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What Measure Is a Non-Human?/Film: Difference between revisions
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* In both the ''[[Star Wars]]'' trilogies, droids are established as having hopes, fears, desires, and moments of insight or creativity. Nevertheless, because they are not organic, no one feels any qualms about slaughtering vast numbers of them in the prequel trilogy (although the Trade Federation droids may not have been sentient, a line of thought which occurs rapidly upon viewing of their ineffective tactics).
** In ''A New Hope'', when the bartender of the Mos Eisley cantina says "We don't serve droids here.", [[The Book]] has Luke decide that it's not the time to fight for "droid rights" before telling C-3PO and R2-D2 to stay outside. This suggests that good guys ''do'' care about droid rights, but the issue is never followed up on (at least not in that book).
** Oddly, in ''Return of the Jedi'', one scene involves the [[Cold
*** Arguably, it could be to show the intense cruelty of Jabba the Hutt and his underlings, with a bit of [[Klingon Promotion]] as well. It's true that such torture on organic creatures would never fly, but that's mostly because such violence would jack up the rating unnecessarily.
*** The audio commentary for ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' had a joke about how they ruled out putting R4-P17 in the arena with Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme because it would have gotten then an NC-17.
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** The Battle Droids of the prequel trilogy are treated as nonhuman, and their "deaths" at the hands of the heroes are even played for laughs. But they still react in a very lifelike way, even acting scared when someone comes at them brandishing a lightsaber!
*** In [[The Phantom Menace]], their brains were not in their skulls, but they were remote controlled from the Droid Control Ship in the orbit, so their program survived the body being gleefully chopped to pieces. Until young Anakin murdered them all.
** A chunk of the Empire's cultural backbone is its doctrine conforming to [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Human_High_Culture Human High Culture], holding to the belief that humans were inherently superior to others. Healthy male humans, at that. The [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/NhM NhM category], standing for Non-huMan, was applied to various degrees to droids, [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Imperial_non-Humans aliens, near-humans, cyborgs], and [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Imperial_women women]. Some from each category except the droids, if they were devoted and forceful enough, rose to power anyway, but it was an uphill battle, and in several cases was only possible at all because they [[Never a Self
*** Interestingly, of Palpatine's thirteen handpicked Grand Admirals, three of them - Thrawn, [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Osvald_Teshik Teshik], and Pitta - fell under the Non-huMan category. Thrawn was a striking near-human who got his position by being almost obscenely good. [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Osvald_Teshik Teshik] was the most compassionate and non-evil Grand Admiral, but after suffering serious injuries and being forced to replace 75% of his body with cybernetics, was widely derided and dismissed, though he kept his rank. [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Danetta_Pitta Pitta], interestingly, a human with near-human blood, was the one most obsessed with Imperial racial purity, "purging" anyone who was revealed to have an impure ancestry.
*** A [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Uwlla_Iillor female officer] who rose to commanding an Imperial Interdictor Cruiser while serving under Thrawn got transferred into the regular Imperial navy, and ended up [[Defector From Decadence|defecting]] to the New Republic after finding that her superiors didn't listen to her suggestions.
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* This trope, and all its myriad mutations, forms the plot of ''[[AI Artificial Intelligence]]''. The plotline and characters of AI were inspired by a series of short stories/novellas written about 20 years ago by Brian Aldiss. Stanley Kubrick's script was particularly focused on the first story, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." Some critics later theorized that one reason the film didn't do so well in its initial run was ''because'' the audience disliked having these issues addressed so directly. Like "Blade Runner", it has since developed a cult audience.
** Likewise ''[[Blade Runner]]'', though this earlier film was much more subtle in its approach.
** For a kid-friendly ([[What Do You Mean
* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' plays the zombie issue arrow-straight -- until the epilogue, which has numerous cases of people retaining their personalities, mostly, after they've become zombies. Which [[What Measure Is a Mook?|makes the earlier events rather a bummer]]...
