Who doesn't love our robot friends, even the ones that want to wipe us out? Cinemalicious this week takes a look at some of filmdom's finest tincan companions...

The star of Pixar's ninth consecutive computer animated hit was a plucky little sentient trash compactor - not much of a looker for a would be Romeo. His neck suggested a wattle, and his clumsy metal hands could barely gras the sleek, curved, eggshell-white fins of his lady love, the probe robot EVE. But WALL•E wooed his paramour - and moviegoers of all ages - anyway, even as the film's story line sparker politicised debate over it's depiction of a future Earth laid waste by consumerism. Director Andrew Stanton says he was baffled: "People seized on things to plead their own causes. I just chose robots to tell a love story."

WALL•E wasn't the first hunk of metal to rivet us. A look back at sci-fi heavyweights through the decades:

Marie in Metropolis (1927)

Director Fritz Lang's futuristic tale features a female Frankenstein, built to seduce a city's workers.

Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

How do you shut off this mute bodyguard's death-ray stare? Just say "Klaatu barada nikto!"

Robby the Robot in Lost in Space (1963-1968)

His proper acronym is GUNTER, but his cohorts Dr. Smith and Will Robinson never call him that.

R2-D2 in Star Wars (1963-1977)

Like WALL•E, Artoo lives to serve - and they both speak in beeps and boops designed by Ben Burtt.

T-800 in The Terminator (1985)

Ah-nold's original terrifying cyborg assassin. We'd like to see WALL•E try to compact that!

Category: Actors and Actresses

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Written by Steve Daily

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