No, I’ve never even heard of it.
Ok, so I can buy the explanation that this is a fairy tale told by super-mechas for other super mechas. But one thing still bothers me. I never for one moment really cared about David. I suppose other mechas could empathsize with him, but not me. I was kinda shocked to read about how much people hated the brother, callng him a jerk or whatever. He may have been stupid, but I never felt bad about how he treated David.
And I think the ending was bad. It may have been necessary for the interpretaion of MEcha Fairy Tale, but that doesn’t make it a good ending. It just means the rest of the movie is a mess if it needs that ending.
Tretiak: You’re not supposed to care about the characters, not in the typical Spielbergian way. He’s very careful to maintain a certain distance from them, in much the same way Kubrick would have. Does anyone really care about Shelley Duvall’s character in The Shining? Or Matt Modine in Full Metal Jacket? Or Keir Dullea in 2001? One of the few times we really find ourselves caring about a Kubrick character is Alex in A Clockwork Orange, and then Kubrick throws it back in our faces in the last two minutes. Kubrick’s MO is to make you think about what’s going on and what it means, and then to have your emotional reaction, if any, based on that rational understanding of the story and its themes. Spielberg goes a long way toward achieving this, even while he couches everything in an ironically superficial sentimentality.
And before I continue, I should make something clear. I don’t think A.I. is a masterpiece. I think it’s badly flawed. I believe it has problems that can’t be rationalized away. I’m reasonably certain that while it’ll be regarded positively in a couple of decades, it won’t be “rediscovered” the way some of Kubrick’s films have been (notably Barry Lyndon). So I feel a little strange, being put in the position of defending a movie I don’t feel is an unmitigated success, and being confronted by those who loathed the movie needling me with “Oh yeah? what about this? and this?” every time I turn around.
That said, I do believe the film is more successful than it isn’t, insofar as these things can be objectively measured. Even aside from its utterly unique pedigree, it has a wealth of fascinating ideas and themes lurking and jostling just beneath its surface. The fact that people are still thinking and arguing about it, and that the various elements being subjected to debate are still fresh and clear in our minds even days later, indicates that there’s something more interesting here than in the average movie. As I said in my review, is anybody arguing anything about Swordfish except the degree to which it sucks?
I don’t demand that the naysayers change their opinion and decide to like the movie after all. Filmgoing is an entirely subjective experience; one can’t control what one enjoys or loathes. My only purpose in pulling apart the threads of the movie, analyzing it and dissecting it in this discussion, is to make sure it’s treated fairly, that the people who decide to dislike it have done so based on a thorough understanding of what it’s doing, as opposed to whatever inaccurate perceptions – e.g., that the movie has a “happy ending” – have cropped up as a result of the half-assed media writing that passes for film criticism in our day and age.
And one quick thing unrelated to A.I., but – jab1: You must, must, see Memento.
All right. Onward.
Fiver: You quote me out of context. Here’s what I actually said:
I’m more than willing to acknowledge the movie’s problems. For example, the Dr. Know scene, in a word, sucks. The ending of the Flesh Fair sequence is a cop-out, and is inconsistent with the movie’s basic themes; it’s a cheat where Spielberg (and, most likely, Kubrick before him) was shoving the story where it didn’t want to go in order to move on to the next thing. The voice-over narration, while clearly designed for a specific effect, is clumsily written and poorly integrated. It makes no sense for David’s designers to give him the ability to turn into a speakerphone. And so on, and so on.
But the fairy tale element isn’t just something I’m making up, something I’m manufacturing and layering onto the movie as a lame rationalization. It’s there. The narrator has the same voice as the supermecha at the end. The story ends with a child falling asleep (maybe). The obvious “Pinocchio” references. The other fairy-tale references, some subtle, some not so. (Did you notice Monica complaining about her shoe falling off as she was headed out to dinner?) The pieces are there, and inform the movie as a whole. You can argue about how well everything hangs together (and I think it’s questionable), but it’s there.
Once you acknowledge this, you have to look at the movie in a different light. If you insist on treating it as Hard SF, of course it’s going to fall apart. I could be equally disappointed by insisting on viewing Blade Runner as a musical comedy. Fairy tales have their own logic. You can accept it as a rationalization of, say, the spinach thing (which I believe is the intent), or you can argue that it doesn’t really work (which is subjective), but you can’t simply dismiss the fact that this lens greatly informs the way the story works.
The next interpretive leap is to realize that this is a fairy tale told by a machine. Of course it’ll look high-tech. Of course it’ll have a sheen that invites us to (mis)read it as SF. Of course the resolution of the story will hinge on a technological device. (Speaking of which, I “go on at length” about VR because it’s the key to understanding the ending. Sheesh.)
Then once you recognize the point of view, you go back and re-evaluate what all of the machines do during the story. Gigolo Joe gives David an excellent encapsulization of why the humans fear the machines: “They made us too smart, too fast and too many. They know when they’re gone, we’ll be what’s left.” (Or something to that effect.) This kind of philosophical understanding goes way, way beyond sexual entertainment. The humans, in their hubris, don’t really understand what they’ve created. They take the robots for granted, and don’t know how far the mechas have transcended their original designs. William Hurt’s character, Professor Hobby (and consider the symbolism of that name for a moment), wants to create these loving boy robots not because it represents some altrustic good, but because they will fill a marketing niche. His motivations are also inextricably tied to the death of his son, as suggested by the portraits on his desk. He doesn’t really care about David; he cares about the achievement. After David destroys his doppleganger, does Hobby even glance down at the debris as he steps over it? Of course not.
