80 SERVO 07.2015
Three More Well-Known Movie Action
Prop Robots
Placed in other very visible
locations in the museum are three
famous movie robots that are fairly
recent. Number Five — or better
known as Johnny Five from the 1986
movie, Short Circuit — is shown in
Figure 17. As you probably already
know, the film’s storyline is about
when the military robot, number 5
from Nova Robotics was struck by
lightning and went from being a
robotic killer to a sentient — a kind-hearted being who was ‘alive!’
Again, here is a robot prop that
took John four years to build, finishing
up in 2004. Building one part at a
time, John either used stills grabbed
from both the ’86 and ’88 movies, or
from driving down to the LA film
industry area to photograph and
measure an actual prop.
One cannot talk about the Star
Wars movies and cute little R2D2
without mentioning the prim and
proper speaking gold-colored British
butler robot, C-3PO (Figure 18) that
accompanied his diminutive pal
around in most scenes. Notice that C-
3PO is holding his severed leg!
Can you imagine being stuffed
into an extremely uncomfortable and
very hot costume and standing in the
blazing desert sun for hours in an
outdoor set? The protocol droid
appeared in all seven Star Wars
movies and the prop’s designer, Ralph
McQuarrie based C-3PO somewhat on
the Maria costume from Metropolis.
John built his C-3PO in 2000.
The Terminator from the 1984
film of the same name has become
even more famous. Not necessarily as
a killer robot (in the first movie), but
because he (it) later became the
“governator” of a large western state
where I used to live.
Whereas most robots in movies
slowly became a bit more tame and
likeable as the years passed, the
Terminator T-800 Model 101 from the
year 2029 is a pretty nasty cyborg.
Figure 16 - Robot from the 1954 film,
Target Earth.
Figure 17 - Johnny Five from
Short Circuit.
Figure 19 - The Terminator T-800
Model 101.
Figure 18 - C-3PO from Star Wars.