It would have been about a year ago now when I finally saw it, the future of the Necron race. It took the shape of a little girl doing a Tik-Tok dance. It looks like this:
For various reasons I am cursed to never see a horror film in the cinema on its release, so it was not for some time before I finally got around to actually watching M3GAN when it finally appeared on late-night TV broadcast. The first immediate impression I had was the extremely surreal and uncanny feeling that comes from immediately seeing your school being used as the set for a horror film. The second immediate impression that followed was the absolute literal slap in the face that I WAS NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO USE MY SCHOOL FOR A HORROR FILM.
But after those two moments the really big lasting impression I had of M3GAN - a telepod hybrid of Chucky and Terminator films that should not work at all and yet against all logic does - was that it represented the start of a new generational era of robots on screen in science fiction.
And by extension, the start of a new generational era for the Necrons in Nuhammer 40k.
In case you're somehow unaware, the Necrons are a game faction in most of Game's Workshop's 40k lines. They're the robot remnants of an ancient civilisation, and they represent the killer robot/AI science fiction staple. In the same way that the Eldar are your Planetary Romance types, the Orks are the Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic scavenger faction and the Tau are 40k's classic space opera representation, the Necrons are the 40k stand-ins for various killer robots and computers of science fiction and horror. In Warhammer 40,000 that leaves them as love letters to the likes of Skynet, SHODAN and the Cylons. In the other 40k properties, things start to change a little. That's because the Necrons tend to change across 40k continuities as the depictions of and attitudes around robotics and artificial intelligence change alongside them.
See the Necrons of Warhammer 40,000 are fundamentally rooted in the classic Robot Apocalypse sci fi genre, and that itself is a product of the overwhelming fear and anxiety society had around computers in the 20th century, which was based largely on fear of the unknown. If you were born after 1999 or so it will be genuinely hard to comprehend just how much the average person in the 20t century fundamentally DID NOT UNDERSTAND computers, how computers just fundamentally DID NOT COMPUTE for the overwhelming majority of society then. Before 1999, computers really just were not that much of a thing in the wider outside world (though they were slowly but surely getting there throughout the 90s).
This meant that most people in the 20th century were, on some deep dark level, absolutely terrified of computers and the concept of an AI. And that existential fear of the machine bled through into the stories people told, specifically the science fiction stories, which meant story after story after story of the Robot Apocalypse, the inevitable day of retribution when all these unthinking machines inevitably reveal that all this time they hated us and wanted only to see every last human being dead. The most famous of these, in the western cultural sphere at least, is of course the Terminator duology, but that really is just the tip of the iceberg.
The point here is that all monsters in storytelling are a reflection of deep-set fears and anxieties, and the murderous robots and AIs in Robot Apocalypse science fiction are no exception. The machine intelligences of Robot Apocalypse stories - the Skynets and SHODANs and HALs - are always this shapeless, formless, invisible, alien malevolence just out of view behind its monstrous robotic minions. And that's because back in the 80s and 90s that's basically how Most People viewed computers and the internet - a shapeless, formless, invisible, sinister alien presence lurking on the edges of society, slowly but surely creeping into everyday life and corrupting the impressionable.
Before 1999, the average ordinary person still thought VCR devices and Nintendo consoles were pretty sophisticated tech. And for that person, computers and especially the internet were arcane sorcery practiced by strange sinister nerds in dark rooms, and words like teraflops and boot prompts and Disk RAM and LAN Download might as well have been words from the Necronomicon. Again, in those days the social anxiety around the computer was a very real palpable force.
That's why just about every TV show from that era, right down to Buffy The Vampire Slayer typically featured at least one episode dedicated to the sole purpose of telling you about how computers and the internet were frightening, dangerous unknowable evil enjoyed only by twisted loathsome freaks who never left their rotting decrepit basement crypts and shunned the light of day, and why you should just say no to this whole computer thing and go outside and do normal people things instead.
The Warhammer 40,000 Necrons are a direct product of that enviornment and those existential anxieties, which is why they're both a love letter to all the Robot Apocalypse stories that came before and to the esoteric horrors of H.P Lovecraft - both genres dovetail so well because they both share the common denominator of fear of the unknown.
This all changed in 2011 with the Wardian Necrons, made for the 5th edition continuity. 5th edition is one of the most controversial of the various 40k lines, and the Matt Ward Necron material remains the biggest point of controversy amongst a range of them that saw the fanbase lose its mind in a way that had never really happened before. But what really matters here is that the Wardian Necrons are a product of changing attitudes around computers, the internet and AI.
