The ending certainly was not happy. I think you missed the point if you thought the ending was a pick-me-up. Monica falls asleep, never to wake again, and her life would never be remembered by any other creature because her space-time pathway was destroyed by the "resurrection". The ending suggested that David "dies" as well, with him (it?) floating off into a perpetual and neverending dream state. I was stunned by the ending because it leaves you with a rash of emotions. You might think it's "happy" because David finds - at last - happiness from his "mother's" genuine expression of mutual love. However, the manifestation of this happiness results in a destruction of both personas...the ending suggests they simply evaporate. Only the advanced mechas - with the images absorbed by them from their contact with David - retain artifacts of the human spirit. I think it's rather devastating.
you have to see the movie as a a three act play...or four....you'll understand it better, at least i did, and i took in all the greatness of the movie
A.I. was a great movie, but I thought they took a lot of the ideas from Bicentennial Man. Very similar movies.
What I don't get is why these futuristic robots can't just ressurect a person and then read all their memories from the brain, then clone the human being using rapid growth and then put all the memories back. It sounds far fetch but hey, when can bringing a person back from the space time continum (time travel essentially), then you can do the stuff I said before.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
- 64,795
- 84
- 91
well what you probably missed was that the entire ending after they touch and lift david from the ice is VR. go back and look, it makes sense. the blue fairy, the mechas looking into a floating table display at david with the fairy etc. they downloaded him together and then created an ending to suite his needs. the ben kingsly robot sat him down on the bed to explain things to him. he didn't have to tell david everything, they knew david was made too young to understand. they gave him a choice.
Well, as a huge Kubrick fan I loved the "Kubrickian" parts of this movie. Having read the short story that inspired it, I can see what drew Kubrick to it. Any faults I can find in it are due to Spielberg taking things too far, into a fanciful realm that Stanley would never have gone.
If you haven't read the short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, please do... it's a five minute read and gives you a quick glimpse of what this movie was attempting to portray.
I love this movie, but parts of it were just too corny for me. That whole flesh fest/carnival thing is totally Spielberg and seemed WAY too contrived... not believable at all.
I agree with you, mithtrandir, that parts of this movie were absolutely heartbreaking. It's definitely one of those movies, despite its flaws, that gives you a lot to think/talk about after its over.
l2c
If you haven't read the short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, please do... it's a five minute read and gives you a quick glimpse of what this movie was attempting to portray.
I love this movie, but parts of it were just too corny for me. That whole flesh fest/carnival thing is totally Spielberg and seemed WAY too contrived... not believable at all.
I agree with you, mithtrandir, that parts of this movie were absolutely heartbreaking. It's definitely one of those movies, despite its flaws, that gives you a lot to think/talk about after its over.
l2c
Spielberg forgot how to say "Cut" for that one 
It was a great movie up to some point, but he didn't end it when he should have.
It was a great movie up to some point, but he didn't end it when he should have.i guess i should see this movie now, just so i can know how it should have ended sooner then it did.
FeathersMcGraw
Diamond Member
- Oct 17, 2001
- 4,041
- 1
- 0
I didn't find that the movie had a terribly cohesive theme. I was less interested in the Pinocchio aspect of the film than the question of what man's relation to his creations is. I didn't mind the former story as long as it was framed in the issues raised by the latter, but the closing of the film is pure wish fulfillment and doesn't jibe well with anything else up to that point. It doesn't help that the pseudo-science that they conjure to support the ending feels like something out of a poorly-written Star Trek episode.
This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the film. It was thought-provoking, it had all the brilliant visuals I've come to expect from Spielberg, and I thought the performances were uniformly strong. I just happen to think that it decided to take a hard right just before it got where I thought it was heading, and that the place it wound up was a great deal less satisfying than the destination I'd envisioned.
SaltBoy
Diamond Member
- Aug 13, 2001
- 8,975
- 11
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Gigolo Jane = Ashley Scott = The Huntress in the new upcoming WB show Birds of Prey...
Anyway, whether I liked the movie or not, and not to take anything away from LOTR, I thought A.I. should have won oscars for visual effects and score. I was FLOORED when I saw that female mecha's face open up at the beginning of the movie, not to mention a lot of other great visual moments. Also, John Williams composed his most subdued and most interesting score in a LONG time -- his main "lullaby" melody is arguably the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard.
