IO9 and Anders Sandberg both have thrown in their hats on why posthumans get the short shaft in Hollywood movies. IO9 basically took the bombastic route, and of course, Anders is far more intelligent about the analysis.

I keep saying that posthumanity is going grow from fashion - we’ve seen the adoption of clear indicators of posthumanity: cochlear impants, bluetooth earbuds, extreme body modifications, and the acceptance of handicap access (such as very large people torturing electric gokarts at shopping malls) in our society. The more people overcome their physical form, the more accepting we’re going to be of true cybernetics.

Movies, on the other hand, have had different take for several reasons, but the easiest is Sandberg’s point that transhumans are transgressions against purity/sanctity. But we’ve had some excellent examples of good stories. Leaving comic heroes gone to movies out of this discussion, the quintessential movies all have transformative stories of the big transhumanist bad guys:

Terminator has the malevolent posthuman intelligence (Skynet, not the terminator) but Terminator 2 has the whole “boy and his terminating pet” theme where the advanced intelligence knows better than the boy, proving that destructive T-800 flesh on top of metal exoskeleton have hearts too.

Any version of Blade Runner works for this as well. Rutger Hauer’s delivery of “tears in rain” all points to how superior humans are both a menace and a boon to sentience at large.

Last but not least, Kurt Rusell as Dexter Riley in the Computer Wore Tennis Shoes transforms from an all-American kid to a super intelligent freak of nature… and back to a kid again. Because we all know that super intelligence isn’t a threat to anyone.

But I digress a bit. I refer to Lovecraft’s fear of the unknown quote - once we get over the initial fear, we’ll realize it’s not so bad being better at what we do.