Rotwang
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C. A. Rotwang is a fictional character in Fritz Lang's seminal 1927 science fiction film Metropolis, and one of the prototypes of the mad scientist.
He is a brilliant but amoral inventor, whose greatest achievement is the creation of a robot "in the image of man" (in his own words), the perfect worker of the future, intended to replace human workers who are prone to fatigue and mistakes. Thus Rotwang is similar to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein in his hubristic ambition to "play God" and create a sentient, quasi-human being, but goes considerably further in intending his creation as a replacement for humans rather than a means to resurrect dead people. His contempt for humanity is further evident from his efforts to bring about the destruction of Metropolis' existing workers.
Another connection with Frankenstein which is not evident from the extant versions of the film, but was an important plot element in Thea von Harbou's story on which the film was based, is that Rotwang intended to build his robot specifically in the image of his dead lover—a theme shared with Shelley's original Frankenstein novel, which also makes it easier to understand his final madness and attempted revenge when his beloved robot is destroyed.
Though not the first mad scientist to be portrayed in fiction, the character of Rotwang was very influential in the iconography of the mad scientist archetype. His laboratory, with its profusion of Tesla coils and towering switch panels, became a stock feature of many later films, including, ironically, many Frankenstein movies. His wild, unkempt shock of hair eerily foreshadowed not only many fictional mad scientists, but some real-life examples of life imitating art—most notably Albert Einstein. Significantly, in his quest to create a machine more perfect than a human being, Rotwang has lost his right hand, replacing it with a prosthetic mechanical hand, foreshadowing a similar trait in many later fictional villains, from Sauron in the Lord of the Rings to Darth Vader in the Star Wars films and Dr. Strangelove of Stanley Kubrick fame.
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