Anyway, whether I liked the movie or not, and not to take anything away from LOTR, I thought A.I. should have won oscars for visual effects and score. I was FLOORED when I saw that female mecha's face open up at the beginning of the movie, not to mention a lot of other great visual moments. Also, John Williams composed his most subdued and most interesting score in a LONG time -- his main "lullaby" melody is arguably the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard.
This seems to be a point of continuous confusion, even with critics.
The mechas at the end of the film were not aliens. People may think they were aliens because they matched our preconceived notions of what aliens look like - tall, slender, graceful. However, they were advanced mechas - robots - made by previous generations of mechas, going all the way back to David's time. This is a huge point. Humankind goes extinct but his creations continue on as if they were their own living species. They evolve like living creatures even though they are still machines. Artificial intelligence. Just as humans have become more intellectually sophisticated over time, the film suggests that robots using AI can evolve into superior machines WITHOUT the direct input of humans.
It was just boring.. I wasn't happy with it at all.. much like Signs.. both very crappy movies IMO.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
- 64,795
- 84
- 91
ieeee!!! not again!! i think people make that insane jump because they aren't beaten over the head with the fact that these are mecha
Its only human arrogance that allows us to believe that aliens would even faintly resemble us. unimaginally advanced tech looks like magic, and then we think of aliens
my friends left the theater thinking they were aliens too same to my great annoyance. it just doesn't make sense in the movie.
its been months since i saw a flood of ai threads on dvdtalk forums, luckily i saved some of the posts from that thread.
so here u go!
"So you don?t have to guess from memory what was said in the movie.
Well here's the full quote foreshadowing the advanced mecha
Gigolo Joe:She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh nor blood. You are not a dog or a cat or a canary. You were designed and built specific like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said or broke. They made us too smart, too quick and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us.
Limitations of Gigolo Joe level mecha.
Dr Hobby:A sensory toy with intelligent behavioral circuits using neuron-sequencing technology as old as I am.
Description of new mecha
Dr Hobby:a robot child that will genuinely love the parent or parents it imprints on with a love that will never end.
employee:a child substitute mecha.
Dr Hobby:but a mecha with a mind, with neuronal feedback. You see, what I?m suggesting is that love will be the key, by which they acquire a kind of subconscious never before achieved. an inner world of metaphor, of intuition, of self-motivated reasoning, - of dreams.
David and the Blue Fairy.
David:I have a wish to make.
Blue Fairy:and what is your wish?
David
lease make me a real boy so my mommy will love me and let me stay with her.Blue Fairy: David, I will do anything that is possible, but I cannot make you a real boy.
David:Where am I? This looks like my house, but it is different.
Blue Fairy:Yes, it is different, but it?s also your home. We read your mind, and its all here. There's nothing too small that you didn't store for us to remember. We so want you to be happy. You are so important to us David, you are unique in all the world.
David:Will mommy be coming home soon? Is she out shopping with martin now?
Blue Fairy: David, she can never come home because 2000 years have past. and she is no longer living. Dearest David, when your lonely, we can bring back other people from your time in the past.
David:If you can bring back other people, why can't you bring back her?
Blue Fairy:Because we can only bring back people whose bodies we dig up from the ice. We need some physical sample of the person like a bone or a fingernail.
Teddy: David?
David:yes teddy.
Teddy: Do you remember when you cut some of mommy?s hair?
David:Henry shook me.
Teddy:and you dropped her hair?
David:I know. Now you can bring her back, can't you?
Advanced Mechas peering through displayGive him what he wants.
What the advanced mecha say to each other when they find David.
Advanced mechas:This machine was trapped under the wreckage before the freezing. Therefore, these robots are originals. They knew living people.
What the Ben kingsly advanced mecha says to David at the end.
