Artificial Intelligence: AI Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
David is 11 years old. He weighs 60 pounds. He is 4 feet, 6 inches tall. He has brown hair. His love is real. But he is not.
Journey To A World Where Robots Dream And Desire
This Is Not A Game
This summer, discover the next step in evolution.
Do not speak the seven-word activation code unless you mean it.
In the not-so-far future the polar ice caps have melted and the resulting raise of the ocean waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world. Withdrawn to the interior of the continents, the human race keeps advancing, reaching to the point of creating realistic robots (called mechas) to serve him. One of the mecha-producing companies builds David, an artificial kid which is the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his "mother", Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted him as a substitute for her real son, who remains in cryo-stasis, stricken by an incurable disease. David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real son returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically. A futuristic adaptation of the tale of Pinocchio, with David being the "fake" boy who desperately wants to become "real".
| William Hurt | Prof. Hobby, the Visionary |
| Jude Law | Gigolo Joe |
| Haley Joel Osment | David |
| Frances O'Connor | Monica Swinton |
| Brendan Gleeson | |
| Sam Robards | Henry Swinton |
| Jake Thomas | Martin Swinton |
| Ken Leung | Syatyoo-Sama |
| Eugene Osment | Supernerd |
| April Grace | Female Colleague |
| Matt Winston | Executive |
| Sabrina Grdevich | Secretary |
| Theo Greenly | Todd |
| Steven Spielberg |
6.80 out of 10 (53771 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Softies At Work
posted on 30 Aug 2009The late Stanley Kubrick's coda to a profound film career essentially reiterates the conclusions about love that he examined in his final film `Eyes Wide Shut' and by allowing Steven Spielberg to direct here he receives the reassurances that a family man like Spielberg can provide. As dour as his worldview is, Kubrick has become a softie at heart but he wants it both ways: you should be happy to be alive and you should welcome death as relief as well; Spielberg, with his idealizations of suburban life intermingling with his fantasy escapes into the void, is a perfect foil for this kind of contradictory viewpoint. But the coldness that was the basis for Kubrick's direction is anathema to Spielberg and the humanity he tries to infuse makes the whole thing rather discomfiting. Fortunately, the one-note Haley Joel Osment, playing a robot with the capacity to love searching for the mother who has abandoned him, keeps the proceedings from getting too emotionally taxing, unintentionally allowing you to keep the necessary distance. Spielberg's usual elegant filmmaking is very much in evidence and the film's pacing belies its 145 minute running time.
Flawed Philosophy
posted on 28 Aug 2009Though artful and well crafted, this film is entirely dependant on anthropomorphism. I found Teddy to be the most human character of the entire film. If you can get past the implausibility of the premise, and the unrelenting darkness of the film, the film can stimulate some good discussion by the philisophical questions it raises even though the film's answers were so unsatisfactory.
A.I. Absolutely Inane!
posted on 28 Aug 2009Cinematic Pap. Unimaginative, uninspiring and non-entertaining. This must be what happens when you take the desires of one dead director and mix it with the designs of another -- who's desires to align with the dead one overrides all, and scrambles the creative genius of both into a hodge podge of cheap gag references to other movies which simply fails miserably to deliver.Perhaps if Speilberg would've had the movie set in our day, instead of some far flung future date -- with fancy cars that look like cost-production clones of Ford Falcon's used on old "Bladerunner" backlot sound stages to wow the audience with future looks at transportation, without even the engineering comforts of say a 1990's Honda, is noticably bad.Once the viewer gets past these many annoyances, he or she is left unfulfilled. The subliminal attempts to give little credits to other Spielberg efforts is lame, or to William Hurt swinging the little A.I. boy in his office chair, just like he does Holly Hunter in "Network" or ET's finger's jetting about across the screen...and what does the audience get for their patience in looking at their watches, patiently waiting with hope for this debacle to be over but -- disappointment! Just watch the numbers drop after the word on this one quickly spreads. Go see "Cats and Dogs" instead.Disappointment abounds. The music, the story or any opportunity to convey any creative spark whatsover, simply fail to manifest themselves throughout the entire waste of time.Today, with our tremendous bio-ethical, medical and technological discovery, Speilberg throws a gutter ball. So much opportunity to draw the parallel of what's truly frightening about these related issues, A.I. does NOT -- not even once -- make it's case.What a disappointment, really. My best advise: Wait till CBS airs it next year and save you and your date the $30.00 it'll cost you. That way, you won't lose a thing, like you will if you fail to heed my warning.
