Your opinions about "AI : Artificial Intelligence" (might contain SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
1

Ok. I just watched this movie tonight. I had no clue what it was about (never read any reviews, nobody told me anyting about it), so I only knew what was written n the back of the box when I rented it.
I was completely caught off guard after the mother’s decision (people who watched it will know what I mean) , and was surprised by essentially all events happening after that. This movie was absolutely not what I had expected on the basis of he short comment on the box. It immediatly made it to my short list of all time favorite movies. I also learnt som moments ago that it was originally a Kubrick’s projet eventually handed to Spielberg by Kubrick himself.
Which IMO explains a lot As a result, I thought that these two should have been forced to made movies together, for the general well-being of mankind. Kubrick’s cynicism + Spielberg’s humanity. Incredibe mix.

I’m usually one of the happy-end haters, and this one is a rare exception. I was wishing, early in the movie, that there would be an happy end, thinking : “that’s Spielberg. Surely, he can’t have chosen a unhappy ending. Can he?” . Actually, the surprising and bittersweet ending was even better than an actual happy end. I suspect it’s a result of Kubrick’s influence.

Then I went on the net to read comments about it, and disovered it was often mentionned as Spielberg’s worst film, and generally considered as a poor movie.
That’s why i would be interested in your opinions, positives and negatives, in order to understand why people disliked it so much, and even maybe why I loved it so much.

The only thing I can think of : maybe it didn’t find its public? Maybe people, like me, expected something else entirely and were for the most part dissapointed while would have been interest, also expecting something else didn’t bother to watch it?
There’s a point that certainly explains in part why I loved it, but I’m going to put it in a spoiler box, since, despite not giving away plot elements, it contains an information about its general athmosphere, and it’s this athmosphere that was the most unexpected to me :

[spoiler] I like and I’m really interested in fairy tales. And this movie is exactly that. A Sci-Fi fairy tale. Nope. Scrap that. It’s a fairy tale, period. But not a fairy tale children would enjoy, in case some parents reading this spoiler would wonder.
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2

Ahem…could a mod correct my coding so that my final spoiler would actually appear in a spoiler’s box? Thanks in advance.

3

That’s not really a spoiler anyway…

My main objection was the ending, which felt completely phony.

4

This is on my own personal Worst Movie Ever list (it’s somewhere around #11 currently).

Main beefs:

#1. I don’t care about the robot. I know you’re thinking “does he mean the kid?” No, I don’t. It’s a friggin’ robot. I don’t want to watch a toaster search for his identity, and I don’t wanna watch a robot do it either.

#2. Every single human being in the movie is psychotic. A mom that accepts a robot son is psychotic. A husband who encourages his wife to accept a robot son is psychotic. The man who builds dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of mechanical replications of his dead son is *really[/y] psychotic. I was appalled at all of them.

#3. Spielberg using his wily ways to try and jerk tears or concern with his usual music score and heavy sound cues only pissed me off. It’s a friggin’ robot. It’s not racist or inhumane to snub a robot. Hell, I ignore my toaster for days at a time.

#4. The ending. After watching this robot wander around in the company of other robots for 2 hours, he’s trapped under the ocean for thousands of years and then aliens come along and make him a new 24 hour mom? WTF is that all about? Who the $#^& cares? It’s a FREAKIN’ ROBOT already. Besides, it meant that the whole search was pointless, utterly futile and had no bearing on the ending of the story. “Lost robot wanders aimlessly, only to be trapped under the sea until just before the Earth’s demise” is what should be written on the back of the DVD cover.

#5. Did I mention that it’s not a kid, not a human being at all? That it’s a frikkin’ robot? An appliance with legs? Why didn’t Spielberg learn from Heartbeeps? No one cares about the feelings and dreams of machines because they’re frikkin’ machines!

Yeah, yeah, I know… “But Bo, it’s just like Pinnochio!” No it isn’t. No real wooden marionnette can move and speak on it’s own. Robots can. Pinnochio was fantasy, and it involved a transformation from inhuman to human. AI was just a movie about a malfunctioning robot who left his maladjusted owners to wander around in a quasi-sociological commentary.

I watched this movie once and then took it back to my friends place (we borrow movies from each other all the time). I have no intention of ever watching it again unless the Swedish Bikini Team shows up at my place on their way from Colombia to to Amsterdam in their private 747 which has waterbeds for seats and A.I. is the in-flight movie. And even then I’d make them promise to only show it once.

5

Thinking twice, I changed my mind. It’s not a fairy tale. However it contains enough references to them and typical elements of them that it still probably played a part in my interest for the movie

6

I thought both the film and the story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” were utter tripe.

7

I understand your point (though I obviously don’t share it), but I’m wondering : if you’ve seen it, what did you think about “Blade Runner” (precisely from Dick’s “Do android dream of electric sheeps”, so at least Dick cared about their dreams), which is about a similar issue?

By the way, about your endind spoiler :

They’re not aliens, though I also assumed so much. They’re highly advanced robots too that outlived humans, something forecasted by the gigolo robot before hi demise

8

I think they really screwed up at the end: too many false endings. Oddly, the story of the on-line game that was a marketing campaign for the movie was much better.

