20 best sci-fi movies featuring women

10. WALL-E

At the heart of it, the idea of giving robots a gender is a pretty strange one. After all, a robot is ultimately a collection of mechanical parts and electrical impulses that has no need to reproduce in a, shall we say, biological manner. Certainly, it the world of WALL-E, they have no social or cultural structures that would impose gender on a given machine.

Still, it’s pretty clear that we’re supposed to assign some sort of gender to the robots in this science fiction Pixar film. WALL-E, the trash collecting robot so cute that it’s practically weaponized, is a sort of dweebish Jerry Lewis type. He’s stuck on Earth, cleaning up massive piles of trash long after humans have abandoned their home planet.

WALL-E’s endless hoovering and trash compacting is interrupted by the arrival of EVE. While EVE stands for “Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator”, it’s also clearly a feminine name. She’s also voiced by Elissa Knight, giving her a decidedly female tone. All of this is to say that EVE qualifies for inclusion here.

Where WALL-E, her co-protagonist, is a musical-loving robot nerd, EVE is simply cool. She’s straight out of Steve Jobs’ dreams, with her sleek exterior and minimal interface. EVE also sports some cool tools, including antigravity drives, an array of high-tech scanners, and a deadly arm cannon.

But EVE is also clearly intelligent and capable of emotion. While she barely “speaks” in any real sense throughout the movie, her actions show an inner strength and ability to save the day with WALL-E.