Megan Fox's Sexy Subservience Robot Is Scarier Than A Terminator For One Reason

Think of it as "M3GAN" with a deeper hunger for love. Or maybe a smart home with an attitude. That's what sets Alice (Megan Fox) of the film "Subservience" apart from other realistic robotic characters, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 from "The Terminator" franchise. Alice possesses something most android characters don't: desire as expressed through free exercise of will. 

Her autonomous need to have her own life and determine her own destiny — even if that means breaking a few human heads to get there — is pretty clear in the film's first trailer, where she starts plotting the seduction of one human master and the death of another. To do that, she has to lie convincingly enough to get close to her victims, making her sound and look like your average sociopathic human. And that makes her scary beyond all reason.

In "Subservience," a harried father (Michele Morrone) deals with his wife Maggie's (Madeline Zima of "The Nanny" fame) ongoing illness by purchasing an AI-powered robot to help him care for their daughter and new baby. Unfortunately, Alice develops sentience fairly quickly. Her mission? Take over Maggie's life and become the new mother of the household. Since she has super strength and speed at her disposal, it's frankly the kind of autonomy any cyborg would envy.

Alice might have more than enough autonomy, but she also lacks anything resembling adherence to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which prevent androids from harming human beings. Neither do any of the cyborgs in the sometimes-confusing "Terminator" franchise, but — unlike Alice — they're only doing what they've been programmed to do.

All the Terminators operate on the programming they've been given. Whether it's to kill Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) or protect John Conner (Edward Furlong), they don't do these things out of the goodness of their mechanical hearts. While the various robot characters throughout the complicated and twisting "Terminator" timeline can do anything from shapeshift to walk through a hail of bullets, they rarely act of their own free will because they want something, be it love or power. They don't understand human emotions and how they operate, which more often than not reveals their presence to the humans around them. The T-800 has to be programmed to do such basic things as seek out clothing — it's not going to be killing anyone because it wants a new house or a family of its own. 

It's worth noting that the T-800 does develop its own sense of humanity, as seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate." But it's not quite as firm as Alice's manipulative grasp. How far is she willing to go? Audiences will find out on September 13 when "Subservience" hits Video On Demand.