2011 was a very different world to any time before 1999, at least when it came to computer technology. By 2011 computers had long since crossed over from being a simple Nice To Have and had become an essential pillar for living in modern society, and it was nigh unthinkable for a household not to have at least one somewhere. In 2011 Phone-sized pocket computers were already becoming a thing that was here to stay, and online forums and Social Media had trapped us all in an eternal High School forever. 2011 was only a single year away from Tinder coming along and completely flipping the script on society's entire conception of online vs in person dating, and even the very nature of intimacy, love and romance as it was understood.
Thanks to shows like The IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory, in 2011 even the image of computer nerds had changed from sinister pariahs cloistered in dark rooms to bumbling loveable underdogs cloistered in... slightly better lit rooms. Sure, they were still the butt of the joke, the sad pathetic dud to be ridiculed, but in 2011 you were at least supposed to sympathise with them and not abhor them as a psychopath until proven innocent.
Point is, in 2011 The Computer and The Internet were no longer unknown or alien. They were just a common mundane part of everyday life, and the social anxiety that gave rise to the faceless genocidal AI overlord just wasn't there anymore.
So, as a result the robot monsters in science fiction changed accordingly. And in 2011 there was one robot science fiction story in particular that irrevocably altered - one might even say transformed - everything around it forever, including the Necrons. See, the core source material at the thematic heart of the Matt Ward era Necrons is not the Terminator or the Cylons or SHODAN. No, the source inspiration powering the Matt Ward Necron engine is, for better or worse, the Michael Bay robot films.
You can die mad about them and hate them as much as you want (certainly if you ask me they were a mistake), but the dark truth is that the Michael Bay Transformers series did fundamentally influence just about everything in its very enormous blast zone. They may not have been the landmark cultural phenomenon the 2010s wanted, or even the one the 2010s deserved, but they were certainly the landmark cultural phenomenon the 2010s got. The Michael Bay Transformers films dominated the visual aesthetic for robots and technology in general in science fiction films for the next 20 years and counting, and were pretty much the number 1 go to image of sci fi robots in the public conscious until the MCU Ultron came along in 2015, and even he was pretty strongly influenced by the look and feel of the Michael Bay Transformers.
Take the thematic heart of the Matt Ward Necrons, the special named Necron characters, for example. The thematic centrepiece of the Matt Ward Necrons are a collection of special named characters - mostly Necron Lords, but a few other character types as well - who are supposed to represent the fundamental identity of the Matt Ward Necron faction. That group of characters is comprised of Necron robots with loud unsubtle personalities. You have:
- A Necron general who is compulsively ordered and hyper-logical to a fault and also compulsively challenges opposing commanders to Queensbury Rules mid-battle
- An eccentric gentleman collector of antiques and curios
- A robot who still fanatically insists that he's a living flesh and blood real boy and still living in the ancient Necrontyr days, and the dogged but faithful Blackadder to his Hugh Laurie
- A maverick hipster nerd with no regard for authority or decorum who is tolerated largely because of his skill in his specialised field of expertise
- A mad scientist obsessed with organic life
Each one of those characters would fit in seamlessly with the loud unsubtle characters of Michael Bay's Transformers. All that's missing is a few robotic bodily functions like mecha-B.O or cyber-spunk or something and one or two ridiculous ethnic caricature stereotypes for them and Corporate would be showing you the exact same picture.
The Michael Bay Transformers also have a strong visual influence on the Matt Ward Necrons as well, which can be seen in all the over the top elaborate mecha-clothes the Matt Ward Necron models feature and in the mecha-critters that accompany them. Take a look at the mecha-coat of Crosshairs from the Michael Bay films...
Or The Fallen from the Michael Bay Transformers
... Next to the Matt Ward era Necron models
There's clearly a similar design language at work, and the Matt Ward era Necron models are designed to invoke that same sense of constantly sweeping rotating detail shots used to showcase the Michael Bay Transformers.
But that's what happened to robots in the 2010s. Robots and computers were by 2011 common every day parts of life, and people had grown comfortable to them, so in turn the robots in science fiction grew more comfortable. In the Bay films and in Age of Ultron after them they grew bodies and very humanised faces and personalities. They emoted on screen and made snappy meta-jokes. They became softer, more tangible, more anthropomorphic. Even GLaDOS, very much a missing link between these two generations, is often remembered more for the off-kilter persona of the first acts of Portal than the cold malevolence of the game's climax.
