The possible merger of humans and machines has been a fascination for science fiction writers since the mid-20th century. With the proliferation of computers and the development of artificial intelligence, it has become one of the most likely scenarios for the evolution of humanity. At the same time, the history of the relationship between humans and cyborgs (biological organisms containing mechanical and electronic components) has always been quite controversial. On the one hand, we were amazed by their incredible abilities, and on the other hand, we were terrified by the prospect of losing our humanity and turning into soulless automatons. That’s why it’s so interesting to explore what cyborgs from science fiction movies are and what opportunities cyborgization promises people.
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The Six Million Dollar Man
Year of release: 1974-1978
Director: Dick Moder
IMDb rating: 7.1
Almost 150 years before Detroit police officer Alex Murphy tried on the silver armor of RoboCop, and 120 years before the term «cyborg» (short for «cybernetic organism») was coined, Edgar Allan Poe wrote the story The Man That Was Used Up (1837). In it, he depicted General Smith, who was cut to pieces by Indians, but continues to live thanks to the latest mechanical prosthetic limbs, eyes, and vocal cords.
A further development of the ideas of one of the fathers of science fiction was the novel by American writer Martin Kadin called «Cyborg» and its film adaptation — the TV series «The Six Million Dollar Man». According to the show’s authors, this is how much the unique operation cost. Thanks to which NASA astronaut Steve Austin, who was crippled in an accident, received bionic legs, a right arm, and a left eye with a built-in TV camera.
The prosthetics not only saved the first American cyborg’s life, but also made him a real superhero. In the series, he runs at a speed of 97 km/h, jumps to the height of the third floor, breaks concrete with his bare hands, and sees in the infrared spectrum. Of course, such capabilities could not escape the attention of the CIA, which made Austin its best agent. However, his implants have significant limitations. For example, they fail at low temperatures and in space microgravity.
RoboCop
Year of release: 1987
Director: Paul Vergoven
IMDb rating: 7.6
RoboCop is perhaps the most famous movie cyborg of all time, and shows us an example of significant cyborgization, when only the brain, lungs, and part of the digestive system remained of the human body. The idea was to use the human brain to make the machine’s actions more flexible. At the same time, a computer connected to the nervous system was supposed to provide OCP with full control over the behavior of its robotic cop.
Paul Vergoven’s film and subsequent installments of the franchise pay great attention to the anatomy of the cyborg. Thus, in the third part of the franchise, the audience was shown that RoboCop is replaced by an artificial heart that pumps blood to the brain through a system of plastic tubes. And earlier we saw that he eats a protein paste with a baby food flavor to saturate his body with nutrients.
In the absence of kidneys, Murphy’s body waste products must be filtered by a special device that OCP scientists have placed in the police station. The device, which looks like a cabinet with many tubes, regularly cleanses Robocop’s blood and saturates it with drugs to maintain immunity. Thus, almost all the processes of the cyborg’s body and all its sensory organs (built-in cameras and microphones) are under the control of the corporation’s electronic implants.
Teacher Amanda, the heroine of the episode «Ordinary People» from the anthology series «Black Mirror», suddenly turns into a cyborg and a corporate product. When a cancerous tumor in her brain threatens her life, it seems a reasonable decision to accept the offer of Rivermind, a startup that implants an electronic implant in the brain and restores cognitive abilities wirelessly.
Over time, it turns out that shrewd businessmen see this vital service as a guaranteed way to get rich beyond control. The electronic part of a woman makes her vulnerable to the whole range of marketing tricks that mobile operators usually use to make us pay more. It turns her life into a real digital slavery from which there is no way out.
Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones
Year of release: 2002
Director: George Lucas
IMDb rating: 6.6
22 years before the Battle of Yavin, the Sith Lord Dooku cut off Anakin Skywalker’s right hand with a lightsaber. Surviving, the Jedi returned to Coruscant to oversee the creation of a cybernetic prosthetic arm. From that moment, in the second episode of «Star Wars», the path of his cyborgization began, which would later make Luke and Leia’s father a robotic monster in armor from head to toe.
After finally falling to the dark side of the Force in the next installment of the franchise, Anakin received the Sith name Darth Vader from Palpatine. After losing both legs and his left arm in a fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and suffering severe burns all over his body, Vader was forced to wear a hermetic suit for the rest of his life. This suit served as both a mechanical exoskeleton and a life support system.
