Mankind versus a hostile AI! From The Terminator to The Matrix to Ex Machina and beyond, so many movies and TV shows have explored the idea of artificial intelligence attempting to take over the world. Some of these films may be getting on in years, but the best sci-fi never feels dated. For Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many others, the ideas and concepts at the heart of the truly great films are timeless. It's not the sci-fi trappings like the blinking lights and special effects that make them movies we want to revisit time and again.
One of the earliest entries of the AI genre came in 1970 – way before audiences had any real sense of where the digital revolution was about to take the world – with the overlooked classic Colossus: The Forbin Project. It remains, 53 years after it was released, one of the most gripping and prophetic films to ask the question: What happens when we create something that is smarter than us?
The film’s title refers to Colossus, a super-computer that is basically Skynet 14 years before The Terminator even came out. James Cameron is apparently a fan of Colossus: The Forbin Project, and it doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that he and Gale Anne Hurd were at least partially inspired by the 1970 picture when they wrote their franchise-starter.
After kicking things off with the Universal Pictures logo – a rotating Earth that’s about to be overcome by a new world order – Colossus immediately if subtly predicts its premise with a pair of shots that quickly flash by. To the sound of trippy electronic sound effects and a vibrating score, we see the beeping light of what is maybe an EKG machine, followed by an out-of-focus eyeball… but wait a second. Is that actually some kind of computer read-out that’s beeping? And maybe that’s not an eyeball at all, but a camera lens staring at us through hazy focus?
In 1970, you couldn’t pause the tape… uh, DVD… uh, stream to be sure, though a little later we see that the EKG thingy is in fact a monitor device built into Colossus. But the blurring of the line between computer and human being is clear. And while that’s an idea that had so effectively been conveyed just two years earlier with 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, Colossus: The Forbin Project took that evolution one step further as its computer eventually approaches something closer to… godhood.
Also shooting for godhood, perhaps, is Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden), the brilliant if short-sighted mind behind Colossus, which the U.S. President (Gordon Pinsent) sees as the ultimate in Cold War technology. A super-computer designed to control the country’s nuclear arsenal, Colossus – just like in that song about, well, God – will soon have the whole world in its hands.
We first meet Forbin as he tours the top-secret facility where Colossus’ brain is housed, switching on gizmos that are meant to portray the most sophisticated computer imaginable in the 1970s, but which look mainly like flashing blinkies and colorful buttons. There’s not a touchscreen in sight! Of course, when this film was made, the very notion of how we would interact with computers in the 21st century was inconceivable for most people. The GUI (graphical user interface) that is commonplace now – essentially, interacting with machines through graphics instead of text – wouldn’t really be invented for another three years. The microchip had only been created 12 years earlier! So the filmmakers here had to figure out how we would communicate with a computer like Colossus.
The answer? Through a LED-light news ticker and a teletype.
Considering how often Hollywood has botched its depictions of computers – often endowing them with abilities that don’t make sense, like when a character only has to do some fast typing on a keyboard to magically move plot or action forward – it’s fairly remarkable how convincing Colossus is as a machine. Convincing and scary. This is what makes good sci-fi – striking imagery or hyper-accurate depictions of future tech are secondary to high stakes and captivating storytelling.
Take the scene where Colossus’ communication line to its Soviet counterpart – another newborn super-brain called Guardian – is severed by the humans. A world map in the White House situation room shows Colossus trying to find a new path to its sibling. It almost feels desperate – sad – as the computer fruitlessly reaches out for its friend, as depicted visually on the map as various telecom pathways. But then Colossus drops a message on its news ticker: “IF LINK NOT RESTORED ACTION WILL BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY.”
Actually, that’s not a message. It’s a threat. Up until now, the illusion of human control has kept Forbin and the rest on their perch. But when the President gets on the line – the user has to dictate what they want to say to Colossus to an underling, who types it into a device that’s even bigger than the typewriter I took to college with me – he makes things worse, and the computer announces that it’s launching a nuclear missile directed at the Soviet Union. Guardian does the same, aimed at the US.
What follows is a flurry of teletype sounds – type-type-type-type – and beeps and increasingly nervous voices as Forbin tries to negotiate with his creation. The Michel Colombier score intensifies as suddenly we’re on a countdown clock. Multiple video conference screens feature the scrambling Soviets while the camera trains on the world map, where simple yellow-white lines indicate the two missiles passing one another on their way to their final destinations.