Advanced Mecha: David, I often felt a sort of envy of human beings of that thing they called "spirit." Human beings had created a million explanations of the meaning of life in art, in poetry, in mathematical formulas. Certainly, human beings must be the key to the meaning of existence. But human beings no longer existed. So we began a project that would make it possible to recreate the living body of a person long dead from the D.N.A in a fragment of bone or mummified skin. We also wondered, would it be possible to retrieve a memory trace in resonance with a recreated body? and you know what we found? We found the very fabric of space-time itself appeared to store information about every event that had occurred in the past. But the experiment was a failure, for those who were resurrected only lived through a day of renewed life. When the resurrectees fell asleep on the night of their first new day, they died again. As soon as they became unconscious their very existence faded away into darkness. So you see, David, the equations have shown that once an individual space-time pathway had been used, it could not be reused. IF we bring your mother back now, it will only be for one day, and then you will never be able to see her again.
David:Maybe, she will be special. Maybe she will stay.
Advanced Mecha: I thought this would be hard for you to understand. You were created to be so young.
David:Maybe the one day will be like the one day inside the amphibicopter. Maybe it will last forever.
Advanced Mecha: David, you are the enduring memory of the human race. The most lasting proof of their genius. We only want for your happiness. David, you've had so little of that.
David:If you want for my happiness then you know what you have to do.
quote:
Then come the aliens (at least, so I thought); who have the technology to recreate his mother. But only for a day? Why? How come? Bad science, and not so good fiction
If you noticed the details the "bad science" is part of a fairy tale. fairy tales are told to children, the being at the end tells this fairy tale to the child. your only taking certain details and ignoring others that would not make sense at all under your assumptions. note how the advanced future mecha is like a parent to david, gently consoling him and giving him a choice for happiness. If you see that everything that happens after they download david when they find him is in a VR enviroment of their creation then everything makes sense. the adult mecha notes that david was made so young, so would you tell a young child the dark dark truth? no, so they make up the perfect ending for him so he tells him the fairy tale and gives him the choice. they have all his memories of his mother and his experiences.. its perfect for such usage. the blue fairy at the end was a vr creation...the ai beings were shown looking into a floating display at david in their vr sim.
also its the only way that david would become "real" in the end, notice that it flashes and suddenly david can cry tears. the ending when he is with his mother again is also shot in a sort of blur dream like quality.
quote:
2) Where do people get the idea the "aliens" at the end were advanced robots? I've only seen it once, so I'm sure there are many things I didn't catch
Well look at all the details, first of all they instantly were able to network with the boy and download his memory. they were also completely compatible with him or had an easy time decoding which would be unlikely for a totally alien species. they had images flashing on their faces, their faces and bodies are almost evolutionary shaped after man, perhaps a natural progression of ai evolution over 2000 years. The vestigal eyesockets, the mouth..all very human. Its very very arrogant and unscientific to think that aliens would be just like us. their bodies look like they are full of circuitry or whatever.. they look artificial and impossible to create using biological materials, they are facinated with humans and the thing humans called "spirit" etc.. like they are digging for knowlege of their creators
quote:
I want to know what kind of disaster could result in the Alantic ocean freezing solid within 2000 years?
Why would robots be limited as humans are by climate change? they could adapt far more easily. the climate change could have been gradual, 2000 years after the last human died.. so the last human should still die far after david gets frozen.
also i don't think that the beings at the end were inferior or lacking something compared to man as someone stated. from all appearances they have emotions, not cold, how else would be so compassionate towards david. they also were searching for the thing humans called spirit, not emotion. the fact that they were looking for this would show them to be very very advanced.
lastly, here's the kubric faq on ai so you guys don't make false assumptions on what kubric wanted.
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/index2.html
http://www.mysteriesofai.com/faq/
AI Faq"
Resurrecting this thread.
I just saw AI this weekend for the first time and I thought it was fantastic.
It was so depressing and sad and there aren't that many movies that can pull those kinds of emotions out of me. But it was also very deep and had me thinking about it the whole weekend long.
0roo0roo, thanks for your synopsis of the movie it was very enlightening. It explained alot of things I didn't understand.
I just saw AI this weekend for the first time and I thought it was fantastic.
It was so depressing and sad and there aren't that many movies that can pull those kinds of emotions out of me. But it was also very deep and had me thinking about it the whole weekend long.
0roo0roo, thanks for your synopsis of the movie it was very enlightening. It explained alot of things I didn't understand.
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