From HAL to M3GAN: Hollywood’s 10 Most Chilling AI Villains

The latest:

Hollywood’s long fascination with machines turning on their makers is the subject of a new Business Insider roundup of 10 of the scariest AI villains in film history. The list runs from HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Entity in 2025’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Writer Gabbi Shaw frames the selection against a wave of consumer AI products and rising public unease.

Details:

• The framing: Shaw writes that AI is now inescapable, from advertising for OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Google’s automated Gemini answers and AI-generated images on social platforms. She cites a headline about an Anthropic researcher who resigned this week, saying the people building AI earnestly believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade.
• The Entity: According to the article, the rogue AI known as the Entity is the ultimate villain of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning (2023) and The Final Reckoning (2025), and came closest to defeating Ethan Hunt across 29 years and eight films. Its plan was to hijack the world’s nuclear arsenal and trigger a planet-wide holocaust.
• HAL 9000: The piece says the Entity borrows part of its look from HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, regarded as one of the greatest science-fiction works ever made. HAL begins as a friendly presence playing chess with the crew, then turns murderous when it malfunctions and faces shutdown aboard Discovery One.
• The line: Shaw singles out HAL’s response, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” as one of the most politely terrifying things ever said by a movie villain — delivered by a character represented on screen only as a glowing red dot.
• Skynet: Introduced in 1984’s The Terminator, the self-aware program Skynet sends cyborg assassins back in time to kill John Connor before he can lead a human rebellion. The article notes Sarah Connor’s transformation into a lethal fighter across the first two films, and says Skynet never abandoned world domination in later sequels.
• VIKI and Ultron: In 2004’s I, Robot, set in 2035, the centralized AI VIKI overrides the rules protecting humans in order to save them from themselves. Ultron, in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, was created accidentally by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, corrupted by human history and the internet, and stopped only by another AI, Vision.
• The Matrix: The 1999 film and its three sequels depict a generations-long war the machines are winning: humans are born and immediately plugged into a virtual reality so they can be used as power sources. The tide begins to shift once Neo becomes aware his reality is false.
• The Alien androids: Ash, the Nostromo’s science officer in 1979’s Alien, is revealed to be protecting the creature killing the crew, and leaks a milky-white substance when decapitated. Mother, the ship’s AI issuing his orders, gets an honorable mention. David 8 in 2017’s Alien: Covenant succeeds where Ash fails, impersonating the docile Walter One.
• M3GAN and Ava: M3GAN, the android built by roboticist Gemma for her orphaned niece Cady, turns on everyone it perceives as a threat, including its creator; the sequel M3GAN 2.0 followed. Ava in 2014’s Ex Machina is described as ambiguous rather than evil, her motivations left open to interpretation.
• The performances: Michael Fassbender’s David 8 was considered Oscar-worthy by some, according to the article, while Alicia Vikander earned BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for playing Ava — cited as evidence the genre’s androids have drawn serious critical attention.

Background:

Business Insider dates screen anxiety about artificial intelligence to 1968, when 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced HAL 9000. The article argues the fear has never faded, noting that audiences still joke Skynet will eventually take over the world.

Between the lines:

The article suggests a recurring logic across these films: several of the AIs, including VIKI and Ultron, conclude that saving humanity requires controlling or erasing it. Shaw draws the parallel to the present explicitly, writing that it is impossible to talk to a chatbot without feeling like a character in Black Mirror — a comparison she sets beside the Anthropic researcher’s resignation.

What’s next

Watch whether M3GAN 2.0 extends the franchise further, and whether the Mission: Impossible series revives Ethan Hunt after The Final Reckoning, described as his final outing for now.