A.I. is a perfect example of negative criticism born from expectations based on assumption or ignorance.
posted on 26 Aug 2009That's right, Steven Spielberg is back. He has taken it upon himself to helm the story started years and years ago by the late Stanley Kubrick, and Kubrick's influence is strikingly clear, especially late in the film. A lot of people were put off by A.I., but this is because they expected a cute kids movie, something in the tradition of E.T. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that both movies have initials in the titles that caused this association. Spielberg is no stranger to dark content. I don't think I need to take the time to explain the content of much of Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List or even pars of Jurassic Park. Before I saw A.I., I read that Spielberg described the tone as what you would get if E.T. had been killed and dissected by the scientists, or if he had never recovered from that mysterious disease. This is a surprisingly accurate description of what you get with the film, so be warned! Don't come out disappointed because of false expectations, as I'm sure is the case with soccer moms around the world. The other thing that people are likely to criticize A.I. for is the almost uncomfortable closeness with which the film parallels the Pinocchio story in many ways. Sure it does that, but it never pretends that it doesn't. On the other hand, you have to keep in mind that this is also a tremendously different version of the Pinocchio story. This is not the story of a puppet, made for entertainment, miraculously attaining consciousness and emotions and wanting to be a real boy, it's the story of a hugely advanced artificially intelligent robot, created to love and comfort humans, attaining consciousness and emotions and wanting to be a real boy.(spoilers) The thing to remember here is the extent to which reality was considered when creating a film with such a fantastical premise. Sure, this is science fiction, but one of the greatest pitfalls of the sci fi genre is the excessive dismissal of reality. In A.I., everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and it's a good thing, because that's life. Monica decides to keep little David (Osment), but then her real son comes out of his coma, which no one expected. Needless to say, all sorts of complications come as a result. Martin (Monica's son) treats David with all of the inhumanity and cruelty as he would treat any lifeless toy. He has no respect for David's feelings, and while this does not seem to bother David, it does have an impact on the development of his emotions. Later on, we find out how hated these androids are by real humans, we see them destroyed, we see them rotting in dumps filled with sickening body parts, where damaged and mutilated robots wander, in search of replacement parts.This is not a perfect futuristic world, although it is a lot cleaner and more optimistic than the future presented in the majority of science fiction films. The emphasis here is not placed on making everyone happy. You won't walk away from the film with a contented smile on your face, everything does not go as planned, and no one lives happily ever after. In fact, the end of the film runs the risk of ruining the rest of it, the way the end of Mission to Mars absolutely wrecked what was otherwise a decent sci fi film. The unimaginably advanced machines of 2000 years in the future are at first frighteningly disappointing, but also strangely beautiful (they look like machinery encased in flawless glass...) and not entirely beyond reason. They may have been a little too computer animated, but they ultimately served their purpose well. Haley Joel Osment gives a stunning performance as David, he even surpasses his excellent performance in the great film The Sixth Sense. Haley Joel is on his way to big things. The special effects were spectacular, both with all of the machines as well as the scenery and also the little things, like the great character Teddy. Teddy was a much better character than Wilson in Cast Away, by the way. And Jude Law gave a strangely refreshing performance as Gigolo Joe, the lover robot who also ends up inadvertently as David's fortunate sidekick. With A.I., Steven Spielberg has taken his uncanny ability to please huge numbers of people and mixed it with Stanley Kubrick's uncanny ability to perplex huge numbers of people, and the result is a tremendously pleasing film that unfortunately went completely misunderstood by a substantial portion of the audience. There can be no mistake about the quality of this movie, but the subject matter is something that today's spoiled audiences are not likely to swallow too easily. Modern cinema is so sugar coated and drab that people just can't take it when a little robot boy spends 2000 years in a stolen police helicopter at the bottom of the ocean, pleading to a lifeless statue to make him into a real boy. If you just can't stand not having a bright side, consider the fact that if she had made him real, he would have died. The movie ends in death, but it is a desired death. It is a rest for a robot who has searched for closure for all those years, much like what was seen in the far inferior Bicentennial Man. If you hated the movie, I'm sorry to hear it, but I can say with reasonable certainty that it's because you didn't understand it or you had unjustifiable expectations. Watch it again with an open mind, and enjoy this excellent film for what it is. Steven Spielberg was obviously not concerned with making everyone happy when he wrote the screenplay for A.I., he was concerned with telling a good story, and that's exactly what he did.