* Fairly blatantly played in the [[B
* In the movie adaptation of ''[[Lost in Space]]'', treacherous backstabber Dr. Smith is kept alive, despite having sold them out and tried to have everyone killed, is allowed to live because he's human (though he likes to brag that he saved their daughter's life, the fact that he endangered it in the first place is ignored by everyone). When he becomes a mutant half-human hybrid, the family have far less qualms killing him, or {{spoiler|injuring him so his mutant alien spider spawn will eat him}}. They admit the only reason they wouldn't kill him was because he's human.
** In defense, the first time he had already been contained; killing a prisoner is always kind of iffy. Once he mutated into the big monster thingie, he was a real threat to everyone, and carrying a [[Weapon of Mass Destruction]] in his gut.
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* Inverted in ''[[The 13 th Warrior]]'', wherein the protagonist learns that the barbaric antagonists are humans wearing bearskins rather then demonic trolls, and is ''more'' willing to kill them as he is distraught that human beings could commit such violence and barbarism.
* Seemingly subverted in George Miller's ''[[Happy Feet]]'', though Your Mileage May Vary, depending on your interpretation.
* [[Arthur C. Clarke (Creator)]]'s novels and their film adaptations ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' and ''[[Two Thousand Ten the Year We Make Contact]]'' explore this subject with H.A.L. 9000, the [[AI Is a Crapshoot|AI]] [[Master Computer]] of the USS ''Discovery''. In ''2001'', HAL goes insane and murders the crew, before being disconnected by the final surviving astronaut, Dave Bowman. The reason for this is not fully revealed until ''2010'' -- he was given [[Logic Bomb|irreconcilably conflicting orders]]. After he's restored to full functioning, however, it suddenly becomes necessary for the astronauts to leave Jupiter immediately or be killed. The climactic conflict arises over whether it's acceptable to ask HAL to risk his own destruction to save the humans aboard the ''Leonov''. The majority of the crew is for lying to him and disconnecting him if he fails to comply, but Dr. Chandra, HAL's creator, feels that he will make the proper decision if told the whole truth. {{spoiler|Chandra turns out to be correct.}} Their final farewell is a [[Tear Jerker]].
{{quote| '''Curnow:''' So it's him or us? I vote us. All opposed? [...] The ayes have it.}}
* Uncomfortably invoked by the "boarding the Arks" scene in ''[[Two Thousand Twelve (Film)|Two Thousand Twelve]]''. Let's see, based on the onscreen action, they've saved about 1,000 humans... and two giraffes. And ''no'' [[That Poor Plant|plants]]. Good [[Homestar Runner|jarb]]. (Yeah, yeah, we know it's an obvious Noah's Ark parallel, but...)
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* ''[[And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird]]'' plays with this. The villain knows that the robot Newman has been [[Haunted Technology|possessed]] by human intelligence Matt, and yet dismantles him. Matt's family regards this with appropriate horror. On the other hand, Matt's son hitting him in an argument isn't treated seriously at all.
* In a rare example of What Measure Is A Non-Living Object, the male and female leads in ''[[National Treasure]]'' both opt to risk the latter's [[Disney Villain Death]] rather than [[Friend or Idol Decision|allow an item they're carrying to fall into a pit and be lost forever]]. Justified because they're both die-hard historians, and it's the freakin' ''Declaration of Independence''.
* In the silent movie ''[[The Golem (Film)|The Golem]]'', the Rabbi -- who is essentially a good character -- has no qualms about turning his creation the [[Golem]] on and off according to his convenience, and eventually prepares to destroy him when the latter has fulfilled his purpose. The Golem, [[Non
* In ''Starchaser: The Legend of Orin'', if you are a robot, '''RUN'''. You have a 90% chance of being killed, regardless of how much personality or plot importance you have. If you're a fembot, you're the character who gets kidnapped, mind raped, sold into slavery, and killed. This movie seriously hates robots.
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