8.2/10. Almost every story about robots ends up being about humanity and personhood. The most unadventurous among them only confront the luddite question of whether an android could ever be sentient, could ever be a person, even though they’re made from circuits and gears rather than flesh and blood. (It’s a question that many great works, most notably Star Trek: The Next Generation have convincingly answered in the affirmative.)
But the best works don’t just interrogate the question of whether a robot can be a human, but rather use the idea of the mechanical man to try to answer the question of what makes us human. Films like A.I.--and make no mistake, it’s a quality film—ask deeper questions about what defines humanity, what qualities, practices, traits do we possess as a species that makes us unique, and uses an outsider and imitator to do so, in the same way that learning a foreign language can help us to better understand our native tongue.
Thus A.I. tells us the story of a young “mecha” child who wants to be a real boy. The film wears its Pinocchio influences on its sleeve, and to that end, offers an updated, sci-fi-infused version of that story. In it, David, an android child, wonders what it takes for him to become real, for him to become human.
The answer offered is an intriguing one – love. What distinguishes David from his mecha counterparts is the fact that he can “imprint” on his mother, that he can have an innate attachment to her beyond his own control. But it’s not the trite Hallmark Holiday version of love. The film presents something far more melancholy, far more heartrending, in its conception of “love” as an essential ingredient in humanity.
In essence, the film posits that what makes us human, our distinguishing feature, is our ability to love something so much that we yearn for the unobtainable, that we reach for simulacra and last gasps of things we can no longer have. The kind of love that makes us human is the one that makes our attachments run so deep that they survive the people we were attached to, that they drive us to try to recapture things we know are lost and can never be recovered.
That is the crux of this film. It repeatedly shows us individuals who reveal their humanity through attempts to revive their loved ones, to find something to fill the holes in their hearts left when they lost those closest to them. Monica, David’s would-be mother, accepted David as a fill-in for her own son who is in suspended animation after some disease or accident that ripped him from her. She is reluctant at first, but soon finds that David is a means to ease her pain, to make this inevitably misguided attempt to bring her child back in a fashion.
That motif is repeated when David finally makes it to his creator’s workshop, and discovers that he himself was made in the likeness of Professor Hobby’s dead son. He too is living monument to the attempt to hold onto something lost, because the love imbued in that person is too much for to allow his maker to let go.
Of course, A.I. is also interested in the morality of creating something that can love, that must love, and which we may not love back. The film’s opening act--which centers on the process of the Swinton family learning to love David, having their flesh and blood son come back to life, and then slowly but surely coming to the decision that David, for manipulated but understandable reasons of safety, no longer has a place in their family—is the tightest of the film. It tells a heartbreaking story of a young man becoming a fixture, becoming a part of a home of love, and then being put out when he no longer makes sense there. In particular, the scene where Monica abandons him in the woods, and he offers impassioned pleas and promises that he’ll be better, than he’ll be realer, to no avail, is utterly devastating.
But it incites the middle act of David’s Pinocchio-like adventures, which prove to be the weakest part of the film. There’s thematic meat in the “Flesh Fare” portions of the film, which communicate the fears of a human population concerned that they’re being replaced by technology in a way that feels terribly prescient now. It also explores the way in which children are uniquely situated to earn our sympathies, that they speak to an innate sense of protection and preservation that manage to cut through even the chauvinistic prejudices of a bloodthirsty crowd desperate for mecha torture.
For the most part, however, these scenes feel like simple ways to fill in struggles between David being kicked out of his home, and him becoming a real boy. His adventures with Gigolo Joe and Teddy (who work as his companions in the vein of Jiminy Cricket) make gestures toward the larger themes of the film, and offer some red meat to science fiction fans both in terms of world building and gorgeous, otherworldly set pieces and sequences that still look superb despite being a decade and a half old, but mostly feel like less compelling detours to the larger story being told. Flesh Fare, Rouge City, and the sunken bones of Old New York are entertaining enough as standalone pieces, but don’t have the thematic coherence of the rest of the film.
That coherence comes in the film’s much maligned end game. While a 2,000 year wait and the presence of aliens may have been off-putting at first, they work as the true equivalents to the blue fairy that David is so desperate to find – the effectively supernatural force that can intervene and grant David’s wish.
And they do. What David wishes for more than anything in the world is to return to his mother, so the aliens revive her for one more day. It is in that final montage, where David gets to celebrate his birthday, to tell his mother his life’s story, to share in the joys and the pains of love and loss, that he truly becomes a real boy. What makes him so is the way that he shares in the efforts of Monica Swinton, and of Professor Hobby – his desire to recapture something lost, because he loves someone, and he can’t turn that off just because they’re gone.
