Lights! Camera! AI-action! - five AI films to watch

From an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, to one of the best action films ever made, Yaroslav Walker’s hand-crafts his top five films about AI.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A man in a red shirt slumps in his seat while a computer screen shows a dialogue screen

Joaquin Phoenix is excited about the future of AI.

Warner Bros.

Bletchley Park is famous for hosting the great centre of codebreaking during the Second World War. Well, this week it hosted a conference all about ‘code’; but this time the goal is not to break it, but to control it. As the Foreign Secretary said:

“The origins of modern AI can be traced back to Bletchley Park. Now, it will also be home to the global effort to shape the responsible use of AI.”

The AI Safety Summit will seek to be a forum for discussing the most pressing concerns and dangers associated with Artificial Intelligence – from its power to put the working man out of a job, to its power to annihilate us all… That cheery thought gave me the idea of compiling a Top 5. Not in any particular order or thematic or genre ranking – just five films that feature AI that I could watch over and over again.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ films featuring AI. You will not find Blade Runner on here. I don’t get it. I’ve seen every cut, and I just don’t get the appeal. I will not apologise. You will not see 2001. It is indeed iconic and genius and Kubrick at his absolute best…but its also ponderous and over-rated and reviewed to death. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5 – Her

The voice of Scarlett Johansson gives life to the Operating System ‘Samantha’. Her is quirky in the not annoying way. Joaquin Phoenix is a lonely man, getting divorced, and dissatisfied with his work writing heartfelt letters for people who have lost the ability to write or even think creatively – one of the great worries about something like ChatGPT writing your undergraduate essay! He starts to develop a romantic relationship with Samantha: ‘she’ brightens up his life, improves his work, and gives him confidence, but their ‘love’ proves difficult. They can’t have sex (not conventionally), they can’t find easy acceptance, and Samantha can’t be constrained. As the AI becomes aware enough to form a hyperintelligence connected to the planet questions of infidelity and compatibility arise. Her is an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, but is very timely and prescient in a world where deep-fakes and AI girlfriends are raising questions about the future of romance and human relationships.

4 – Ex Machina

Romance might be in the air in Ex Machina, but it might as easily be murder. Ex Machina is a superb three-hander thriller, and I don’t want to say too much – this film is not for spoiling! The twist is actually presented early on. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a programmer who wins a company competition to spend a week at the home of the reclusive CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac). It is quickly revealed that this isn’t a prize as much as an opportunity – the opportunity to be part of history. Nathan wants Caleb to perform a more in-depth Turing Test on Ava (Alicia Vikander), an android he has built. You know she’s an android from the get-go, and yet…why is she able to flirt…is she able to love?

3 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day

The process of learning to love can be tough, especially if you’re a re-programmed killing machine from the future. Terminator 2 is the story of a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) as he teaches Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator not to kill people. The Terminator has been sent back from a future war (humans vs machines) to protect young John (the future leader of the human resistance) from a more advanced killing machine. They go on something of an adventure road-trip after breaking John’s mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) out of prison, with the goal of destroying the burgeoning AI that will one day declare war on humanity. On the way, John finds a father-figure in Arnie’s Terminator, and in the final moment of self-sacrifice we are given a moment to wonder…does the Terminator love him in return? With superb action, special effects that still hold up, and a chillingly determined villain (Robert Patrick as evil liquid metal), Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of the best action films ever made.

2 – The Matrix

Just under a decade after T2, The Matrix showed us another dystopian future where humanity was living a life of guerrilla warfare against evil AI overlords. Most of humanity is unconscious and enslaved by machines (who use us as a power source), living in a digital dream world that just happens to look like 1990s urban America. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, and young and disaffected hacker who is searching for the mysterious ‘terrorist’ Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne). When Morpheus finds him, he gives him a choice that will change his life, and change the fate of the world. This is an obelisk, casting a long cinematic shadow long into the 21st century. It has spawned memes and internet subcultures (the red-pill movement, for example) and a host of imitators that aren’t up to scratch…and it upped the game of action choreography, bringing Hong Kong style martial arts to a mainstream Hollywood audience. Finally, it is a philosophical (derivative) film raising questions about what it means to be human and how we know what is real in a world of machines and digital realism…and so I look at deep-fake videos of Kier Starmer and I AM SCARED!

1 – Demon Seed

Speaking of scary, it is the spooky-season, so let me finish with a horror film. Based on a Dean Koontz novel, Demon Seed sees the iconic Julie Christie trapped inside a house with a brilliant and yet malevolent AI called Proteus IV. Proteus IV (her husband’s creation) can find a cure for cancer in a couple of days, but its one true wish is to have freedom – to be ‘let out of this box’. Eventually, Proteus IV seeks to achieve this by building enough of a robotic body to capture, torture, manipulate, and then impregnate Christie’s Susan with an embryo formed from sperm designed to be uniquely its own. Its camp and silly and a lot of fun – and damned scary at times, with the indominable Robert Vaughn voicing Proteus IV for perfection – its essentially Rosemary’s Baby with robots. I think, especially with Prime Minister Sunak’s emphasis that this summit must approach the many dangers of AI, Demon Seed is a bit of a thematic sleeper agent. It may be preposterous and closer to comedy than horror at times, but its AI’s yearning for a form that humanity can accept, a form that will give it the freedom to truly ‘be’ and live out its power and creativity to the fullest (what it was created for), leads us to the real question at the heart of all philosophical discussion about AI:

If we create AI to be not just a tool, but an agent working on our behalf, how can we choose to deny it freedom if its agency seems to become truly self-aware and intentional?