I don’t want to laboriously walk through every single scene and provide my interpretation; I think the movie’s ambiguous enough that there’s “wiggle room” for several conclusions, although closely related ones. (Does David die at the end? Or just go to sleep? Or does he just lie there? And what is Teddy thinking as he climbs up on the end of the bed?) But I do want to establish that the movie has a number of thematic throughlines that are handled (for the most part) with thoughtful consistency. It’s far more interesting to me to puzzle out these throughlines, figuring out what the movie is saying, and then identify where Spielberg fails to handle them clearly, than it is to recognize that the movie doesn’t quite work and then stop thinking about it. That, to me, is unforgivably lazy. There isn’t anything to think about in Tomb Raider. There’s lots to think about in A.I. Speaking for myself, at least, I’d like to do the thinking.
Atreyu: I don’t think the final simulation happens in the physical world at all. Based on the oversaturated color after David first awakes, and the circular viewscreen used by the supermechas, I think David’s body is immobilized somewhere with a bunch of feeds attached to his sensory inputs. Given this, I think it’s far more likely that the supermechas recreate an artificial Monica to give David exactly what he wants, and provide David a false reason why it’ll last just one day in order to give him closure so they can continue their archaeology, than it is that the supermechas would recreate Monica and then somehow attach her biological form to the same VR setup as David.
Further: Monica shows no disorientation at all about her age (assuming, of course, she didn’t die immediately after abandoning David in the woods), she doesn’t ask about her husband or her biological child, she doesn’t ask how David got back – she does nothing that the real Monica would do in those circumstances. Instead, she gives David exactly what he wants: her undivided attention, positive feedback, and a declaration of love.
It seems far more likely (to me, anyway) that she’s a phony, that David is being deceived – because this is exactly the kind of bitterly ironic reversal Kubrick would have used. As I said above, he wanted Spielberg to direct the movie because he thought his younger counterpart would be better able to achieve the soft-focus ending that masks the irony, and that allows the audience to fool themselves into buying the happy ending along with David. It’s Kubrick’s last cynical jab: We’re all so desperate to believe that things work out in the end (of life, not just of the movie) that we’ll latch onto even a clearly manufactured reality if it looks and feels right.
One last postscript: I’ll repeat, I don’t think the movie entirely works. I don’t think it achieves the desired effect, not a hundred percent. I think all the ingredients are there, and once you think about it you get what the movie’s about, but it doesn’t hit you with either an emotional wallop or an intellectual eureka. It’s a slow dawning, and there are too many odd little violations in tone, too many small places where Spielberg couldn’t quite get what Kubrick was after (or that Kubrick himself hadn’t quite solved in his twenty-five years of tinkering), to make the movie totally successful. But the more I think about it, the more I recognize just how damned fascinating the thing is. It’s not just entertainment; it’s intended as Art. I don’t think Spielberg gets all the way there, but it’s the first movie of his about which you can say he’s making Art instead of just a Movie, and that, in and of itself, is worthy of note.
Here we disagree.
But’s OK. There’s enough disagreement about the movie going on that we’ll be in good company. 
Uh…that was supposed to say, “But that’s OK.”
Whoops.
Cervaise, what do you mean that Swordfish sucked? Admittedly it wasn’t the greatest movie ever, but come on, it was pretty cool. (I found Memento to be a bit heavy-handed, BTW.)
PS The subject line isn’t an insult, its a film reference. You can redeem yourself if you know the source of it.
I haven’t seen it, but from what I heard, the only reason to see it is Halle Berry’s first-ever topless scene. Halle Berry is very lovely, but she can’t act and if I’m gonna pay $5 or more for a movie (I ALWAYS go to the movies during the discount time), there had better be more going for it than a 7-second shot of her tits.
Besides, you don’t see a thread of 100 posts devoted to Swordfish, do you?
There is. There are two four-second shots of her tits, and a 45-second scene with her in revealing underwear.
Beyond that, yes, the movie is incredibly stupid and lame. The opening scene, culminating in a Matrix-style shot of an explosion, is a promising start, but after that it goes downhill fast. The only way it might seem acceptable is in comparison to Tomb Raider.
And I do recognize the albino line, but I can’t for the life of me remember where it comes from. Give me time.
Anyway, back to A.I. …
Cervaise wrote:
Yes. Thank you.
This whole movie is a futuristic fairy tale. Furthermore, I thought the film owed almost as much to the Brothers Grimm as to Pinnochio. It is a fairy tale with some hard edges, the kind that were found in the Grimm tales before they got Disney-fied.
I also agree with the posters who suggest that A.I. will reward multiple viewings. I look forward to seeing it again to try to work out some of the details.
Interesting also that references to Blade Runner keep popping up. Both films are exploring the same territory if you think about it. (When is a machine more than a machine?)
I believe that we may one day put A.I. in the same category as Blade Runner. A disappointment at the box office, a masterpiece in hindsight.