I’m pretty sure that the beings at the end were not aliens, but advanced AIs. But most people seem to disagree with me.

9

If it had ended two endings ago when the robotic kid, realising he’s a toaster, jumps in the sea it’d have been a decent flick.

10

C’mon, it’s a Spielberg movie.

They were aliens, and cheesy ones at that.

Unless you can provide some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary?

And IMO, anything that A.I. did, Blade Runner did better, and anything that Blade Runner did, Cordwainer Smith did better.

11

First, about the ending: as much as I hated this movie, its lucky that I remember anything about it. I tend to make purge efforts to remove information from ym brain that I don’t want. Apparently my effort with AI was at least marginally successful. I’m sorry if I weirded anyone out misremembering that detail. Thanks for correcting me tho; at least I wont make the same mistake again.

I enjoyed Blade Runner a lot. Like 5 stars a lot. In fact, if Ridley Scott would just let them sell the theatrical release, with the Vangelis soundtrack, I’d buy a copy.

For me, the differences between the two movies are huge.

#1. The main character is a human. Although the movie leaves us hanging as to whether or not Decker is truly human… he may be a type of replicant… we may all be a type of replicant. How would we know? Very PKD sentiment, there.

#2. The replicants are indistinguishable from humans. In fact, they actually are some kind of superclones, who have a built-in 5 year life span. They’re story is not that of something that is inhuman trying to become human, but of people who have been denied their birthright of humanity. Created to be slaves, and born to die, the film is partially the story of these people trying to be acknowledged as such, and in particular, to be acknowledged as such by their creator (their father, if you will).

#3. The movie doesn’t end as many times as a hair band ballad. True, the ending leaves some bits hanging, but that’s a part of the noir feel and as I mentioned in #1 is perfectly in keeping with PKD’s writing.

#4. From a technical standpoint, an aesthetic standpoint, Blade Runner is a benchmark film. Amazing looking establishing shots, awesome sets, cool props (like the flying car) and great lighting, most of which had never been seen on a movie screen before. And best of all, the acting performances in the movie are truly outstanding. A fine cast was allowed to act, not just read their lines, and they carry the film. As we watch them, we are aware of how very human they are, despite their gifts and the terrible fate they know awaits due to their ticking biological clocks. Nothing in AI comes close to the beauty, wonder and sadness found in Roy’s last words.

#5. Did I mention that the characters aren’t all robots? That they’re people who have been treated as inhuman, and seek to be acknowledged as people who have been wronged?

I am a big fan of PKD, and since I can see where you’re trying to go with this last question, I should point out that an android is not a robot. Cite.

12

I felt the ending felt tacked on. In my opinion, it would have been much better if it had ended with David praying to the Blue Fairy, and you would keep hearing his pleas through the credits as the sub went dark…

13

Well…Your link lead two 5 definitions, one is irrelevant, one not very relevant (“having the angular form and narrow outlet typical of the human male” ), two would result in defining the main character of AI as an adroid, and only one is supporting your point (and anyway, I’m not sue why it would make a difference whether the “automaton” would be created using biological materials or not).
Anyway, I understand the isue you have with this movie.

14

Yeah, probably. But I just needed an happier end.

15

No, I can’t. It’s in the various comments about the movie that I found first mentions of them being robots, and later that the film makers themselves stated so (and since it makes perfect sense, I had no reason to doubt this statement).

16

What I should have written is: an android is not necessarily a robot.

In the case of PKD’s story and the film Blade Runner, the androids in question are not robots. In AI it most definitely is a robot, a mechanical construct designed to “fool” people that it is human.

17

I’v eonly skimmed the thread.

I thought the movie was great because it *doesn’t * have a happy ending. It just pretends to. Throughout the film we make excuses for David because he’s so cute – “they just don’t understand!”, we say. But at the end of the film, the future robots tell David that they can give him one day with his mother but doing so will destroy her soul forever, and he doesn’t even consider any other option. In that moment David is revealed as a ravening id, the worst kind of monster. And if you revisit the earlier incidents through those eyes, you see that that’s what he’s been all along (trying to drown Martin, his violent freak-out at the factory, etc.). And who created such a dangerous creature and let it loose? We did.

–Cliffy

18

I didn’t enjoy the film just at the level of moviemaking. Irrespective of whether they’re aliens or robots (I assumed they were robots from the start, and it fits) or whether you think David is sympathetic or not, I found the movie terribly choppy, badly edited, and the ending was overlong and tedious no matter what meaning you think lies behind it.

The Flesh Faire sequence was, I thought, some of the worst cinema Speilberg’s ever put on screen. It veered back and forth from good to silly almost from shot to shot.

19

But it had Ministry playing, so that forgives a lot in my book.

20

I can’t say why exactly, but AI just isn’t a good movie. It relies on cheap sentiment and sappiness instead of character development to move forward. David doesn’t change as a character once he’s made permanent. He’s supposed to be a replacement human, but has none of the characteristics of a human, and as such is not a sympathetic character at all. Add that into the mix of a lame plot, a stupid ending, and you get a movie that is, while a technical marvel, just not that good.