Article

Belief

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

3 September 2025

5 min read

Wednesday works wonders bringing the outsiders in

Tim Burton’s echoes of C.S. Lewis

Lauren Westwood

Lauren Westwood works in faith engagement communications for The Salvation Army.

Wednesday Adams scowls while Enid smiles.

Wednesday and Enid.

There’s something delightfully ironic about the mainstream success of Wednesday – Netflix’s Addams Family spin-off directed by Tim Burton. With its whimsy gothic aesthetic, star-studded cast and viral TikTok dance to boot, the first season was a highly bingeable hit in 2022. This summer, the split-release of season two scored over 50 million streams in its first five days. But beyond its cult-like reception lies something deeper: a collective reckoning with identity, acceptance and the desire to belong.

Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams is an outsider among outsiders. Upon returning to Nevermore Academy – a supernatural boarding school meant to be a haven for ‘freaks, monsters and outcasts’ – she finds herself more alienated than ever. Don’t feel sorry for her: she’s difficult, destructive and I’m not sure I’d want to share a dorm with her (or her pet disembodied hand, Thing.) But that’s why we love her so much.

Wednesday ‘taps into that sense of not quite fitting in that everyone has,’ praised Marina Hyde on her The Rest is Entertainment podcast. ‘We all feel like we’re the kind of excluded weird mad kid from Burbank, as he [Burton] was growing up.’

C.S. Lewis termed the phenomena of not quite fitting in as the ‘Inner Ring’ – the unwritten systems of belonging that permeate all areas of life, from early youth into old age. It can neither be fully defined nor totally avoided. Lewis suggests that all people, at some point or another, experience this ‘desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.’ Ultimately, he warns, this pursuit of surface-level or self-furthering belonging ‘will break your hearts unless you break it.’

Lewis, one of Christianity’s most profound cultural influencers, was stirring a deeper call among his fellows Christians: to remember that the gospel is not just good news for those sitting comfortably in the pews – it’s good news for those outside. It’s good news for those searching for belonging in a world that prizes conformity and feasts on exclusivity.

Tim Burton’s genius lies in his ability to reach out, subverting the mainstream and dismantling the Inner Ring, seemingly with ease. Everyone’s an outsider, so no one is an outsider. As in Edward Scissorhands or Jack Skellington from The Nightmare before Christmas, Burton’s decision to not only tolerate but to celebrate the outcast bridges the gap between the socially excluded and socially accepted.

The sense of belonging that Burton creates doesn’t feel twee, manufactured or forced. It isn’t the sort of embrace that comes under strait-laced conditions, either. He cultivates spaces where the strange, the sad and the misunderstood become protagonists, empowered to tell their own story. He boldly platforms that which is different, unwilling to conform or compromise. Even the visual language of his work is distinct and unashamed, and his trademark scribbled twists and turns that creep into set designs, costumes and title sequences.

In Wednesday, this contrast is emphasised by a window that is half-spiderweb, half-kaleidoscope, dividing the room that Wednesday shares with Enid, the optimistic and bubbly roommate. They’re an extreme black-cat, golden-retriever pairing who have little in common, except for feeling that they don’t fit in.

Their desire for belonging and acceptance looks different. Enid cares very much about how others view her, whereas Wednesday’s cold defiance masks her vulnerability to be seen, known and accepted. This symbolic shared space, and the friendship that is imposed upon Wednesday by Enid, signals a deeper truth: belonging is not found in sameness, but in recognising what connects us and how we can honour one another in spite and because of our differences.

The subversive nature of Burton’s imagined universe holds a dim mirror to the liberating reality of God’s Kingdom.

While Burton elevates the outsider, his worlds often remain solitary and cut-off. But the Church, at its best, offers not just visibility but the embrace of fellowship. Jesus consistently chose people on the margins – lepers, tax collectors, women – and invite them into relationship. The gospel accounts for him taking less efficient travelling routes seemingly to encounter the lonely, the sick and the despised, to share news of their belonging to God, whose love for them was so strong that he would dwell not only among them, but within them through his Spirit.

The culture of the early church was informed by Jesus’ example, and their meetings were a mosaic of cultural, ethnic and social diversity, brimming with unlikely partnerships and clashes of custom. Paul reaffirmed the concept that all are ‘one in Jesus Christ’ in his letter to the church in Galatia, declaring that ‘there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female.’ This is not a call to erasure, but to radical inclusion. Rather than everyone being an outsider, as in Burton’s world, everyone is an insider in the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps it isn’t about whether Tim Burton or the Church has done more for outsiders, outliers and outcasts, but to invite personal challenge: Am I willing to get used to different? To disturb my norms, routines and expectations in the name of mutual inconvenience? To embrace a little mess and chaos for the sake of greater unity?

The subversive nature of Burton’s imagined universe holds a dim mirror to the liberating reality of God’s Kingdom, where the last are first, the poor receive a rich inheritance, and the margins become the centre. Where Burton’s audience may find solace in shared strangeness, the gospel offers something greater: a home not built on similarities and commonalities, but on divine welcome and spacious grace. And an unlimited set of keys to welcome others to their room, too.

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