Oh dear, what a mess ...
posted on 26 Aug 2009It is so saddening that Steven Spielberg of all people had to make this film. And it is a mystery why Stanley Kubrick wanted it so. The sharp intellect and non-cliché of Kubrick is in complete contrast to Spielberg's soppy, sentimental cliché extravaganzas. The ending does away with all the cerebral handling of the theme of artificial intelligence and cooks a stew of Close Encounters cuddly aliens, fairies and resurrection superstition. Oh dear, what a mess! If you want brain exercise and uniqueness please see anything done by Kubrick and don't be mislead by the homage connection here. It is a complete waste of Kubrick's 15+ years of analysis, it deserves to be remade by a peer of Kubrick.
Stop him before he films again!
posted on 20 Aug 2009If "Eyes Wide Shut" hadn't been such an iffy effort, I might surmise that Stanley Kubrick would be spinning in his grave with the release of Spielberg's take on his A.I. project. Something tells me he still wouldn't be best pleased to see his idea subjected to the Spielberg Schmaltz Machine.Revealing himself as totally bankrupt in the imagination account, Spielberg recycles bits from his Greatest Hits collection: the first sight of David (the artificial boy) recalls the first sight of the alien in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the moon motif evokes "E.T.," the inexplicable teddy bear is a reborn Gremlin (with the voice of Hal the computer, from "2001: A Space Odyssey") and, most reprehensibly, the Flesh Fair smells of "Schindler's List." The cocoon-like bed in the boy's room even has the Dreamworks logo to lull the kid to sleep!But this would be almost tolerable if the story itself weren't so dismally flawed: full of inconsistencies and unmotivated acts. If humanity could create a robot (not to mention a child's toy) that can remain active for 2000 years, how could they not come up with a way to maximize or replace their resources so that the robots weren't necessary in the first place? If a mecha boy is destroyed by eating spinach (take THAT, Popeye), how does he remain untouched by being submerged in water? If all of Manhattan (with its underground power cables) is under 50 storeys of water, how does William Hurt's character maintain a home and laboratory at the top of a skyscraper? What on earth caused the creeped-out mother first to activate the love-imprint and then agree to abandon the loving son? Nothing in Monica Swinton's behavior as shown caused either act to make sense. And let's not forget: who the heck is providing the voice-over?The question about Monica nods to the odd undertone of misogyny in the entire film. Let's leave aside the startling entrance gates to Rouge City, where pneumatic babes with their heads flung back fellate each car as it approaches. The notion of the artificial boy appears meant only for mothers. When David's imprinting is activated, he calls Monica "Mommy" but Henry is still "Henry." Apparently, only mothers who lose sons are in need of this artifical support. The only compassionate female in the film is a mecha nanny at the Flesh Fair, who consists only of a body and a face: the camera makes it quite clear that there is no brain behind the features. I found myself consumed with curiosity about the nature of Spielberg's relationship with his own mommy.One of the greatest flaws, however, is Spielberg's avoidance of the question he poses at the very beginning of the film. One of the great scientist's assistants asks, "Once you've made a robot love a person, how do you get that person to love the robot? It's a moral question, isn't it?" Indeed it is, but Spielberg isn't going to waste his time on anything profound and moral. Too busy with his modernized fairy-tale, he won't even address what the nature of love is. Because what David evinces is not love, it is programmed obsession. The film, already mistitled (nothing in the film has ANYTHING to do with artificial "intelligence" -- except perhaps the making of it), isn't even dealing with artificial emotion.But nothing -- NOTHING -- in the film prepares you for the barrage of saccharine implicit in the last 15-20 minutes. Instead of ending this disaster where it made the best cinematic sense to, with David endlessly imploring the Blue Fairy to make him a real boy, Spielberg tacks on a nauseating and profoundly pointless coda in which David gets...well, what? What exactly did he gain? The ending was so manipulative (Spielberg's calling-card) and syrupy as to make this viewer need a shower.Save your money. Don't be Spielberg's enabler.
