Like what? That you’re not an easily manipulable boob? 
No, it’s the director & actor’s job to make us care, and they failed miserably. This is coming from a Hollywood where they have made me care about people I normally wouldn’t.
Although I thought the movie would’ve been more effective if it had ended with David and the Blue Ferry at the bottom of the ocean, I have never thought the actual ending was either tacked-on or happy. The appearance of the advanced mechas was forshadowed thoughout the movie and the ending is, at best, bittersweet. For one thing, the advanced mechas don’t really care about David or his plight. To them, David is a “Rosetta Stone” they can use to understand the mental and emotional workings of the now-extinct human race. (I thought this, by the way, was the most interesting concept of the movie.) The real reason they granted David’s wish and “brought back” his “mother” for 24 hours was not because they felt sorry for little twerp, it was because they wanted to find out what made human beings tick. Like he was at the beginning, David is just being used. The only difference is that he’s being used by the advanced mecha rather than humans.
Can someone spoiler-box me the very, very end? I almost care more about the Teddy bear than David.
I just remember the ocean scene.
I fell asleep renting AI.
(My fault, not the movie’s.)
Did you just call me a boob?
Did William Hurt ‘care’ about his creation? He would say he did but did he. This entire movie is about taking care of what you make. Did the Mom? She is the one who did the imprinting. Then she throws him to the wolves. Did the Dad care for his own son? Oh well, he’s sick, we’ll replace him with a robot.
Early in the film Hurt asks a robot what love is. She replies with how she fakes love. (like an actor?) Then Hurt asks his guys to make a robot that can love. Notice how he doesn’t say what love is. It’s because he doesn’t know. What is love? is one of the themes of the movie. David is on a quest to love and to be loved. You can’t identify with that? He was built to love and be loved by someone who doesn’t know what love is. He is trapped in a world he never made.
You didn’t care about David? Who in the film did care? Only the robots.
Besides, this isn’t a movie about a robot. There has never been a movie about a robot, nor has there been a book about robots. Not till robots make movies will there be one. Just like Babe the Gallant Pig isn’t about pigs, this movie is not about robots.
The audience is crushed under an avalanche of suckitude.
And if they are advanced robots, why do they look like Greys?
Well spoke.
I think he’s right. That was one of the more Kubrick-esque things about the film in my opinion.
What should they look like?
That should’ve been clearer. I think Zebra is right. A couple of Kubrick’s movies ask what it means to be human, and this film is along the same lines.
I don’t respond to posts, except factual points like the definitions or the aliens/mechas issue (*) because I’m mostly interested in knowing what people why people liked/disliked the movie, but I would mentionthat’s precisely the reason why I changed my mind about it being a fairy tale. In fairy tales of this style(quest tales), the hero overcome obstacles and as a result, change. While in this movie, he doesn’t overcome anything by himself except once (when he kills his double), IMO. And he doesn’t change. Or not much (except probably once again when he kills his double, and also of ourse after he meet his brother and begins to want to become human…by eating spinach, for instance).
(*) Concerning facts, I don’t believe contrarily to some posters’ statements that he tries to harm his “brother”. It seems to me that they fall accidentally in the pool, while he’s trying to get his “brother” to protect him.
I assume that at this point, it’s pointless to use spoiler boxes anymore given that most things have been dicussed openly.
This one might have been better suited for great debate, but on this particular point : what’s the difference with us, humans? What’s the difference between thinking we love and actually loving? How could we tell?
Well, clearly we couldn’t. But we certainly can say the artificial demons you gun to death in Doom aren’t actually feeling pain - or anything for that matter - despite the synthesised screams.
It’s an intellectual movie about love.
Kubrik was not an emotional story teller. Steven relies on emtion to tell a story. That is what makes this movie both great and a disaster. But then again, if I think about it, so is my love life.
No, but I’ll ask for specifics as to what exactly is being told about a viewer who feels that David was only a robot, with no real feelings, and thus the viewer doesn’t particularly care what happens to him. Is that viewer… bad, or something?
Geez, didn’t you ever watch ReBoot? Those are sentient sprites you’re nullifying!