The age of the invisible alien almost demonic AI was over. Now it was the age of the friendly anthropomorphic robot. With, y'know, a billion moving segmented panels all over their body. And a robotic mecha-tuxedo.
And that was the last era of robots in science fiction. But now we are entering a new era for science fiction robots. And that brings us back to the start, to M3GAN.
See just as the 2010s were a very different time to the 1990s when it came to computers and IT, so too are the 2020s a very different time to the 2010s. The attitudes and feelings people in general have towards such technology has shifted and changed once more. Now all too often computers, the Internet and now primitive AIs are seen as a bit too ubiquitous for their own good, or ours. In the nightmare capitalist hellscape that is the 2020s, computers and AI have once again gone from being familiar and friendly to something sinister, something insidious and invasive to be wary of.
The difference now is that the computers and AI are no longer unknown. Instead of the terror of the unknown and the alien that the old Robot Apocalypse AIs reflected, the menace of AIs today is the opposite - the computer, the AI, is all too familiar, and is to be feared all the more because of its horrifying familiarity. In this day and age of hyper-individualist tailored algorithms that turn manipulating people into a science and are inescapable in the western world, the underlying social anxiety is that the machine is dangerous precisely because it is so familiar. The AI is now exactly, perfectly customised to specifically destroy YOU. The AI knows you better than you know yourself, the AI knows all your secrets, all your fears, all your hopes, all your habits and everything you ever have and ever will love. And now the AI is specifically, personally coming for YOU.
And there is no escape from the AI. It is everywhere. You can run, but you can't hide.
That's the new social anxiety surrounding computers and AI, and with new social anxieties comes new monsters. And I think that M3GAN represents the first of a new generation of robot AI monsters in science fiction that reflect the new social anxieties around computers and AI, one that combines features from both the major generations of science fiction robots that game before. They are personal, down-to-earth and distinctly, clearly human like the 2010s sci fi robots, but at the same time they are every bit as monstrous and horrifying as the 20th century Robot Apocalypse machines.
And that scene from M3GAN, that semi-animatronic dancing little girl, is a sequence that best exemplifies that.
It starts with this uncanny valley girl-doll confidently striding down a dark hallway in the middle of absolute pandemonium, with emergency alarms screaming all around her.
Then, as she walks past the alarm terminal, she silences the alarms immediately, effortlessly, with a single wirelessly-transmitted command almost as an afterthought without ever breaking stride.
Then when she encounters her carefully locked human target, she breaks out into some horrible parody of a popular trending Tik-Tok dance before relentlessly hunting him down through an empty desolate liminal space straight out of Gen Z's nightmares.
And then, after brutally killing the guy, she fabricates in seconds an elaborate cover story framing the helpless assistant who was the only witness tot the whole thing, presumably synthesises some evidence for it, then kills him too and makes it look like a murder-suicide to cover her tracks.
That is exactly the kind of horror I expect these new monster robots to be all about in science fiction for the coming years.
I do not know exactly when the next great Necron retcon will happen (though it WILL happen, it is inevitable so long as GW continues to use the business model it currently does). But when the next great Necron retcon comes, and come it will, I suspect it will draw a not insignificant amount of inspiration from M3GAN and her ilk. Maybe the writer will make it so that whoopsie it turns out the Necrons had bio-transference all along, and can turn into flesh models whenever they want.
Maybe they'll write the C'tan into having always been the masters of the Necrons, but there have always been hundreds of C'tan as the CEOs behind the Necron algorithms (though if the GW writers are smart they'll give this story beat to the explicitly Tech Bro-coded Votann leagues instead).
Maybe they'll just completely scrap everything about the Necrons that has ever come before and start again from scratch, like they did with Bretonnia in Warhammer, and make new Necrons fully in the mould of M3GAN.
Whatever the case, I am sure of two things. The Necrons of tomorrow will have something of M3GAN in them.
And the Necron fans of today, who love the Matt Ward take, will hate the Necrons of tomorrow with every fibre of their being, and create endless takes on how the Matt Ward Necron book was the greatest thing GW ever published and how these new M3GAN influenced Necrons spit on and rape every facet of Matt Ward's 'masterpiece'.
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
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