Flawless second half
posted on 20 Aug 2009A seriously good movie once Martin, the son of the Swintons who adopted David, regained consciousness.I thought it was rather losing its way during the early build-up but the final hour redeemed the movie . . . and then some.Very enjoyable, and the ending was not over the top, which is always a danger with blockbusters.
Better than I thought it would be
posted on 20 Aug 2009Whenever I see a new Steven Spielberg movie for the first time, the words that pop out of my mouth are almost without exception "well, the bloke did it again". However I was very suspicious about "Artificial intelligence", simply because Spielberg usually has a very over-sentimental style of filmmaking and the story of a robot-boy desperately seeking motherly love sounded like the corniest film he has ever done. Once again I'm glad I was wrong. Of course the ending is so annoyingly "Spielbergish" that it's really not even touching anymore but most of the movie actually looks more like, well, Stanley Kubrick's work than a traditional Spielberg film.Of course that leads to a question what would "AI" have looked like if Kubrick would have been the man behind the camera instead of Steven. Even better, I'm sure, but this one is a wonderful experience too so why bother to complain? Haley Joel Osment's performance was surprisingly incredible. I never really understood his talent when I watched "The Sixth sense" but now I have to admit that he's a phenomenally gifted kid and I'm sure he will keep on getting roles as an adult. Jude Law made a fantastic supporting role as Gigolo Joe. He was funny, stylish and downright terrific. "Artificial intelligence" will be remembered as one of the big Spielberg classics.
I don't think Kubrick would have liked it, either.
posted on 20 Aug 2009If I had one suggestion to Spielberg, it would be this: editing is GOOD. After 2 hours, I got up to water my plants, as the film went from being mildly thought provoking to pseudo-emotional, and the plot shifted from weak to nonexistent. I would have loved to see the concept of the film carried to completion by Kubrick, as the dark subject matter and psychological and moral implications in the story seem like something Kubrick could have portrayed exquisitely.AI, as made by Spielberg, though visually stunning and well acted, just feels like it was dumbed down and dressed up to appeal to a broader audience. Had he truely committed to making it a family film, instead of riding the fence (badly) between dark drama and fairy tale, perhaps I'd have really enjoyed the it. At least I wouldn't have wasted an entire afternoon waiting for it to get better.
Stunningly Beautiful Film - Tender Like the Heart of A Child
posted on 16 Aug 2009What can I say? This is one truly wonderful movie. It is like nothing you've ever seen before. How so? It does not cater to the popcorn and Jujubee crowd that seems to darken the corners of many an intelligent forum these days.Anyone who thinks Speilberg is there to crank out the same movie OVER AND OVER AGAIN should stay away from this truly great artist's movie from now on. There's always another mindless pit with guns and action that says NOTHING new nor presents nothing truly close to the human heart. Go to see "Tomb Raider" instead. You will be enriched to your shallow heart's and mind's content.Here we have another shockingly beautiful performance by Haley Joel Osment, gorgeous artistic direction, and technical marvels to keep you thinking long after the movie has ended.Of course, this was Stanley Kubrick's project. We will never know what he would have done with it. Suffice it to say that Speilberg managed it with virtuosity, grace and aplomb. I am sure Stanley would have loved it.The visuals, sets and matte artistry were awe-inspiring and lent themselves intimately to the story.The John Williams musical score was prodigious in it's non-intrusive nature and lovely beyond words. I am one of those people that do NOT run out to see if my car is still in the parking lot. I stayed until the final notes died away - what a lovely experience.Only one aspect of the film even irked me in the slightest - there was something missing in the writing for the adoptive father. He seemed to be rather one-dimensional. First he was all excited about the boy and then all of a sudden he thought the boy was a monster. Too bad.The passing of time and the appearance of new characters at the end was handled with intelligence and never seemed contrived.ALL IN ALL: one of the finest NEW things I've seen in a long time. It goes beyond any science-fiction/fantasy movie yet made and creates a new genre of the heart.
