Top 10 Cinematic Cyborgs!

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Yo, how many of y’all are scheduled for an UPGRADE this weekend? Mild recommendations are in order, for despite some sizable flaws, the movie remains pretty damn entertaining throughout. If you cop a peek, be sure to report back with some spilled blood.

But before all that, in the lead up to the film, we thought what better time to revisit some of the best cinematic cyborgs of all time. Now, to be clear, we don’t mean robots or androids, we’re talking about half-human/half-machine hybrids. No, not Inspector Gadget or Luke Skywalker…we’re restricting our cyborgs to the realm of the sci-fi/horror/thriller genres. Entities with a bit more bite! Ah hell, see for yourself below as we present our Top 10 favorite Cinematic Cyborgs!

#1. T-800 (TERMINATOR SERIES)

Stop it right there! If you’re one of those brown-nosing teacher’s pets who must point out that the fact the T-X or T-1000 is a technically superior model to that of the T-800…just get the f*ck out of here right now. Yes, that may be true, but don’t get it twisted, Bob Patrick ain’t no motherf*cking Arnie the Schwarz! Of course the T-800 would reign supreme as the all time greatest cinematic cyborg. The 30-year arc Cameron has given the title character, from cold-blooded killing machine to warmhearted accomplice for the survival of humanity, is not only the richest and most comprehensive, it’s also the likeliest of inevitabilities in real life. Or, at least the most optimistic!

#2. ALEX MURPHY (ROBOCOP)

Part Man. Part Machine. All Cop. Such is the high-concept tagline for Paul Verhoeven’s tale of ultra-violent urban warfare, ROBOCOP, starring Peter Weller as the titular law-enforcing cyborg. The first film was such a critical and commercial success that it spawned two sequels and a 2014 remake. The idea to have such a critically wounded police officer like Alex Murphy come back as a bionically indestructible force of good is too damn sweet to award anything less than a silver medal. In one of his fondest memories of his entire career, Peter Weller recalls listening to Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” inside his Robo suit while filming the drug-bust sequence. Murphy’s motherf*cking Law!

#3. LUC DEVERAUX/GR44 (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER)

Strike this one up as a double shout-out to Van Damme’s Luc Deveraux, aka GR44, and Dolph’s Andrew Scott, aka GR13, in Roland Emmerich’s 1992 kickass cyborg showdown UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. Indeed, “almost human, almost perfect, almost under control” seems to aptly sum up what amounts to a chaotic whirlwind of intense metal-on-metal combat. You know the gist. After being killed in Vietnam, Luc and Andy are reanimated as obedient cyborgs with only one known mission: kill every motherf*cker in sight! Of course, things get complicated when Luc’s memories before the procedure come back to haunt his conscience. For 20 odd years, until the DAY OF RECKONING!

#4. JASON VOORHEES (JASON X)

Yup, I’m getting a little misty-eyed over here. Never will I be able to think of JASON X without thinking of the time my two best friends and I saw this movie in the theater alone – all by ourselves – while everyone else watched SPIDER-MAN. The sheer joyous uproar of seeing Jason Voorhees – our favorite horror villain of all time – get the terrifying technological makeover on board a spaceship is a feeling I can neither shake, nor articulate. I think it injected us with the same kind of charged-up, superhuman energy Voorhees received en route to tallying his highest kill count of all. Seriously, the psycho-zombie-slasher was indestructible before extending his rein of terror to the cosmos. His upgrade is downright unfair!

#5. DEL SPOONER (I, ROBOT)

To be crystalline, I do not like I, ROBOT even a little bit. That said, I can discount my taste, separate the movie from the character and recognize what a charismatic and formidable, robot-hating detective Del Spooner is in the film. Will Smith charms like no other, but it’s the distinction of having robot parts implanted into his human body that make Del his own brand of cyborg. And why is that? Well, despite fearing and loathing robots after being almost killed by one, Del has a cybernetic left arm, lung and ribs. This puts our cynical cyborg in a bind when forced to investigate a humanity-threatening crime carried out by robots. You know how it turns out, three years later Big Willy goes from I, ROBOT to I AM LEGEND.

#6. MAX DE COSTA (ELYSIUM)

Given the astronomical expectations yielded by his prior film DISTRICT 9, unfairly or not, I’m still a tad disappointed in Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 sci-fi follow-up ELYSIUM. One of the only things that redeemed the over-churned story was the character of Max De Costa (Matt Damon), a car thief who ends up with surgically-graft, electrically powered exoskeleton attached to his body in order to become one of the most lethal cyborg-warriors ever constructed. This f*cker’s no joke. The high-tech arsenal, advanced weaponry, antiaircraft firepower, and that nasty rat-tail…shoot, Maximum impact indeed!

#7. MAJOR (GHOST IN THE SHELL)

Be honest. Would you rather cop a peek at an animated image from 23 years ago, or stare longingly into the eyes of the Scarlett lady? Yup, thought so. Which is why, instead of feting the far better version of the same story, we’ve opted to depict Major – the cyborg protagonist in THE GHOST IN THE SHELL – rather than Mokoto Kusanagi. You understand. Interestingly, in a plot-line likely most redolent of Universal Soldier, the story follows Major (Scarlett), a human who suffers a near fatal accident. With her body bolstered with cybernetic technology, she recovers as an all-powerful super-soldier with capabilities to thwart the most dangerous criminal minds in the world. Mamoru Oshii’s film is too important to omit, Scarlett’s too damn smokin’ to extinguish!

#8. BB (DEADLY FRIEND)

Let it be known, a Horror Top 10 Spot always feels the most complete when his highness, Wes Craven, graces the list. So it’s with great satisfaction we recall one of Craven’s least heralded horror joints of all, the 1986 flick DEADLY FRIEND. Check this cybernetic differentiation. When Paul’s good friend Samantha (Kristy Swanson) is murdered by her abusive father, he attempts to bring her back to life by implanting nanotechnology into her brain. Soon, the tech goes haywire, sending Sam’s fetid corpse on a robotically controlled murder-spree. Not even Anne Ramsey’s scary ass can do anything about it.

#9. FRANKENSTEIN (THE VINDICATOR)

Damn are we pumped for this one! Straight up, if this list serves no other purpose, please come away with this one required homework assignment: track down and watch the 1986, French-Canadian killer-cyborg flick THE VINDICATOR. You will not be disappointed! No lie, this movie is all kinds of badass. The story follows an employee who unwittingly becomes the victim of a special weapons operation. He dies, reanimates as a kill-crazy cyborg whose programming demands that he brutally murder anything that comes near him. We’ve got Pam Grier and Maury Chaykin to help support Frankenstein (David McIlwraith),which elevates this one right above Mandroid, a fellow 1986 cyborg from the movie ELIMINATORS.

#10. CASH REESE (CYBORG 2)

Yeah yeah yeah…scoff all you want. But the fact remains, while Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) – the titular CYBORG in Alex Pyun’s 1989 Van Damme actioner – plays far more of a vital role in her story, there’s no way her gorily greased-up bald pate is anywhere near as photogenic as nubile Angelina Jolie as Cash Reese in CYBORG 2: GLASS SHADOW. No way in hell. Therefore, we’re kicking this motherf*king soiree off with a little titillating B-movie camp and kitsch. In the film, Cash is an “almost human” cyborg created to woo and seduce her way into the headquarters of a rival corporation, then blow the sumbitch to pieces once inside. Yup, Cash Money!