With more and more material from next Spring’s remade/reworked Robocop film escaping into the wild, fans around the world are coming to the conclusion that those in charge of the remake didn’t necessarily get what was best about the original movie and, to a lesser degree, the sequel. (Although, now that I think of it, the same could be said about Robocop 3.) Officer Murphy’s journey from cop and father to implement of destruction back to a semblance of humanity was a disturbing tale, filled with violence, mutilation and entirely human monsters, and the tank-like armored form that Peter Weller inhabited wasn’t SUPPOSED to be a sleek, black superhero suit. But, as with anything, mileage may vary, and having not yet seen the movie, I can’t promise that it won’t be the best man-into-machine story of the modern age. Of course, since pop culture as we know it is roundabout a century old (depending who’s doing the measuring) that designation begs a query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) will always have a soft spot for ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man,’ a film that I nonetheless have no desire to ever see again, asking: Who’s your favorite human/machine hybrid in all of pop culture?
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first thought: warrior nun arelia. now that i think on it, she may be the ancestor of a certain artificer we all know and love, with her one power-fist action for her main man, the baby jesus. how excited was i to learn that someone in america was creating a manga – based on killer nuns!? very. her action figure lives on in this home.
of course, my heart is always with the kids at neon genesis. that’s a lot of machine to manipulate with one’s pubescent brains. go asuka, go!
RANDUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do I really need to say more. his arm was seared off by a skeleton, which he replaced with a metal prosthesis. Later he gets time jumping capabilities, and then needs to root himself to Penelope’s Chronometer so that he can control his time jumps. And finally he has to insert ports into has body to connect himself to the Bomb-bolt. Also best artificer ever….though his rolls do suck most of the time.
I agree!!!
His rolls do suck!
…and yes he is awesome.
Metallo from S:TAS – In the Animated version, he’s an tragic character.
Darth Vader from the original trilogy.
While it might be expected of me to say Darth Vader because I’m such a big Star Wars geek, he’s not exactly at the top of my list (although still reasonably high placed).
There are several I considered listing, but I had to pick a definition (I went with “cyborg”) because there are various different methods of merging man/machine (such as nothing but a human’s brain/mind/memories copied to a machine body or a person’s life/mind/soul transferred to a machine and later transferred to a new body, etc), and I have separate favorites on several of those lists.
But for top place of favorite fictional cyborg, I have to go with Sokichi Banba (Big One).
http://powerrangers.wikia.com/wiki/Sokichi_Banba
Robocop ranks as my number 2.
My number one? Gally/Alita from Gunmu/Battle Angel Alita.
Loaded down with lots of Angst and heavy German philosophy (as a product of Japan in the eighties, this is to be expected) Battle Angel Alita is also loaded down with a plethora of pop culture references in it’s own right, but it’s main punch comes from the main character, Alita, taking no crap and kicking lots of butt.
Gotta go Daleks.
Ok, maybe they’re not a true “Human” /robot hybrid, but they’re definitely cyborgy.