The Dark Lord’s armor was responsible for supplying him with oxygen, nutrients, and medications. And the neural needles in the helmet were connected to the cervical spine to transmit nerve impulses to biomechanical prostheses. Thanks to his protective suit, Vader could survive in any environment, including space vacuum.
To describe cyborgs like Vader, American science fiction writer Bruce Sterling coined the term «lobster». It refers to a person integrated with an autonomous suit, which, like the shell of a crustacean, cannot be removed without killing its owner. While a classic cyborg may look like a human but not be one, a «lobster», on the contrary, usually looks like a robot but remains a human inside.
Star Trek: First Contact
Year of release: 1996
Director: Jonathan Frakes
IMDb rating: 7.6
In all of the above cases, people became cyborgs to save their own lives. Although, for the sake of objectivity, it must be admitted that in the case of Officer Murphy, the concern for saving his life was only a pretext for the criminal plans of the OCP corporation. But science fiction has striking examples of forced cyborgization, when the population of entire planets was turned into machines against their will.
We are talking about the high-tech Borg civilization in the «Star Trek» universe. It consists of more than 10 thousand intelligent species (humanity, for example, is assigned the code «species number 5618») that have been turned into cyborgs by force and function under the control of a collective mind. The goal of the Borg is to assimilate civilizations and turn them into their own kind. At the same time, they consider their actions to be a step towards perfection and benevolence, which, unfortunately, is not understood by other intelligent beings.
The process of assimilation begins with the introduction of nanorobots into the bloodstream, which change the body from the inside, after which the pigmentation of its skin becomes dark gray. This is followed by the removal of some biological organs to replace them with mechanical devices. In «First Contact», for example, a crew member of the starship «Enterprise», kidnapped by the Borg, had his forearm and eye removed and then replaced with cybernetic implants.
According to the plot of the feature film, the «Enterprise» arrives in time to help the defenders of Earth, which is under attack by the Borg. The enemy is defeated, but one of their ships travels back in time to prevent humans from entering deep space and the historic meeting of Earthlings with the first representative of the extraterrestrial race, the Vulcans. The «Enterprise» pursues the Borg to thwart their plans, but it turns out that the cyborgs have already beamed aboard the ship and Captain Picard will have to face their terrifying queen.
The Bicentennial Man
Year of release: 1999
Director: Chris Columbus
IMDb rating: 6.9
Since we have already started talking about unusual types of cyborgization, it is also worth mentioning the so-called reverse cyborgization. Its vivid example is depicted in one of the most underrated science fiction films of the 1990s— is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s short story «The Bicentennial Man», which was directed by Chris Columbus in 1999. The film begins with Richard Martin’s family buying a new generation of robotic butler, NDR-114, and naming it Andrew.
One day, the robot accidentally breaks the glass horse of Martin’s daughter, «Little Miss» Amanda. To make amends, he carves her a new one out of wood. In this way, Richard discovers that Andrew has considerable creative abilities. Intrigued, he relieves the robot of his butler duties and decides to support him in his desire to create something with his hands. Gradually, Andrew develops more and more emotionally and becomes more human. At his request, NA Robotics upgrades the robot’s body so that it can wear clothes and creates a new face with facial expressions.
After the death of the aged Amanda, Andrew decides to save all his friends and develops biosynthetic internal organs that can replace the human heart, kidneys, and even the nervous system. In addition to selling them to anyone, he installs these inventions in his body and thus becomes a cyborg.
Over time, Andrew notices that he is jealous of Amanda’s granddaughter, Portia, and her fiancé. He confesses his feelings to the girl and goes to court to be recognized as a human. The judge refuses, citing the fact that the positronic brain makes Andrew immortal, which is not typical of humans. So the cyborg decides to change his synthetic blood to biological blood, which will cause irreversible changes and death in his body after a while. At the age of 200, Andrew dies a few minutes before the court recognizes him as a human being.
Screamers
Year of release: 1995
Director: Christian Dugai
IMDb rating: 6.3
Another example of reverse cyborgization. But this time, the robots’ motives are far removed from the desire to create and the romantic aspirations of NDR-114. The movie «Screamers» is based on the novel «The Second Model» by Philip K. Dick. It tells the story of a brutal war that takes place on the planet Sirius 6B in 2078. The conflict between the powerful mining corporation «Sky» and the miners’ union should have ended quickly with the former’s victory. However, the inhabitants of other planets created the «Alliance for Assistance» and armed the workers of Sirius with the latest invention of their scientists — autonomous combat robots called «mobile sword» (autonomous mobile sword).
