A.I. (film)
From Open Encyclopedia
| A.I.: Artificial Intelligence | |
|---|---|
| Image:AI DVD.jpg {{{caption|}}} | |
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Produced by | Jan Harlan Walter F. Parkes Stanley Kubrick (posthumous credit) |
| Written by | Brian Aldiss (short story) Ian Watson |
| Starring | Haley Joel Osment Jude Law |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | {{{cinematography}}} |
| Editing by | {{{editing}}} |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. (U.S.); Dreamworks LLC (outside the U.S.) |
| Released | June 26, 2001 (New York City premiere) June 28, 2001 (Los Angeles premiere) June 29, 2001 |
| Running time | 146 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90,000,000 |
| Preceded by | {{{preceded_by}}} |
| Followed by | {{{followed_by}}} |
| IMDb profile | |
| {{{footnotes|}}} | |
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (actual on-screen title: Artificial Intelligence: A.I.) is a science fiction film that was released in 2001. It was the last project on which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick worked.
Kubrick had long planned to film A.I., but had been putting it off until he was confident that the effects could be handled convincingly, all the while working on the story in close cooperation with Steven Spielberg. After many years of exchanging ideas about the project Kubrick became convinced that this film needed Spielberg's "different kind of sensitivity" and urged him to direct the film. Spielberg finally accepted. Using Kubrick's storyboard, he wrote the script himself. The film has a certain "Kubrick feel" due to widespread use of metaphors and an ethereal score.
Kubrick died before the film started shooting.
Contents |
Partial credits
- Haley Joel Osment as David, a young Mecha
- Jude Law as Gigolo Joe, David's companion and also a Mecha
- Frances O'Connor as Monica Swinton
- Brendan Gleeson as Lord Johnson-Johnson
- Sam Robards as Henry Swinton, David's adopted father
- William Hurt as Professor Allen Hobby, David's creator
- Jake Thomas as Martin Swinton
It was adapted by Kubrick, Ian Watson and Spielberg from the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Effects, Visual Effects and Best Music, Original Score.
Plot
The story begins in the 22nd century, when an ecological disaster has resulted in a drastic reduction of the land area of the Earth and also of the human population.
These problems have been successfully addressed by technology. Androids with very high levels of artificial intelligence (called mechas, as opposed to orgas for "organics", i.e. humans) have become commonplace but have been granted no civil rights and must submit to government registration or else be destroyed. While mechas have a level of intelligence comparable to that of humans, they seem to lack emotion. They are also able to simulate certain body functions, such as sexual intercourse, but not others, such as eating or sleeping.
George and Monica Swinton are a married couple whose son is extremely sick and near death. In hopes of cheering up his wife, George agrees to his company's offer to let him bring home and test a prototype of an extremely advanced humanoid mecha that looks like a boy about the age of their hospitalized son, and which is supposed to be capable of feeling love. The mecha's name is David (named after the creator's late son) and although Monica is initially frightened of the android, she eventually warms to him after activating his experimental imprinting technology, which makes the mecha feel love for her as a child loves a parent.
The couple's son eventually recovers from his disease and returns from the hospital. This prompts a sibling rivalry between the mecha David and the Swintons' real son, who delights in taunting David, chiefly by telling him that Monica will never love him because he isn't "real". After David by accident nearly drowns the Swintons' son, Monica sets out to return him to the manufacturer. But fearing that David will be dismantled, she instead releases him in the forest of rural New Jersey to live as an unregistered robot, accompanied by his animatronic teddy bear friend, named Teddy. David is soon captured and nearly destroyed by a group of anti-robot activists at an event they organize called a Flesh Fair. He narrowly escapes with the help of Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute mecha, who is on the run after being framed for the murder of one of his clients.
The two become friends and set out to find the Blue Fairy, who David remembers from the fairy tale "Pinocchio" as a being who has the power to turn him into a real boy. If he becomes a real boy, he imagines, Monica will love him and take him back. With the assistance of some sympathetic frat boys on a road trip, Joe and David make their way to the decadent metropolis known as Rouge City (perhaps a 22nd century Philadelphia), in search of the knowledge that will lead them to the Blue Fairy.
An oracular computer personality called Dr. Know (voiced by Robin Williams) eventually leads David, with Joe in tow, to his manufacturers' offices at the top of a building in the flooded ruins of Manhattan. There, he sees that he is not unique and his manufacturers have created dozens of copies of him. This fact seems to disturb him as he meets and destroys one of his copies, and, disheartened, he jumps from the office into the ocean.
David is fished from the ocean by Joe in a stolen amphibicopter (amphibious helicopter), but before he is pulled up he sees the Blue Fairy on the bottom of the ocean. After Joe is seized by the police, David flies the amphibicopter back under the water, where it's revealed that what he saw was a statue of the Blue Fairy in the submerged ruins of Coney Island. Naïvely believing it to be the real Blue Fairy, he makes his wish to be turned into a real boy. The amphibicopter is pinned under wreckage and can no longer take David back to the water's surface so he simply waits for the wish to come true. David waits for many years, sitting in the amphibicopter on the bottom of the ocean and staring at the Blue Fairy statue.
