The Geek6: Robot Death!

Danger! Danger GeekSix offices! Robots are becoming extinct! Ignore enhanced AI, we are dyyyyyying!

It was those famous last words of the office mascot the robodog that left us pondering what just are the best deaths among robots? Whether circuitry being fried, or being blowed up real good like, its always a little sad when someone from the other side bites the dust.

So we give to you, the Geek6 of robot deaths. The pantheon of metallic goodbyes.

Blain
Ash – Alien
This was a tough one to narrow down for me. I’ve always found the T-1000’s death in Terminator 2— it’s both beautiful and disturbing. And then there’s the Iron Giant’s self sacrificing and heroic send off (even though technically he’s still alive in the end). But when it comes to great robot death scenes, the one that still has the greatest impact on me — and makes me occasionally distrust technology — is the android Ash’s death scene from Alien.  Played by Ian Holm, he is trying to kill Ripley with a rolled up magazine (something about that is still unsettling for me) when Parker and Lambert intervene. A fight to get him off of Ripley causes him to start spewing milk and spinning around like a wind up toy with no direction. This part used to scare the hell out of me and the weird vocal whine he makes still sends creepafying shivers down my spine. Parker hits Ash with a fire extinguisher, decapitating him except his head is hanging by a thread of synthetic skin while running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Ok, more like a  chicken that just downed several gallons of milk. They rewire him and bring him back for a couple of minutes to interrogate him. After a snide “you have my sympathies” from Ash, Ripley gives him a final punch in the head, shutting the evil bastard down and then Parker incinerates his ass with a flame thrower.

Autumn
Roy Batty – Blade Runner

And of course you cannot go wrong with the Lego version!

Josh
Jazz – Michael Bay’s Transformers
While I should go with the death of Optimus Prime, which marred my childhood in untold ways (and still makes me choke up when I see it), I figure that’s too obvious. I’m going to go forward about 20 years for a different approach.

And that’s Jazz from Michael Bay’s Transformers slugfest. Why did it make me so sad, you might ask? It wasn’t emotional at all, you might say. And that’s just it, and that’s why it saddens me.

Take one of my favorite characters from the original cartoon (voiced perfectly by Scatman Crothers), suck out all of his personality, and reduce his few lines in the movie to be that of “the token black guy,” and you have the new Jazz.

He had about four lines, and then died in the big battle scene, because Michael Bay hasn’t yet figured out any other way to attempt to induce any emotion other than dizziness into his audience.

And then, they pretty much cast him off, with barely a mention. Even in the movie’s ham-fisted chronology, Jazz was a warrior that had fought loyally beside Optimus Prime for thousands of years. And then he dies, and gets a “we’ll remember him, but it’s time to move on.”

Weak, Michael Bay. Weak.

Jason
Optimus Prime – Transformers the Movie
I don’t care that it scarred you Josh and that you still cannot face the reality of it, the death of Prime has to be the pinnacle of robot death. How can it not be.  After years of being blasted and put back together, Prime left us. Not only did he leave us, he turned all gray and stiff and deadlike. Very creepy. How can he just leave us like that? It is still not fair.

Joe
Marvin – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
It’s not *technically* a death and it’s not *technically* a movie, but when Marvin inadvertently gets left behind by himself for 576,000,003,579 years in Restaurant at the End of the Universe it is pure hilarity at the expense at the most lovably depressed android ever. “The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”

Christy
Scar – Battlestar Galactica
I loved him so. Do not tell Leo.