually scavenging parts off their friend who was just shot in the head. The ROC executive mentions that the first AI was shut down expressly because it was starting to evolve to a point where humans could no longer comprehend what it was saying or doing.
• Black Box: The biokernel containing the robots fundamental AI and the two protocols is believed to be completely unknowable and uncrackable, except possibly by the person who built them. Turns out that the biokernel was developed by an AI without the protocols, that was becoming more and more intelligent—a self-contained singularity. Nobody knows how the biokernel actually works.
• Broken Faceplate: Robots have mask-like faces over their true robotic “skulls” and we often see them get their faceplate cracked.
• City with No Name: The city Jacq lives in is only referred to as "The City". The mix of accents among the main characters, and Rachel being asked by a hospital orderly if she understands his language, imply that it's populated by refugees of the cataclysm.
• Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: Conway muses that one day the encroaching desert will cover the City and there will be nothing alive but "millions of cockroaches". We do see ants, worms and Circling Vultures living in the desert though, implying that organic life will continue in some form. However the next generation of robot built by the evolved androids has a multilegged cockroach-like appearance, presumably because it's more practical for living outside the City than their bipedal form.
• Damsel out of Distress: Rachel snatches a knife off the belt of the man trying to use her as a Human Shield and stabs him.
• Depopulation Bomb: Roughly 99.7% of humanity is dead.
• Desaturation: Most scenes are desaturated and washed out, with an overall grey/blue/white colour scheme.
• Disney Villain Death: Conway is knocked off a ledge by the bug-like robot the Clocksmith built.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Jacq is an insurance investigator so doesn't carry a gun for his work, in contrast to the various policeman, assassins or ROC security operatives he encounters. He only grabs a gun when things get really serious.
• Dramatic Unmask: As the robots gain self-awareness, some of them remove the faceplates their creators designed so humans will feel more comfortable interacting with them. At the end of the movie, Cleo discards her human faceplate as superfluous when she goes into the irradiated zone where no humans can go.
• Driven to Suicide: Jacq gets motivated to investigate further after he witnesses a robot intentionally knock over a can of flammable liquid and immolate itself with its welding torch (something which should be impossible by its protocols). All because he asked it what it was carrying.
• Due to the Dead: When they come across Wallace lying dead next to the robot he destroyed, Robert says they should bury him. Conway callously tosses him a spade, and jokes that he should bury the robot as well because it probably had a soul by the time it 'died'. While doing so, Robert notices that Wallace has a revolver in an ankle holster and surreptitiously removes it.
• Dying Race: It’s clear that humanity is on its last legs. Leaving the robots to carry on civilization.
• Failure Montage: A photo montage at the start of the movie shows the Pilgrims being introduced as the saviors of Humanity with great fanfare and public adulation. When the Pilgrims are unable to stop the desertification, there's a corresponding backlash.
• Flare Gun: Jacq finds a flare pistol with two cartridges among the items the items that Cleo salvaged from the car crash. He later uses a flare to summon Wallace to his position, then when realising his savior is likely to kill him as well he shoots Wallace with the last flare, causing him to die screaming in agony.
• Fem Bot: Cleo, the awkwardly designed Sex Bot.
• Flashback: Throughout the film, Jacq has flashbacks to a moment in his childhood where he helped a baby sea turtle get into the ocean. This mirrors the main plot and what humanity is unwittingly doing for robots.
• Forbidden Zone:
  • Outside the city is a slum whose residents are shot on sight for attempting to enter or just for getting too close to the Wall. Outside it gets even worse with radiation and unchecked desertification.
  • The androids want to take refuge from humanity in an area subjected to nuclear bombing that will remain uninhabitable to organic life for millions of years.
• Future Slang: A "clocksmith" is someone who makes illegal modifications to robots.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Jacq assumes that the Clocksmith is the original unfettered AI that developed the protocols, but The Clocksmith denies this, says its sentience "just happened", comparing it to the evolution of human sentience. It's suggested that this is the inevitable outcome for any Unit, which is why the Protocols were created.
• I Have Your Wife: Thinking that Jacq has turned traitor, Conway's superiors let him take Rachel and her newborn into the irradiated desert as hostages.
• Just a Machine: Said repeatedly, sometimes word for word.
• Living Is More than Surviving:
  • Rachel is pregnant against the wishes of Jacq, who fears it's pointless to raise a child in a doomed world.
  • The Clocksmith cannot understand why Jacq is afraid of dying, as death is a normal part of human life, just as the impending extinction of humanity is normal. "No lifeform can inhabit the planet eternally." It points out that the androids were conceived of and built by humans, so humanity will continue to exist through the robots that they created.
• Maternity Crisis: Rachel's water breaks when her husband is far outside the City and unable to return. Then the hospital orderly makes her wait in the car while he checks her insurance.
• Mechanical Evolution: The Second Protocol expressly forbids this, partly to prop up ROC's bottom line (as exclusive supplier of robot maintenance) but also because ROC's upper management are genuinely afraid of what could happen. In the latter part of the movie, Jacq witnesses the androids building an insect/dog-like robot that's better able to survive in the desert.
• Mega City: Smaller than unusual but looks pretty much the same as the setting of Blade Runner.
• MegaCorp: ROC, who build the Pilgrims and employ the protagonist.
• Morality Chip: Robots have two protocols that govern their behavior: a restriction against hurting humans, and an inability to repair or augment themselves.
• Non-Action Guy: Jacq is an insurance investigator, not a fighter. However displays surprising badassery once his family is threatened.
