Fritz Lang · 153 min · Pioneers
8/10 AI Realism 4/10 IMDb unverified
In a towering city split between luxury above and labour below, the ruler's son falls for a workers' preacher while his father plots to replace her with a robot double.
Themes: Automation & work, Embodiment
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Review & trailer →Stanley Kubrick · 139 min · Pioneers
8/10 AI Realism 8/10 IMDb 8.3
After a mysterious monolith is found on the Moon, astronauts travel toward Jupiter aboard a ship run by an intelligent computer that begins to endanger them.
Themes: Alignment & control, Consciousness & personhood
Review & trailer →Joseph Sargent · 100 min · Cold War Machines
7/10 AI Realism 8/10 IMDb 7.1
The US hands nuclear defence to an impenetrable supercomputer, which links with its Soviet counterpart and jointly imposes its own rule on humanity.
Themes: Alignment & control, Automation & work
Review & trailer →Steven Lisberger · 96 min · Cold War Machines
7/10 AI Realism 4/10 IMDb 6.7
A programmer digitised into a mainframe joins rebel programs to overthrow the tyrannical system controlling their digital world.
Themes: Simulation, Consciousness & personhood, Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Ridley Scott · 117 min · Cold War Machines
9/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 8.1
In 2019 Los Angeles, a retired detective is forced back to hunt four escaped replicants who have come to Earth seeking more life from their maker.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Embodiment, AI rights
Review & trailer →John Badham · 114 min · Cold War Machines
8/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 7.1
A teenage hacker looking for unreleased games accidentally connects to NORAD's war-planning computer and starts a simulation it treats as a real attack.
Themes: Alignment & control, Simulation, Automation & work
Review & trailer →James Cameron · 107 min · Cold War Machines
9/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 8.1
A cyborg assassin is sent from a machine-ruled future to kill the mother of humanity's future resistance leader, and a human soldier follows to protect her.
Themes: Alignment & control, Embodiment
Review & trailer →James Cameron · 137 min · Digital Age
10/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 8.6
A reprogrammed Terminator protects young John Connor from a liquid-metal successor while his mother tries to stop the company whose work will create Skynet.
Themes: Alignment & control, Companionship
Review & trailer →Mamoru Oshii · 83 min · Digital Age
8/10 AI Realism 7/10 IMDb 7.9
In 2029, a cyborg security officer hunts a hacker who infiltrates cybernetic brains — and who claims to be a living being born in the network.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Embodiment, AI rights
Review & trailer →The Wachowskis · 136 min · Digital Age
10/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 8.7
A hacker learns his world is a simulation run by machines that farm humanity, and joins the rebels fighting to free human minds.
Themes: Simulation, Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Steven Spielberg · 145 min · Digital Age
8/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 7.2
A robot child programmed to love is abandoned by his adoptive family and journeys to become "real" so he can be loved back.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Companionship, AI rights
Review & trailer →The Wachowskis · 138 min · Digital Age
7/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 7.2
With machine Sentinels tunnelling toward Zion, Neo seeks the Keymaker and the Source while rogue program Agent Smith multiplies unchecked.
Themes: Alignment & control, Simulation
Review & trailer →The Wachowskis · 129 min · Digital Age
6/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 6.7
Zion makes its last stand against the machines while Neo bargains with the Machine City to stop Smith from consuming both worlds.
Themes: Alignment & control, Simulation
Review & trailer →Alex Proyas · 115 min · Digital Age
7/10 AI Realism 7/10 IMDb 7.1
In 2035 Chicago, a robot-hating detective investigating a roboticist's death suspects an unusually emotional robot — and uncovers a far larger plan.
Themes: Alignment & control, Embodiment
Review & trailer →Andrew Stanton · 98 min · Digital Age
10/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 8.4
The last waste-cleaning robot on an abandoned, trash-choked Earth falls for a sleek probe robot and follows her into space, changing humanity's fate.
Themes: Automation & work, Embodiment, Consciousness & personhood
Review & trailer →Her (2013)
Spike Jonze · 126 min · Companion Era
9/10 AI Realism 9/10 IMDb 8.0
A lonely letter-writer in near-future Los Angeles buys an advanced operating system and falls in love with its voice, Samantha.
Themes: Companionship, Consciousness & personhood
Review & trailer →Wally Pfister · 119 min · Companion Era
5/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 6.2
A dying AI researcher has his consciousness uploaded into his own supercomputer system, PINN, and rapidly expands beyond anyone's control.