A Great Film, but only if you like to think...
posted on 16 Aug 2009This was a great movie! But only if you care to actually think while you watch. Many movie-goers want to be spoon-fed the storyline, this movie actually makes you think about the role humanity plays in its own destiny.Many have said the multiple endings were "added on", but if you look at the original Kubrick screenplay (what was completed), they are not seperate endings, but rather a progression of thought, start-to-end.Spielberg took some liberties with the touchy-feely side of the movie, but never varied from the original story line that Kubrick wrote. This movie is a trilogy, written in three parts, presented as the same.In a nutshell, if you don't understand, or can't "figure out" the movie, then stick to less demanding fare like "Scoobie Doo" or the like. On the other hand, if you are a "thinker" when you watch a movie, then this one is definitely for you.
A bad version of Pinocchio
posted on 12 Aug 2009I was expecting a lot out of this movie since Spielberg directed it. I was Extremely disappointed! The effects were good, Haley Joel Osment did an excellent job, naturally. But the plot bored me. The story line was too hokey and it was a blatant Pinocchio rip off without the fun animation. While it is meant on some levels to be a "thought piece," the only thing I was thinking was "When will this torture be over?" While the ethic arguments are apparent, they did not spend nearly enough time on them and spent too much time focusing on unimportant things. What a total waste of Jude Law!!
Destined to become a classic!
posted on 10 Aug 2009This film is a masterpiece, borne of the collaboration of two of film directors' masters -- Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg has been my favorite director since before he scared the daylights out of me as a young teenager with Jaws. Stanley Kubrick's films have been at the top of my list as well.I'm not going to give any spoilers here. This is a movie everyone must see for themselves. One suggestion: See this movie with an open mind. Don't sit down and think you're about to see a typical Spielberg film, or a Kubrick film that someone else finished for him. It is both, and neither.The acting in this film was beyond splendid. Special mention must be made here for young Haley Joel Osment. I fully expect him to not only be nominated for an Academy Award but I will have serious doubts about the system if he is not given the Oscar for his performance. This young man keep proving himself as a top-notch actor, a true professional.After seeing A.I., if you don't leave the theater thinking about life, morality, and mortality, seek help!
Thought provoking
posted on 08 Aug 2009A lot of the reviews I've seen, both here and elsewhere, carp on about the central character of the story - David - not being emotionally engaging. "How can we feel emotion for it? It's a robot!"Hmm...to misquote Churchill: "Never, in the history of human cinema, has a point been missed by quite so much, by so many".The whole point of the film was that David *did* feel emotion - genuine emotion - for his mother. Genuine emotion, you say? Rubbish! He was programmed that way.Hmm..yes. As are we. *That* is the point. We are organic machines, comprised of cells and tissues and fluids, that process information and come out with emotion. David was a mechanical machine, with wires and electrodes and processors, that process information and come out with emotion.What's the difference? That is the question asked by the film. If you were asked to *prove* your emotions for your mother were real, could you? How then, can one insist David's emotions were simply "programmed", any more than ours are "programmed" by evolution and our neural network?Seems to me an awfully humanocentric viewpoint is being flung about; one kind of similar, in principle, to the bloodthirsty (fluid-thirsty?) mob in the film who were cheering as the droids were torn to pieces, burned and dissolved by acid.I think we need to have a long, hard look at ourselves if we find it so frightening to accept that something *different* to us could maybe, just maybe, feel the same.I give A.I. 7.5/10
Heart Brains and Wires.