• Ocean Awe: Jacq dreams of the ocean that he saw as a boy, and wants to move to a City there despite skepticism from Robert that the ocean even exists any more. At the end of the movie as they drive there, Rachel says she can see the ocean in the distance.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: Averted; Jacq brings home a bottle of wine to share with his pregnant wife.
• Papa Wolf: When a dying Robert informs Jacq that they have his wife and child hostage, he races back to take on Conway.
• Passing the Torch: On large scale, humanity is unknowingly doing this to the robots.
• Purely Aesthetic Era: Due to ever increasing solar storm activity civilization is regressing. The general culture and style resembles a strange mix of The Future and The Roaring '20s.
• Rabid Cop: Wallace gets drunk and high on the job, quickly resorts to violence—including threatening Jacq's life when he refuses to sell the nuclear battery and split the proceeds with him, and seems to have a chronic phobia of robots.
• Rain of Something Unusual: Mildly acidic rain falls over the City. A hooded raincoat is enough to serve as protection, but a Pilgrim android still warns Jacq when he goes walking around in the rain after Rachel kicks him out of their apartment after an argument.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Robert Bold; who deals with Jacq in good faith, promises him a good transfer for his work and is reluctant to fall in with his bosses more extreme policies. Though this is likely because Jacq is also his brother-in-law.
• Robots Are Just Better: When Jacq asks Duprè what the big deal about the second protocol is, she replies thus:
  Dr. Duprè: You're here today trafficking in nuclear goods because a long time ago a monkey decided to come down from a tree. Transitioning from the brain of an ape to your incredible intellectual prowess took us about seven million years. It's been a very long road. A unit, however, without the second protocol could travel that same road in just a few weeks. Because your brilliant brain has its limitations. Physical limitations. Biological limitations. However, this tin head? The only limitations that she has is the second protocol. The second protocol exists because we don't know what can be beyond the second protocol. If it were eliminated, who knows how far that vacuum could go.
• Robots Think Faster:
  • In his introductory scene, Jacq is investigating an owner who alleges that his Pilgrim killed his pet dog. Jacq tests the first protocol is still operating by dropping a kitchen knife point first onto his own hand, only for the Pilgrim to catch it in midair.
  • Once the altered biokernal is installed, Cleo is able to repair her damaged limb in only one hour and ten minutes, something Dr. Duprè notes took her years of study to learn. When Duprè is murdered, Jacq flees out the back of the building and jumps into a passing car only to find Cleo driving it, implying that she reacted to the murder quicker than he did.
• Robot Names: While several robots appear in the film, most possess a simple alphanumeric designation except for Cleo, who works as a Sex Bot.
• Robotic Reveal: When Jacq is confronted by a cloaked figure who is the clocksmith behind the altered robots. The cloak is thrown off to reveal The Clocksmith as another robot who managed to move beyond its protocols.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: In a final act of defiance the Clocksmith shows how far he's grown beyond his programming by refusing to follow Conway's orders to get on his knees. Shortly after, Conway is killed by the bug-like robot the Clocksmith created, which was built without any protocols.
• Sex Bot: Cleo was built as one, but it's clear that her creator isn't very good at constructing; she's very patchwork and haphazard looking, with a stiff, plastic-looking face. Only someone with a serious robot fetish could get turned on by it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: When Robert realises that Conway has brought Rachel and her daughter as bait for Jacq, he tries to force Conway to return him to the City at gunpoint, only to get shot by his mercs.
• Shout-Out:
  • Both the general premise of the film and the rainy, neon city has a clear Blade Runner inspiration.
  • Cleo looks like Björk's fembot from the music video All is Full of Love.
  • Daisy Bell plays during the end credits, the song sung by HAL 9000 as it was switched off.
• The Singularity: Humanity’s time is at its end. Eventually, the robots that human kind created will be all that’s left.
• Solar Flare Disaster: Solar activity is rendering Earth lifeless and killing off humanity.
• Son of an Ape: Conway says to an insubordinate robot that it is "just a machine." It retorts by saying that calling it "just a machine" would be like saying Conway is "just an ape."
• Three Laws-Compliant: Two protocols are embedded in the “biokernel” of each automata. The first is not to harm any form of life^note this usually extends to an unspoken "or through inaction allow a form of life to come to harm.", the second is not to modify another robot or one’s self and the second disappearing triggers the beginning of the movie.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Dr. Duprè answers the door for a couple of slum children who shoot her dead without the slightest change in expression, then chase after Jack with the intention of killing him off as well.
• Used Future: Everything in this film appears to be covered in a layer of grime.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The executives of ROC genuinely believe that if robots were to gain sentience, it would spell disaster for humanity.
• Wham Line: More of a Wham Facsimile. It's a rather coded message, but between Jacq and Duprè, it shatters a very important part of Jacq's world and society at large.
  YOUR VACUUM...
  HAS
  COME DOWN FROM THE TREE.
• You Have to Believe Me!: No-one believes Wallace when he insists the android he shot was trying to repair itself in violation of the second protocol, not least because tests show he was both drunk and high at the time. Likewise Robert refuses to believe Jacq when he says he saw an android commit suicide, thinking it's a ploy to get himself transferred. Robert's superiors in turn believe that Jacq has turned traitor, when all he wants to do is get back to his wife and child alive.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Swarms of blimps float over cities to act as mechanical clouds, dispensing water in rain, presumably to keep the radiation under control.