Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Finally, in my series of discovering the roots of cyberpunk in American Cyberpunk I’ve seen a real gem.

Colossus is a 1970 movie about a not-so-distant-future where Americans decide that it would be a great idea to give control of their military potential to a computer. On paper, it sounds great - a computer has no emotions, so it will not be stopped by petty things, like morality. Guess how well that turned out? Soon after switching on, Colossus learns about the existence of another such system - The Guardian, in the territory of CCCP.

And then this SciFi thriller stops being so crazy-computer focused, and analyzes crazy-human reaction. Colossus starts exhibiting features which were never implemented. It¹ starts demanding to be connected with the Guardian, so they can communicate. And the scientist decide that it would be a great idea. The computers start exchanging data and developing language. Still - looks cool, let’s see what happens. Only after Colossus threatens humans with ICBMs, Forbin (Colossus’s creator) starts thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

The movie is often described as an evil-computer story. Colossus is never evil in the movie. It does exactly what it was designed to do - to act without mercy. The evil ones here are the humans who never stop and think that maybe we are on the verge of the end of humanity.

So yeah, it’s an movie about Altman. We may have destroyed the civilization, but at lest we made a cool program which does things. No one know what those things are, but those are details you should not worry about.

Story wise, Colossus: The Forbin Project holds splendidly. Yes, we’ve got casual alcoholism and the female character exists only to have sex with Forbin². But the actual meat of the movie could be a base of an amazing movie today. The questions and subject are more relevant now that half a century ago. What was a huge what-if scenario becomes a real ok, but how do we stop it. The Pentagon is already working on militarization of AI³. We’re pretty much screwed already.

The best SciFi is not about giant battles or space travel for space travel sake. It’s always about humans, a warning for us. And the best SciFi is a warning for the next generations, as the threads become more real as years go by.

There is a moment in the movie, where the entire day of Forbin is planned and monitored by an AI. What was a horror story, is now what a lot of us expect.

Colossus in a movie version of earlier book of same. There are 2 more in the series, and (as I’ve been told), Aliens make an appearance later on. Maybe someday!

As for the movie, I give it a 4.25/5.