Anyone else HATE the ending of A.I.?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let me pre-emp this by saying that I really don’t know whether this should go in IMHO or the Pit. I don’t curse, and there seems to be room for debate, so I’ll just put it here.

I saw Spielberg/Kubrick’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.” a few days ago, and thought it was an astounding movie . . . up until the last thirty minutes.

I’m a huge Kubrick fan, and for those of you that have seen the movie, I have NO doubt that Kuibrick would have left David and Teddy desperate at the bottom of the ocean, imploring the Blue Fairy in vain. This ending would be a fitting end to Kubrick’s career, putting the art in front of the audience. Unfortunately, Spielberg cannot direct a movie without shoving in a “golden moment” at the end. This is the ONLY thing I didn’t like about the movie.

What was with that ending? Apparently, these futuristic beings forgot that necessity is the mother of invention. The vehicle that dematerializes when you land? Come on! They also believe that the ol’ bipedal system is the most efficient for robots. RIIIGHT!

IANA Physicist, but I have real doubts about the deus ex machina that prevented David’s “mom” from being ressurected for more than one day.

<paraphrase>“The fabric of space-time contains a record of everything that has ever happened. When someone dies, that thread of space-time is cut. Therefore, we can only travel on it for a limited time.”</paraphrase>

Huh? If David was so smart, why didn’t he just cut a lock from his mother’s hair again every day, so he could bring her back everyday?

The movie should have ended sooner.

That said, the Academy should just mail the Oscar to Osment right now. He did a bloody good job.

-Soup

2

I feel the exact same way. Also being a big Kubrick fan, I thought immediately that he would have ended the movie with David staring at the Blue Fairy. To me, that would have made the movie at least three times better. I thought the ending was far too neat and complete and even silly. You’re right about his mother only coming back for one day. Another problem I had: Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Jude Law, but I thought that his part was unnecessary. And I hated that stupid Dr. Know. My parents were just raving about it when we were walking out of the theatre, and all I could really say was “Eh.” Kind of a disappointment, especially the ending.

3

I hated the ending too.

The movie wasn’t perfect. How did David steal a police heliocopter that should have had some sort of tracking system? How come David didn’t have a tracking system? How could the mother leave a multi-million dollar machine out in the forest? What company would let that happen? etc. etc. etc.

But the movie was great. It wasn’t about aliens attacking or laser guns and heroes saving the universe. It wasn’t about using blue screens or creating technology to fill a hole in a script. It was about creating a futuristic situation and working through moral and ethical dilemmas of that situation. That’s what science fiction is all about. The movie was excellent.

Even the merging of the two directors was excellent. It was a tad disjointed at parts, sure, but I think it blended well nevertheless.

And then the ending came. I sat there with my mouth open, my jaw hanging down, and me shifting uncomfortably from side to side. I saw this movie go down in flames and I heard the groans and snickering from otherwise attentive moviegoers behind me. I felt embarrassed for the movie as if, somehow, it was my fault this was happening.

I wanted so much to like this movie. And had it ended where it should have, I would have. But I felt drained by the end, barely able to say “eh…it was ok.” because to say it was good means that I must take the ending into consideration.

4

The ending irritated me as well. I longed to see David and Teddy at the bottom of the ocean wishing for all of eternity. Kubrick was all about making you feel violated after one of his films. I love watching his work and going “What the hell was that?” It’s beautiful. Yeah, Speilberg should have avoided that sappy ending. It didn’t fit with the rest of the story.

As for another film that made me cranky by its ending, The Ninth Gate ended in the most idiotic way imaginable! I LOVE Roman Polanski, and I was really impressed with The Ninth Gate up until the end. I was so into the mystery of the books and the pictures drawn by Satan and all that, but when the French girl gets down with Johnny Depp in front of the burning castle at the end because the picture foretells her as being a demon or something, the film makes me feel wronged. It doesn’t make any freaking sense!

5

I,too, found the ending problematic.

I could ‘believe’ it up until then.

if they could have recreated his mom from a tiny piece of DNA, he had a lock of hair! couldn’t it have been chopped up into a million little pieces?

6

It’s pretty sad when an computer generated teddy bear has to carry the film.

No offense to “Teddy”, I thought his acting was superb. I’m just glad, that later in the film, they showed the audience where Teddy stored that lock of hair. At first, I could of sworn he put it in his “Teddy” pocket.

The film was fine up until the scene at the human fair thingy, after that, it was all downhill.

I give a 7 for special effects, and a 3 for content.

7

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ve heard a lot of people bring up the part about only being able to bring back his ‘mother’ for a day. It does seem very scientifically unlikely - so perhaps the more advanced robots are just making up an explanation for his benefit, and they aren’t really bringing back his mother but recreating her from his memories.

8

ALSO

If he was able to cry and have a temper tantrum, would that make him a “real boy”? Was that the idea, and if it was, why couldn’t he then see that his “mother” never really cared for him? He was only a substitute for the sick boy. When that boy got well, the mother was content to dump him in the woods. Why would he even want to spend that last day with her? She’s the reason that he got into all that shit in the first place. I hated that woman.