Colossus is a tight 100 minutes of increasingly ratcheted-up tension as the cocky Forbin and the clueless President watch their control of the world disappear utterly and completely.
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It’s an incredibly gripping sequence, culminating in Forbin giving the computer what it wants. Four tense-as-hell minutes after the first missile launch, the sequence ends with one aborted attack, one destroyed Soviet town, and Colossus one step closer to full dominance over man.
That’s the type of action the film provides – it’s basically just a bunch of guys in a room talking to a news ticker. It’s simple and there’s no need for high-tech frills. But man, is it unforgettable. Still, it’s no surprise that most of the movie posters for Colossus: The Forbin Project focus on a minor character who is gunned down midway through the film, since that death takes place during one of the few more traditional “action” scenes.
Directed by Joseph Sargent, a TV helmer who was transitioning to a full-time feature career and would soon turn out the classic NYC subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Colossus is a tight 100 minutes of increasingly ratcheted-up tension as the cocky Forbin and the clueless President watch their control of the world, slowly at first, but eventually in runaway-train-like fashion, disappear utterly and completely.
Early in the film, the charming Forbin gives a Steve Jobs-like presentation about how impressive his new tech is (the only thing missing is the black turtleneck). Speaking of Jobs, it’s interesting that the not-too-distant future depicted here doesn’t seem to have any room for Big Tech. Colossus is apparently a government-funded project, and Forbin has to bend to the will of the President at times – even more so in the book on which the movie is based. That said, the film predicts some of the workplace and lifestyle developments that have since become commonplace for us. Zoom calls are basically a thing, as is a work-from-home ethos – at least for Forbin and his team, who all live on a sort of campus where work and play are intermixed. Eventually, Forbin is forced to live under the constant gaze of an ever-watchful Colossus, which perhaps isn’t all that different for some of us who are forever tied to our tech, social media and otherwise.
During that earlier presentation at the White House, Forbin – standing in front of a portrait of Washington no less as he unwittingly signs away mankind’s freedom – had asked rhetorically, “Is Colossus capable of creative thought?” His answer at the time is no. So when, shortly thereafter, Colossus outgrows his creator in a matter of days, it’s got to be a tough pill to swallow. (In a great sequence, Colossus and Guardian begin to communicate via basic math – 2+2=4 and so on – but before too long, they’ve advanced to theoretical mathematics and are breaking new ground on topics that the human scientific community hasn’t even been close to touching.)
But that’s the real trick, isn’t it? From Frankenstein to HAL to Scarlett Johansson’s Samantha in Her, the genre has a long history of man creating something that, once created, can no longer be controlled. Forbin, in his quest for more knowledge and scientific dominance, made a mind greater than his own. Indeed, early on, when he attempts to punish Colossus like a bratty child and seems to briefly win back control of the computer, his assistant asks if he’s disappointed. Forbin only chuckles in response, but it’s right there: Deep down, there’s a part of the scientist who wants his creation to be “more.” And if that means letting a super-computer run the planet Earth… Eh, whaddaya gonna do?
It’s the genie out of the bottle syndrome, and while the current AI situation that we are facing in 2023 may be far less dramatic than Dr. Forbin’s nightmare scenario – no AI in the real world has blown up a city yet as far as I know – the bottom line is that much of the reasoning and arguments made in favor of the development of AI are the same as the promises Forbin and the President make: “[It will be used as] an aide to the solution of the many problems that we face on this Earth...”
By the end of Colossus: The Forbin Project, the solution to those many problems means that Colossus/Guardian have inherited the Earth, and Forbin is a prisoner in his own life, working as a slave to his creation. Mankind may be better off because of Colossus, but it’s no longer calling the shots. The final moments of the film are perfect, early-’70s bleak sci-fi: Forbin finally breaks down in rage and frustration as the now seemingly all-knowing, all-seeing Colossus reads out its benevolent plans for humankind’s future. That includes a promise that, in time, Forbin will come to regard the machine with love. That Forbin’s last words, as the computer – and we – watch him simultaneously from every angle, are “Never!” means nothing to the AI. See, Colossus has evolved past mere man, and it knows better now.
It’s got the whole world in its hands.
Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!