His revival of Monica, his desperation to enjoy one last day with her, one last simulacra of where his love led him, shows that David has a soul, however you’d like to define that term. As the similarly precocious Lisa Simpsons once put it (via writer Greg Daniels) some philosophers believe that a soul is not something we are born with, but rather something we earn, through suffering, struggle, and acts that reveal our humanity. David has done all that and more, coming close to death, traveling great distances, showing his devotion and futile hope for millennia, in the hopes of being able to return to his mother.
So when he does, when he gets to spend that one last glorious day with her, it’s not just the culmination of the story, it’s his reward for his steadfastness, and the confirmation that he is a human being, in every meaningful sense of the term. It is moving when he hears the words he so desperately wanted to hear ‘lo those many years – that his mother loves him, that she’s always loved him. It is then that he not only becomes “real” but becomes whole, the gaping hole inside of him is filled. In the end, David wants without reason, he wants beyond reason, and like the little wooden boy who inspires him and those telling his story, eventually, his wish is granted, and he knows the profound pain and immense joy that comes with being a human being. The boy who was treated as much like a child as a person, turns out to be the last bastion of humanity, the legacy of our sins and our aspirations, at the end of the world.
I don't know why everybody hails this film as a masterpiece. I found it only a mediocre movie! Don't get my wrong, the idea and the opening of the movie are great, but for me it gets very implausible when David is "released into the wild" (the aliens, that David finally can sleep & dream, "the rising moon", etc.). Additional it is way too long for my gusto.
Conceptually interesting, but we’ve seen it done better in other movies and even tv shows at this point.
Yes, I certainly can’t deny that the acting and visuals are brilliant.
Also, the action scenes and worldbuilding are magnificent.
Can you tell it was made in the early 2000’s? Absolutely, the cyberpunk look is ever so present in a lot of scenes, but that’s not bothersome. In fact, I think it’s awesome.
Furthermore, this story goes in directions you don’t expect.
It takes a while for the real adventure part to kick in, and only then you’ll realize that the first act was just a lot of character development.
This film fails on a point where Spielberg hardly ever failed: tone.
As you probably know, this film was originally intended to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.
His dark touch is felt, and it really doesn’t mix with Spielberg’s whimsical style at all.
For example, do PG-13 Ted and an Einstein cartoon played by Robin Williams feel as if they belong in the same movie as where a mother leaves her own kid behind in the forest, and cries her eyes out for doing that?
Unfortunately, they don’t, which results in bizarre tonal shifts throughout the film.
Moreover, I found the choice to have the AI act like our stereotypical imagination of robots a mistake, as it makes it harder to connect to the characters, or understand certain choices of human characters in the first act.
Finally, certain scenes were, in the larger scope of the story, unnecessary (e.g. Brendan Gleeson’s circus show). Removing those scenes would’ve sped up the pacing and shortened the runtime, something this film needed.
5/10
This starts with a great concept about a robot experiencing human emotions and the consequences that would have. The movie also starts off pretty decent by showing how an emotionless robot is pretty scary, but how emotional humans are also pretty scary. Then it turns into a carnivalesque chase/quest, which is funny, exciting and looks amazing: great mid-story. There were a couple of ways I could see this end, so I figured it would lead to something great. And then, when I least expected it, I got to witness the worst ending I'd ever seen in a sci-fi movie (or Indiana Jones 4), guided by a voiceover (!) literally explaining the moral of the story over and over for 20 minutes.
I was willing to look over some plotholes and some annoying characters (yes teddy and mommy, i'm looking at you) because I liked the fact this movie made me think about what it means to be human. But the ending changed this from an above average movie to a terrible movie. It made me ashamed to be a sci-fi fan...
I didn’t like it until the second time I saw it. But now I love it
Starts off well and ask some serious questions along the way. The end? Jeez what a load of fucking shmush.
The strangest rewatch of my life: https://boxd.it/2bkeyr
What an amazing film, unique and profound and beautifully told.
However, my only complaint is the first 30 minutes or so. It’s almost like watching a 70’s film with the music used and unfortunately, I didn’t like it. Thankfully, it doesn’t continue throughout the film. It’s not really worth mentioning as the film as a whole is almost magical.
I remembered my childhood. It's heartwarming.
Interesting story but the pacing is off. The start and end are strong but the middle drags. Good acting and visuals. There are better stories about artificial intelligence. This one was pretty straightforward of a a kid wanting to become real.
This movie although a Sci-fi isn't about Sci-fi.
The end of this movie is perfect (not a spoiler) but an enhancement which gives you time to get all emotional and cry, also it gives you time to get it together before somebody turns on the lights.
I wonder what your opinion would be about "The Game (1997)"
there are 2 spoilers in that movie and 1 mistake but it's still great.
The end sucks imho
I can see why some people live this film but for whatever reason I can’t explain it was just an alright watch for me. Perhaps it was the pacing, maybe the characters but I don’t see myself revisiting this down the road.
This was suuuch a boring movie and it just dragged on and on. If you want a story about robots trying to become human, just watch someone play Detroit: Become Human. That game is a thousands times better than this.