Doesn’t David lock up in panic and drag his “brother” to the bottom of the pool? If David can be harmful in this fashion without even realizing it, that alone justifies his removal from the home.
If anyone is the bad guy in this film, I’d have to say it’s the shockingly short-sighted William Hurt character, who stands ready to mass-produce what is essentially an immortal high-end pet, who will give its owner unconditional (in fact, dangerously unlimited amounts of) love. Thought it may look like a child, it’ll never mature, grow or adapt. The people who would buy such a supertoy might imagine that this is desirable; that they’ll never want things to change and an immortal pseudochild is just peachy.
In fact, it would have been amusing if the hyperadvanced mecha said that this was the development in robotics that doomed humanity. The loving supertoys sought to defend the objects of their affections and since they could never be argued into moderation or compromise, they ended up killing all possible rivals. Husbands and wives and foster-siblings… schwack! Eventually all that was left were single parents with their inescapable robokids, unable to form new families to breed more humans because anytime they tried, the relationship was perceived by the supertoys as a thread to the monopoly over mommy’s or daddy’s love.
But it was a good day. 
Happy thoughts… happy thoughts…
No, but a person’s reaction to art tells us more about the person than the work of art itself.
In fact, some people think that you can never explain a work of art at all. All you are talking about is yourself.
Maybe I should put down the bong. Oh wait, I don’t smoke. But it is late, so I’m off to bed.
If you’re looking at it from the perspective of ‘he’s a toy/pet,’ I suppose you’re right. I’m putting in a vote for ‘he’s not trying to harm the brother,’ though.
I wonder if people who are evaluating this film from the Asimovian standpoint aren’t looking for the wrong thing. clairobscur is right, I think. The film is much more of a fairy tale than a sci-fi story; I don’t think Spielberg intended to make a piece of speculative fiction. Not that that makes it okay for the movie to be boring or just not grab you and so on.
The major difference is that we can change our programming. It may be simply a matter of degree, but I didn’t get a sense that the robot’s programming adapted at all from it’s initial instructions.
It’s the subtle difference between having thousands of pre-programmed responses and figuring out the best response based on experience.
Computers can sort of already do that using neural networks. Adjusting weights based on previous experience (training) to produce optimal outputs. They’ll only work within a predetermined range of outputs based on their training however so will never come up with a novel solution just by thinking real hard about the problem.
You don’t have to care about David. Why would you? He’s a robot. He’s also a kid (that scores some negative points all by itself) and a very creepy one at that. Each time you see him you know something’s wrong about him, that he’s odd, and unlike humans. It’s weird. Yes, he’s an it.
That’s the point of the movie. David’s an it, yet what are we? What are humans? David can do most of the things humans do and he can love too. Well, sort of. At least, to him, his love is real. The premise of the film is very well established in the first scene at Cybertronics: “In the beginning, didn’t God create Adam to love him?” is the Proffesor’s response to the ethical implications of building a robot that can love. In a way, humans also have a creator who programmed them to serve a specific purpose. Our bodies are also wired and powered, just not with the same materials a robot’s is. The movie (most of it) is about this even if there is no expository dialogue to prove it. As it stands, the first two acts deal with the following: here’s a creepy robot kid that can love and tickles everyone’s self-awareness and the meaning of humanity – let’s give him a family, see what happenes. As the story progresses, there are instances where you are constantly reminded of how dark the story really is. Instances such as:
David’s first laugh.
Hide and seek.
His sudden mommy love conversion.
“You’ll break him!”
David’s first swim.
The flesh fair.
David vs. David.
David’s second swim.
The problem is, these scenes are so strong and poignant they become embedded in the viewer at the point where the film decides to take a detour and make David human. You can see how the story works as a fairy tale and as the story of Pinocchio, but the narrative of the first two acts betrays it. It’s just too dark and somber for the third act to work. David does become human at the end and, even though the movie is up for interpretation, I think this one’s safe: David closes his eyes to either a) die with mommy or b) sleep with, I mean, alongside mommy. Mechas don’t blink. Mechas don’t sleep. Mechas don’t die. He became human just as the story’s automagic transmission kicked in. That’s why, as a whole, the movie doesn’t work, regardless of the sheer brilliance of the first two hours.