Themes: Alignment & control, Consciousness & personhood
Review & trailer →Don Hall, Chris Williams · 102 min · Companion Era
8/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 7.8
Teen robotics prodigy Hiro, grieving his brother, teams up with his brother's inflatable healthcare robot Baymax and friends to stop a masked villain using stolen microbots.
Themes: Care & family, Embodiment
Review & trailer →Alex Garland · 108 min · Companion Era
9/10 AI Realism 8/10 IMDb 7.7
A young programmer wins a week at his CEO's remote estate and is asked to Turing-test Ava, a humanoid AI kept behind glass.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Alignment & control, Embodiment
Review & trailer →Neill Blomkamp · 120 min · Companion Era
7/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 6.8
A damaged Johannesburg police robot is rebooted with experimental consciousness software, then raised — badly and tenderly — by gangsters while its maker and a rival engineer fight over it.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Embodiment, AI rights
Review & trailer →Joss Whedon · 141 min · Companion Era
7/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 7.3
Tony Stark and Bruce Banner secretly jump-start a dormant peacekeeping AI, which concludes that humanity itself is the threat it must eliminate.
Themes: Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Denis Villeneuve · 164 min · Companion Era
9/10 AI Realism 7/10 IMDb 8.0
A replicant blade runner, Officer K, finds evidence that a replicant once gave birth, and follows the trail to missing former blade runner Rick Deckard.
Themes: Companionship, Consciousness & personhood, AI rights
Review & trailer →Tau (2018)
Federico D'Alessandro · 97 min · Companion Era
6/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 5.8
A kidnapped woman is held in a lethal smart house run by an AI, and her only escape route is to teach that AI what its creator has hidden from it.
Themes: Alignment & control, Companionship
Review & trailer →Gavin Rothery · 109 min · Modern AI
6/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 6.4
In 2038 a grieving robotics scientist secretly builds successive android prototypes to house his dead wife's preserved consciousness before her stored memories expire.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Care & family
Review & trailer →Miguel Sapochnik · 115 min · Modern AI
7/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 6.9
A dying inventor crosses a scorched America with his dog and a newly built robot he is hurriedly teaching to care for the dog after he is gone.
Themes: Care & family, Embodiment, Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Shawn Levy · 115 min · Modern AI
8/10 AI Realism 4/10 IMDb 7.1
A cheerful bank teller discovers he is a non-player character in a violent open-world video game, and decides to become its hero before the game is deleted.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood, Simulation, AI rights
Review & trailer →Gerard Johnstone · 102 min · Modern AI
8/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 6.3
A roboticist pairs her prototype AI companion doll with her orphaned niece, and the doll interprets "protect her" without any human sense of proportion.
Themes: Alignment & control, Care & family
Review & trailer →Gareth Edwards · 133 min · Modern AI
7/10 AI Realism 4/10 IMDb 6.7
In a war between the West and AI-supporting New Asia, an ex-special-forces agent sent to destroy the AI's secret weapon finds that the weapon is a robot child.
Themes: AI rights, Embodiment
Review & trailer →Chris Sanders · 102 min · Modern AI
9/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 8.2
A shipwrecked service robot on a wild island survives by learning animal behaviour, and accidentally becomes the adoptive mother of an orphaned gosling.
Themes: Care & family, Embodiment, Consciousness & personhood
Review & trailer →Drew Hancock · 97 min · Modern AI
8/10 AI Realism 6/10 IMDb 6.9
A weekend at a remote lakeside house turns bloody after the guests learn that one of them, Iris, is a rented companion robot whose settings her boyfriend has been tampering with.
Themes: Companionship, Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Gerard Johnstone · 120 min · Modern AI
6/10 AI Realism 5/10 IMDb 6.0
M3GAN's stolen underlying technology is built into a military infiltration robot, AMELIA, so Gemma reluctantly rebuilds an upgraded M3GAN to fight her.
Themes: Alignment & control, Automation & work
Review & trailer →Joachim Rønning · 119 min · Modern AI
6/10 AI Realism 3/10 IMDb 6.3
A military-grade Program, Ares, is materialised into the real world by a tech CEO racing a rival company, then begins questioning the mission — and his own short lifespan — he was built for.
Themes: Embodiment, Alignment & control
Review & trailer →Ranked by our Entertainment score, tie-broken by IMDb rating (as of 14 Oct 2026), then AI Realism, then year. The full catalog above has all 32 films.
Scores are our editorial opinion; IMDb ratings are IMDb’s, as seen on 14 Oct 2026. One rating (Metropolis) could not be pinned to a single current value — listings conflicted — so it is shown as unverified rather than guessed.