A nice early 2000s sci-fi film that is created by the one and only Steven Spielberg. I believe I had seen this movie when I was younger, but I did not remember any of the plot beats. Overall, this one was pretty good, albeit unspectacular. Without the nostalgia, I think this one showed age more than most Spielberg does.
Rating: 3/5 - 7.5/10 - Worth Watching
This movie is a two-for, maybe even a three-for. There are definitely two if not three separate plots that could be separated out and fleshed out into their own movies, combined all at once into this one movie. Pee before watching.
Spielberg copying Kubrick sounds better than it actually is.
Just because it's long doesn't mean it's good.
There's a great series of ethical questions just dying to be asked here, but they're buried beneath so many layers of glossy effects, shameless sentimentality and routine overacting, it's hard to say whether they're worth digging up. A.I. is quite Kubrickian at heart - complicated, fascinating and occasionally bizarre just for the sake of it - but also so thoroughly lathered with the strokes of Spielberg that it could almost function as a parody of his career. That duality is often mesmerizing, but also quite destructive. There are a few moments where this picture shines brighter for such combined efforts than it ever could under a single master, particularly in the fleshed-out world itself, but they're frequently outweighed by the long stretches where the two visions clash loudly and horribly - as the entire third act can attest. An aspirant, visually stunning genre-straddler, it's an uneven, long-winded showcase of the best traits and worst indulgences of both directors.
Tired of having dull conversations? Watch this film with a friend, and if you can endure it to the end you'll have plenty to talk about as you vent at each other and try to make sense of the rubbish you've subjected yourselves to.
What the hell is this film?
Imagine a film where the first act starts off like a creepy version of Bicentennial Man.
And then the mid-section is like zany, action-heavy version of Blade Runner.
And the ending is the cheesy and fairy-tale mutated offspring of the ending from Interstellar.
Do you like feeling awkward and uncomfortable? Do you want to watch a highly intelligent robot (who should know better) standing around and being creepy? Do you want to watch his family treat him poorly in creepy ways while the robot continues to do creepy things? Then you'll be enjoying yourself for the first act.
Do you like watching robots getting framed for murder, getting hunted and blown up in a sexy PG Cyberpunk world? Then the second act is for you!
Is the story so far off-the-rails that only random aliens can make it worse? Absolutely!
I can't decide if I like this movie or not. The story is based on a good concept and in fact one of the oldest stories in scifi. The beginning is promising and sets up expectation moving forward. But then it somewhat drowns in a fantasy-fairy tale that has a bit too much Steven Spielberg in it. This becomes clearer the more the story progresses and you can't help but think E.T. or Close Encounters. The Picocchio theme is very much the essence here and I am tempted to say "unfortunately". Because this always comes up in this type of story and I would have liked a different angle for once. It runs a bit long, the pacing is really slow at times.
This is originally a Kubrick idea that he never got to make into a movie himself. I didn't knew that going into the movie and I am not sure I would have watched it knowing it. Because, and this might come as a shocker to some, I am not a huge Kubrick fan.
The one thing I can't complain about is Haley who is phantastic in playing David. But even with all the positive angles this movie does have at the core I don't like the execution much.
All the hype leading up to the movie...10min. into it I realized it's pinocchio; so disappointing
the story in this movie even though seems light but its rather deep, a journey how a robot with artifical intellegence seek a way to become a real boy so that his mom can genuinely love him, inspired by the classic story of carlo collodi fitted in post apocalyptic modern society theme, some audience probably think this movie is boring and the ending rather perplexing than revealing which I totally agree, but the whole story is great, the music is grand and spielberg did a great job presenting a "what if movie" about the future society where human and robot live side by side and its social and norm impact
Pelicula muy buena que recomiendo totalmente, excelente guion , es una obra muy sentimental y emotiva, además de que nos muestra lo que pasaría en un hipotético futuro con la creación de la I.A.
Esta nos muestra varios dilemas morales como el amor, el cariño, el engaño, el dilema de la delgada línea que separa lo humano de lo no humano, surgen muchas preguntas morales, pero que quedan por responder a merced del espectador.
Nos muestra todo lo que se es capaz de hacer para poder ser amados, todo esto bien equilibrado con grandes lineas de ciencia ficción, al final eso mismo que impulsa a David (Haley Osment), es lo mismo que impulsa a los últimos robots a buscar el origen de ellos dando con el. En fin es una pelicula muy emotiva, muy sentimental, con muchos dilemas morales y bastante compleja la cual recomiendo abrir totalmente tu mente para un mejor entendimiento.
Shout by SimonBlockedParentSpoilers2015-09-01T20:53:14Z
Profound! I enjoyed this movie when it was released and enjoyed it again tonight. Interesting if slightly 'creepy' topic of substitute robotic children. Probably more sinister to be honest is the fact that humans cease to exist by the ending. The cast are great and 14 years on now from it's release the CGI stands the test of time; my DVD's print quality does not :(