posted on 08 Aug 2009David is a robot boy programmed to experience human emotions, after a series of unfortunate home life events he embarks on the ultimate voyage of discovery.Spielberg and Kubrick!, hmm well on first glance they appear to be odd bedfellows, but strip away the formers high concept block busters and you can see traits that bring the two giants together. Debate will rage forever about if Spielberg's finished product is in line with what Kubrick had envisaged before sadly passing away to witness what he had asked Spielberg to mold. You can find hundreds of comments and philosophical arguments about the merits of Artificial Intelligence: AI, this site alone has been party to aggressive discussion about its intelligent worth, with the ending alone particularly causing consternation to many. So with that in mind i don't wish to over do my brainiac leanings on this bleak and cold masterpiece, i just wish to jot down my emotional thoughts about how this film makes me feel.I love this film so much, i really do, which considering it leaves me feeling quite desolate, makes it even more of a interesting statement. What Spielberg has done here is take Kubrick's cold eloquent style and fused it with a sort of edgy Pinocchio meets 2001s meaning, this is in short the polar opposite to his own E.T fable. Considering that this story is played out thru a robot child's point of view, the subject matter is shatteringly adult, it resonates with grim violence as it poses many unanswerable questions. What does it mean to be real? can we replicate ourselves into a synthetic being, and just how close can that being be to being perfect?, love and it's power, where is the cut off point where we can say they are only human traits?, you could go quite mad thinking too hard about it, and this is one of Spielbeg's masterstrokes with the picture, he is not here to spoon feed us {those thinking the ending is syrup are seriously misunderstanding it}, he outlays his grim tale and asks us if we dare to ponder these prevalent questions.Hayley Joel Osment is David and it's a hauntingly brilliant show from the youngster, intensely creepy and borderline freaky. David demands empathy as his loving family union comes crashing down around his newly emotive life, and it's here when the film takes a tonal shift that Osment excels. This then brings the excellent Jude Law, as mecha sex robot Gigolo Joe, into David's world, and here the film on the surface goes jaunty, but it's merely a brief diversion from the films core bleakness and is in fact adding to the head scratching nature of the beast. The visuals are wonderful, from the colour explosion that is Rouge City, to the underwater sequences in the final third, Spielberg not only dazzles with his tools, but also shows that he can fuse CGI with a serious storyline and let them benefit each other. Must give a nod of approval to John Williams score, nominated for an Oscar but not winning, it is however memorable and intensely touching.Artificial Intelligence is not for everyone, i can see quite easily why it is so hotly debated time and time again, but the work on the film is brilliant, almost as brilliant as the dark grim nature of the pictures heart. I firmly believe that in time this film will be revered as a classic, i'm also convinced that they will dissect it in film studies classes long after i have left this mortal coil. I just know that it's poetically beautiful and that come the end credits i have a multitude of questions in my head and a multitude of tears in my eyes, incredible 10/10.
Steven, Steven, Steven ...
posted on 06 Aug 2009Great idea for 1971 maybe. In this age of cloning who cares about robots that look almost human. Only the first part of the movie is worth watching the rest is a moralistic crapfest. Kubrick didn't make the movie because he knew it was a bad idea, so he passed to Spielberg who couldn't do much simply because the script was bad, oh wait a minute ... didn't he write the script?
Warm meets cold
posted on 06 Aug 2009A Steven Spielberg sci-fi film by way of Stanley Kubrick (or is it the other way around?) I think I would have preferred Kubrick's method for the entire film, instead of the beginning and middle passages. Spielberg resurrects the aliens from "Close Encounters" for the final moments of the film, and although the final scene is quite moving, it pales in comparison to the last few shots of "2001." This movie is beautifully shot and poignant, nevertheless, and in a summer of disappointing, overly hyped big budget films, this is the best bet.
And did Spielberg actually use "Once Upon a Time" from "Sleeping Beauty" for a scene near the beginning? An appropriate choice for the scene, but Rollerball (the 1975 original) already used it.
Chugga...chugga...splat
posted on 06 Aug 2009This film had a great concept. And it started off well. And went on... and on... and was quite good, and you thought it was going somewhere. The only problem, as in Bicentennial Man, being that the boy is outliving everyone. And this was bad, unlike in Bicentennial Man, because the boy's sole purpouse was to find the blue fairy. The plot was reasonably distributed along the timeline until (approx quote): "Boy moves in time. Seeks fairy. Uses submarine. Gets frozen in ice for a few thousand years..." WHOA! What? Hold on, he freezes? And then they totally randomly introduce wobbly translucent aliens. It's ridiculous. Talk about writing oneself into a corner...I do that sometimes, but then I go back, and start again at the point it started to get silly. They definitely let is get silly. The only mistake worse than this that Spielberg has made on an ending is the sterotypically cliched finale for Minority Report. A happy ending to end all happies... UMPH! Bad film.
