by Melissa Strong

Practically since the invention of the motion picture, movies have imagined worlds where humans are threatened, surpassed, and replaced by androids, cyborgs, hybrids, and machines. Metropolis (1927), the seminal silent film written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou and directed by Lang, anticipates Blade Runner’s replicants as well as the alt- and post-humans that follow in the twenty-first century.