The heart wants what it wants. And sometimes what it wants is a robot or an operating system. (We're not speaking from experience.)
Guillermo del Toro's fantasy fairytale The Shape of Water is a love story between a woman and a merman, due out 16 February, 2018, and it's by no means the only example of movies where a human has fallen for a non-human...
(Warning: There are some spoilers ahead.)
1. Her - Man + Operating System
In Spike Jonze's smart, artful sci-fi, Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with an AI. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, it's a perfect AI who can evolve and learn, and who's his PA, his relationship counsellor, his best friend and eventually his lover.
A moving philosophical musing on flawed human relationships that probably makes Siri and Alexa feel a bit nervous right now.
2. Warm Bodies - Woman + Zombie
Otherwise known as 'Romero and Juliet' where a human woman (Teresa Palmer) falls in love with a zombie man (Nicholas Hoult) who's killed and eaten her boyfriend, much to the displeasure of her father.
This twist on the Shakespeare tale ends with love conquering all though, essentially proving the key to ending the apocalypse is zombie-human relations.
3. Ex_Machina - Man + AI
In this twisty, ingenious three-hander directed by Alex Garland, Oscar Isaacs is the tech genius who's created a completely life-like AI called Eva (Alicia Vikander). She thinks she's sentient, and tricks his employee (Domhnall Gleeson) into falling in love with her.
More Silicon Valley nightmare than cross-species romance.
4. King Kong - Woman + Ape
It's the classic tale. Giant ape meets girl. Ape loses girl. Ape saves girl from dinosaur attack. Girl's employer imprisons ape and puts him on Broadway in shackles. Ape takes girl up the Empire State and is shot down by aeroplanes.
Ah, 'twas beauty killed the beast! And also 'twas the aeroplanes.
5. Beauty and the Beast - Woman + Beast
Disney's classic fairytale sees a young woman fall in love with a cursed prince who looks like a wildebeest. He's gruff and grumpy, and boy is he hairy, but women do love a fixer-upper.
So much so that in the recent live action version, it was somewhat disappointing when the beast transformed back into the prince. Even though the prince was played by Dan Stevens.
6. Splash - Man + Mermaid
Tom Hanks falls for a mermaid in Ron Howard's fantasy romance which begins as a literal 'fish out of water' comedy, and then gets a bit dark when a scientist's desperation to expose Daryl Hannah's mermaid's fishy tail inadvertently leads to her being taken to a lab and almost dissected.
It all ends happily ever after though, if happily ever after is living the rest of your life at the bottom of the ocean.
7. Lars and the Real Girl - Man + Doll
Ryan Gosling stars as a socially isolated man who convinces himself the full-size sex doll he bought on the internet is actually his girlfriend, a wheelchair-using missionary called Bianca.
Not as weird and pervy as it sounds, but actually a rather touching romantic drama where the townsfolk's acceptance of Bianca and help from a psychologist coax dysfunctional Lars back into the real world.
Not to be confused with Mannequin, where Andrew McCarthy thinks a shop dummy is his real -life girlfriend and it turns out she is.
8. Howard the Duck - Woman + Duck
Much-maligned Marvel movie produced by Lucasfilm about an intergalactic duck transported from Duck World to Earth, where he meets and falls for a human female played by Lea Thompson. The production was initially meant to be an animation but became live action because of contractual obligations, and the movie changed the tone and the satire of the source material.
It's sleazy rather than romantic and features a weird bit where Howard gets a sort of feather erection via the crest on his head. Yeuch.
9. Earth Girls are Easy - Woman + Alien
One of a number of human + alien movies, which include Star Man, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Under The Skin and My Stepmother is an Alien, this good-natured comedy-musical addition stars Geena Davis as a valley girl who finds three horny aliens have crash-landed in her swimming pool.
