Short Circuit

    I was also struggling to come up with something, but after seeing Roo’s post about a book from her childhood, I started thinking about books and movies I had enjoyed as a kid that might be considered science fiction. I grew up on a lot of good ‘80s movies because of older siblings and I realized a lot of our family favorites were science fiction – Short Circuit, Back to the Future, Flight of the Navigator, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, D.A.R.Y.L., etc. These movies range from time travel to aliens to robots. Fun fact, all these great movies were made between 1981 – 1986. I decided to focus my suggestion on Short Circuit, but they are all great movies!

     Short Circuit is about a prototype US military robot build for the Cold War. Robot Number 5 is hit by a power surge and suddenly has free will. He leaves the laboratory and goes out into the world. Number 5 is almost like a child, fascinated by everything around him and trying to learn everything he can about the physical world and emotional world. He even learns about mortality when he kills a grasshopper, and realizes that if the military scientists recapture him and disassemble him, he will die. A riveting chase then ensues while the military tries to capture him and ends in an accidental explosion, where everyone thinks Number 5 has combusted. However, he has survived and escapes with two of his human friends to live happily ever after.

     It’s interesting to watch a robot go from just learning about the world to developing emotions and feelings of humans. He, just like most people, wants to live and is afraid of death when he learns that there is no way to come back from being disassembled/dead. The idea of death ignites a fight or flight response in him, because he just wants to keep on living. Also, I think it’s interesting that even as a robot, he got a happy ending at the close of the movie.

Here’s the scene where Number 5 learns about mortality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwkuQfTmdM

The full movie is actually on Youtube if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuQrgk0xLLQ