The Alliance robots were able to move quickly beneath the surface of the planet’s sandy soil and were armed with circular saws to cut to pieces any living thing that came within their reach. Their piercing screams during the attack deafened the enemy — hence the name «screamers». But the main feature was the AI elements and the unique ability to learn and reproduce itself. After killing a person, the robot transported their remains to its underground hideout for processing into fuel (methane) and material for spare parts. It seems that in comparison, even the gloomy prophecies «Terminator» look quite optimistic.
Over time, the «screamers» became completely independent of their creators and took over not only the operation of the underground factory where they were created, but also the supply of resources and the development of new and improved models. The bizarre evolution of this quasi-race resulted in androids that are almost indistinguishable from ordinary people. The first models still had a limited vocabulary, but later models could quote Shakespeare fluently, could cry, and bled when injured.
Iron Man
Year of release: 2008
Director: Jon Favreau
IMDb rating: 7.9
We just couldn’t help but mention the most popular superhero in the Marvel universe, because by all accounts, the miniature arc reactor in his chest made Tony Stark a cyborg. The reason was his attempt to survive in Afghan captivity after being seriously wounded. But after being freed, Tony got a taste of his unique new abilities and developed an improved reactor and a more powerful armored suit.
In the Iron Man comics, Stark’s merger with the machine goes even further. After Tony is paralyzed by a gunshot wound, a biochip is implanted in his brain, which not only duplicates the damaged nerve channels and restores his ability to walk, but also creates an inextricable link with the suit. This allows him to summon it at any time with an effort of will.
Altered Carbon
Year of publication: 2018-2020
Director: Miguel Sapochnik
IMDb rating: 7.9
Tony Stark is far from the only cyborg in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but even if you put all his biomechanical colleagues together, they won’t be able to compete with the cyborgs of the «Altered Carbon» series. After all, according to its literary source, the novel of the same name by British science fiction writer Richard Morgan, almost every inhabitant of the Earth in the twenty-fourth century is equipped with a built-in electronic device (cortical stack). This device constantly records a person’s consciousness and memories on a hard disk.
This has led to a situation where death is no longer an absolute. The fact is that the consciousness of the deceased can be easily transferred from the stack to cloned or any other available body. Only in case of physical destruction of the stack can real death occur. But even this possibility does not frighten the richest and practically immortal inhabitants of the planet, the so-called Mafia (from the biblical name Methuselah), who regularly store backups of their consciousness in the cloud and can afford to create dozens of their clones.
Murderbot
Year of release: 2025 — …
Director: Chris Weitz
IMDb rating: 7.3
The series « Murderbot» from Apple TV+ has gained favor with viewers and high ratings critically acclaimed for its successful combination of sarcastic humor, action, and emotional depth. The plot centers on an android security guard «Security Unit 238776431» who hacked the built-in control module and took on the loud name «Killerbot».
But instead of going on a rampage, he continues his security service and desperately tries to hide the changes in his behavior. Firstly, because he is afraid of being destroyed when the truth about his arbitrary antics is revealed. And secondly, he just wants to continue to do his favorite thing in peace — watch TV shows.
You can find out how the character is described by the author of the series’ literary basis, American writer Martha Wells, and what is better — reading or watching — in the video by my colleague and science fiction expert Pavel Chuikin. And we’ll try to find out if Murderbot is a cyborg. After all, even the scientists whom Alexander Skashgård’s character guards are constantly arguing whether he can be considered a machine.
It is ironic that the unit is compared to the augmented (a term for people with built-in computer implants) crew member Guratin. And according to some of the team, the bot definitely looks more emotional. In episode 3, Ratti asks Murderbot if it is true that cloned human organs were used to create it. He is sure that this could explain why the mechanical guardian has human feelings.
Unlike Andrew from «Bicentennial Man» Murderbot, he is aware of his wards’ shortcomings and does not want to become human. However, he also doesn’t want to harm humans because they are so funny and created his favorite series «The Rise and Fall of the Moon-Sanctuary». In any case, it doesn’t really matter how much organic matter is actually in the android’s body. The main thing is that before our eyes, he is making his way from a machine to something completely new, becoming more and more humanized with each successive episode.
It is interesting to trace the evolution of cyborgs on the screen using the films in this selection. Between 1987 and 2025, huge changes took place. At a time when most of us are reading this article from a smartphone screen, we are no longer afraid of turning into machines (now we are afraid of artificial intelligence). And as Posse « Murderbot», we can finally talk about cyborgs with humor and sympathy, not with fear and distrust.
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