Our story in Automata begins in 2044, several years after increased solar activity has turned large parts of the earth into desert and made many wireless devices useless. Humanity constructed a line of humanoid robots called the Pilgrims to try and stop the desertification, but they failed, and the robots have since descended into miserable household caretakers and menial laborers for their human masters. The robots are programmed to obey two protocols: 1) a robot cannot harm any form of life 2) a robot cannot alter itself or others, a setup that is almost identical to legendary sci-fi author Isaac Asimov’s "Three Laws of Robotics" (Ibàñez unabashedly cites Asimov as a major source of inspiration). The chief mystery concerns several robots that appear to have unauthorized modifications to their intelligence, and finding out who or what is behind it all falls upon a burned out robot insurance agent named Jacq Vacuan (a bald Antonio Banderas, giving one of his best performances in years). Violence and depravity ensue, and before long, Jacq finds himself in way over his head, as does the rest of humanity.

Dirtied, dented machines moving around with alternating grace and clumsiness

Automata gets so many things right, especially when it comes to world building. Ibàñez, who came up as a visual effects artist, decided early on to create his robots using practical effects — full-scale puppetry — rather than relying on CGI. The results are impressively authentic and appropriately eerie, with dirtied, dented machines moving around with alternating grace and clumsiness, clearly occupying the same physical reality as their dishevelled human counterparts. The use of practical effects also makes the haunting scenes in Automata that much more disturbing and iconic, and there are many. A quick, opening credits still shot of human laborers assembling the Pilgirms in a Foxconn-like factory is admittedly blunt, but also poignant. A robot beggar with a staticy voice caught on loop, pleading for money on behalf of its human owner, who lies curled up beside it in a darkened tunnel, is almost profound.

Automata doesn’t shy away from computer generated imagery, though: instead, computer art is laced subtly throughout the film in areas where it works especially well, such as in the holographic displays and controls for many of the machines. The combination of low and high technologies has been done before many times, but seeing a pager and fax machine being used alongside the holograms and advanced robots in Automata, unironically and without comment, is a comically nostalgic, oddly reassuring thing to behold. From acid rain coats to nuclear batteries, every prop in every scene seems to fit together perfectly, adding to our sense of complete immersion in a filthy, hopeless future.