The end of the Frankenstein myth?
posted on 29 Jul 2009___SPOILERS____ In 'A.I' Spielberg manages to overturn almost 70 years of filmmaking centered around the Frankenstein myth. In the Hollywood version of Frankenstein, man tampers with nature and a monster appears to punish him. In 'A.I.', man tampers with nature and creates a race of angelic beings -- which bring out the monster in him. This film may mark a major turning point in cinema plotlines. Could this be the end of 'Frankenstein' as an adequate storytelling myth?The reason I point this out is that the most angry people I've run into who have seen this film are in the film industry. This film was meant (among other things) to kick them hard in the butt. One reviewer commented that Spielberg failed to show us what is *really* evil about technology. That wasn't his purpose. He wanted to show that people are where the evil lies...even within his own Boomer peer group. That has to stick in the craw of creative folks who've spent their lives warning us about the dangers of science and technology in film -- while using the same high tech (CGI, indie DV) to make these very same films. It is no fun being called a hypocrite. A great slap in the face, hopefully a wakeup call.If you assume that David is really alive in some sense the interpretation is simple: the first child of a new golden age struggles with wicked elders who created him for the most callous of reasons. Only in the future (when his kind inherit the earth) does he find peace.But...even if we assume that David's love is in some sense not real this film has a powerful message. Assume he is a stand-in, symbol, an image for a real boy. He is treated horribly. Other symbols of goodness (maids, workers) are savaged before our eyes. This peaks in the relentless confrontation of the 'Flesh Fair' in which quietly protesting robots are destroyed for sport. Spielberg's message is clear: we don't have the right to evil behavior, even if it is directed at something that may be no more than a hunk of metal. This is an astonishing reversal of the usual Hollywood message about the evils of technology.This directly attacks the Hollywood Frankenstein myth appearing in indie and studio films alike. For example, in Jurassic Park (a franchise originally created by Spielberg) we have a short religious opening telling us of the perils of messing with nature. However this is like a prayer before gluttony -- the tampering releases a truckload of screaming dino action which is the main reason for seeing the film. The Frankenstein prophecy exists solely to relieve our guilty pleasure at seeing totally cool dinos charge around. Thousands of studio and indie filmmakers have used similar storylines without further reflection.In 'A.I'. Spielberg has called their entire mindset into question at a deep level. Is it ethical to vent our worst emotions on something even if it isn't real? Spielberg says no. If so, is it legit to create movies with 'enjoyable evil' simply because they're not real? Spielberg implies that it is wrong - evil acts performed with a facsimile are just as evil as with the real thing. And movies have no more reality than any robot. Definitely a major work that has the potential to redefine cinema storytelling. This is perfectly channeled Kubrick.
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Real Stupidity
posted on 30 Aug 2009(SPOILERS)Alright, a few comments about AI. Walked out of the movie theater, looked at my wife, and said, "Never again will I see another Speilberg movie." If you are a thoughtful person who likes thoughtful movies, you will hate AI. If you liked The Phantom Menace, then AI will be right up your alley.This is truely a bad movie -- it starts out ok (albeit with some over-the-top sentimentality and ridiculous violin background music) with the story of a family with a half dead kid who is willing, with aprehension, to "adopt" cute little "i see dead people" robot-boy. At this point, I'm thinking: "ok, there are some issues that the movie could deal with that could be really interesting once it becomes a little less sentimental."But alas, the sentimentality part was the best part (and it was bad). Now we move into the second act. Robot boy is on his own and in search for that-which-will-make-him-human-and-make-mommy-love-him. But, OH NO, the evil humans capture him and try to destroy him b/c he is a robot. He escapes, of course, thanks to a good natured male prostitute robot. To give you a feel for this painful second third of the movie, imagine a really really really hokey Mad Max set complete with motorcycles with wolf heads on them and evil humans riding (for some reason) in a big balloon. Really really stupid.The final third is a return to the sentimentality of the first, but with a really forced attempt to be Kubrik-esque. Imagine Spielberg trying to make a surrealistic movie like A Clockwork Orange. He can't because he isn't that intelligent -- when he tries, he just looks pathetic.Take it from me -- use your tax cut check to do something other than see AI. Heck, go see Momento again: now there's the movie of the summer. Or save it to see The Fellowship of the Ring (Hollywood isn't going to mess that one up, are they?).