9

And, yet, it seems that everyone who has seen this movie HAS felt violated.

Has it occurred to everyone that the disgust at the ending was exactly what Kubrick envisioned?

10

OK, let’s put an end to one baseless point of speculation right away–the oft-repeated thought that “Kubrick would have ended the movie at such and such a point.” The only person who knows where Kubrick would have ended the movie was, well, Kubrick, and perhaps Spielberg, since their conversations concerning the movie took place over a decade and a half.

As it happens, though, there has been available on the Web a review of Kubrick’s script treatment for the film, in which we discover:

So there–all you speculators now know exactly what Kubrick’s intentions were for the end of the movie. And, as it happens, Spielberg took a little from each idea (replace “bloody mary” with “coffee”) and added some of his own.

If you look through the archives of alt.movies.kubrick, you can probably find a full copy of the script treatment that contains these endings.

11

To lend additional support, in a recent interview, Brian Aldiss (the author who wrote the short story upon which the movie is based), states, regarding his early work with Kubrick on the script:

12

Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought you could only get DNA from the root of hair, not from the ends (which is what Teddy had).

Personally, I like the ending, but I still don’t like the movie overall.

I like that the Blue Fairy didn’t make David into a real boy, but rather made the real Mom into an artificial being.

David was created as a tool for the mother’s wish fulfillment and in the end the mother was created as a tool for David’s wish fulfillment.

I think Spielberg needed to be more explicit about the beings at the end being advanced terrestrial Mechas and not alien beings (about 80% of the people I’ve talked to didn’t realize this). Those Mechas are now all on David’s quest for humanity (though they can recognize the necessity of failure) and view humans as the key to understanding the purpose of the universe. If you believe the Mechas are aliens then I think much of the point of the final act is lost.

13

Wow, Obfusciatrist, you pointed out things I didn’t see! I did think that the beings at the end were either Aliens, or the evolution of humans. Silly me! I like the irony (is that irony?) of David’s mother becoming an artificial being too. That’s wonderful!

I still don’t like the ending much, but it makes more sense now.

14

I was mildly disappointed with the ending but shrugged it off to “That’s Hollywood”, having been hardend to this attitude by [B}Unbeakable.**

15

Nice insight into the “instead of David becoming real, his mother becomes artificial” thingy.

Sorry about the title. It should have had a huge SPOILERS marker, but I guess that didn’t make it.

Man, I LOVED Unbreakable. It was a great movie.

I’ve never seen Unbeakable, though. Must give it a rent… :smiley:

-Soup

16

Hey, all. I posted the following message a bit ago, and was led by a response to this ongoing thread, so I thought I’d copy and paste my thoughts where they belong! Read on…

First let me say, that I loved A.I. I thought it was terrific, and was affected by it on a variety of different levels. However, there is a definitive and fundamental error in logic regarding the way the film winds up, in the last 25 minutes or so. Here it goes:

The “super-mecha” considered David to be something of a missing link, because he was around when there were still humans, so he had memories of what they were like, and there were no other modern day Mecha who had did, right? Thus part of wha they strived for was the smallest hint of what mankind was like, right? Well…if all that’s true…then who CREATED those Super Mecha’s? If their creators were human, why don’t they have any recollection of them? Let’s say their creators were ALSO Mecha…who created THEM? And so on. Down the line, someone must have been witness to human life, and if the modern Mecha had the ability to make every one of David’s memories their own (“no memory, no matter how small, was too hidden for us to find” <paraphrase> ), they certainly could share those memories with each other and pass them along through the centuries, right?

AND…any of the Mecha in this chain were most likely more advanced than David, and CERTAINLY more advanced than Teddy, right? Well, they both remained operational for 2000 years. Surely the more advanced Mecha’s that came along after David and Teddy, or some of them, would have survived, especially if this race of Super Mecha can now dominate the Earth as they do in the end of the film. Why does no one remember the details of human life??? At one point was it lost, and why? Did someone erase 400 years of their memory or something??

…also, an added thought: wouldn’t dead hair strands decompose in 2000 years? Even a LITTLE? They sure looked to me like they were fresh from Mommy’s head! I know it was damned cold down there…

17

You know, everyone seems to be saying the movie should have ended with David frozen at the bottom of the sea forever. I disagree. If I had made the movie, it would have ended shortly after David jumped off the building. You see, the mechas believed that Manhattan was the “end of the world.” The ancient philosophers who believed the world was flat would often stare at the Atlantic Ocean, believing that if you sailed far enough, you’d reach the edge of the world. Some were terrified of falling off the edge. Others, undoubtedly, longed to stand at the edge and wonder, “what lies beyond?” That’s the image that sticks with me here. David wasn’t just jumping off a BUILDING; he was jumping off the EDGE OF THE WORLD! He should, in fact, have traveled to the Great Beyond, whatever that is for a mecha.