In one of the longest flash forwards in motion picture history (not including stories with a major time-travel theme), the action skips to two thousand years later. Manhattan is buried under several hundred feet of glaciers and the human species is extinct. Highly advanced humanoid mechas conducting an archaeological excavation discover David and reactivate him (the ambiguity of these characters' origin, as well as their appearance, have led many to conclude that they are not mechas, but rather extraterrestrials; however, Spielberg has made it clear that they are in fact the mechas of the future). David is deeply upset to be permanently separated from Monica, and eventually the creatures offer to revive her from a few strands of her hair that Teddy saved all this time, although if they do so she will only live for one day and she can never be revived again. David eagerly accepts the offer, and spends one long day alone with Monica, basking in her love. The film ends as Monica and David lie down at the end of the day, to go to "the place where dreams are born."
The Ending
This ending has been subject to some debate. Many argue that it was really a dark ending masquerading as a happy one. Some observers claimed that the resurrected Monica was in fact an illusion or psychological manipulation created by the advanced Mechas so David can finally settle down peacefully and end his long, sad quest. The resurrected Monica was much warmer than her normal self, and many point out that during the long day she spent with David, she never asked about her husband Henry or her son, Martin. The ending also became a matter of debate among science fiction fans from a storytelling standpoint, with one side supporting the ending and hailing it (and the film as a whole) a classic, and the other side of the opinion that the ending was unnecessary and the film should have ended with David trapped with the Blue Fairy. The debate over the ending is also complicated by the fact that many viewers mistake the advanced mechas for extraterrestrials. They bear some resemblance to extraterrestrials in another Spielberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The ending can also be seen to have parallels to religion, especially Christianity. David, in essence, prays to an icon reminiscent of the Virgin Mary for 2000 years, and his mother is ressurrected, and he is finally loved, after the deus ex machina intervention of the androids. Also, the explanation for the fact that humans can only be 'revived' for one day is that such an occurrence in the fabric of space and time can only take place once, which can be seen as an indication that a human life is unique.
Implications
The film echoes Isaac Asimov, the Asimov-derived films Bicentennial Man and I, Robot, many old and new episodes of Star Trek, and doubtless the original work by Brian Aldiss, in making us think about the risks - or at least the philosophical and moral connotations and consequences - inherent in pushing machine technology, computerisation and robotics ever closer to the human condition - doubtless something that civilisational progress will eventually make possible. Will a sufficiently complex machine inevitably find emotions awakening inside it as an emergent property? Or will human beings supply them? On the one hand we doubtless rather hope so, since there could be little more dangerous for our way of life - and our safety - than cold, ruthlessly-logical high intellect in a nearly-everlasting bodyframe. Yet if machines can be made to feel but are effectively immortal, what kind of burden would humans - their designers - be imposing upon them? How would it "feel" for a robot to wait 2000 years for love? Or to see the humans it's been programmed to feel for shuffle so relentlessly and quickly off the mortal coil? And how far down the road of loving them back do we go? Doubtless, as the film makes clear, any barrier to engagement in the physical side of love might soon break down, but the Asimov rules (and probably our own most fundamental instincts) demand that we continually hold biological life in higher esteem than A.I. Never was the potentially hideous capacity for cruelty that that possibility entails made clearer than in this film. Were humanity to turn away from affection for the sentient robotic forms it had given life (or at least pseudo-life) to, were it then to go beyond a bare toleration of them, all that would then be left would be the kind of profound disregard and cruelty that A.I. encapsulates so graphically. If our species can maybe mature beyond brutality towards our fellow men and women, or to animals, then robots might still continue to seem fair game - and then, as Spielberg shows us with such overwhelming and sickening clarity, humanity dehumanises itself just as it confers humanity upon androids in the process of making martyrs out of them. All things considered, this would seem to be a moral minefield that at times seems to shout "don't go there!" in our ears. Which brings us of course to one more, fundamental, question: if humankind is physically, mentally and technologically capable of developing a technology that might have minuses as well as pluses, will it ever develop the necessary maturity to decide to refrain from doing so?
Website game
The movie had an unusual publicity campaign consisting of a new type of "game" involving approximately 30 interlinked websites. This type of game has since become known as an alternate reality game (ARG). The A.I. game did not have an official name, but became known as The Beast by its most ardent fans, the 2000-strong team who called themselves the Cloudmakers. The Beast was wildly successful as a game, attracting a much more devoted audience than the game designers had expected. It set the tone for future ARGs, and defined much of the genre's terminology.
In the game, the interlinked websites purported to be sites for a number of organizations (universities, businesses, and personal home pages) set in the fictional world of the movie in the 22nd century. Hints to the websites' existence were contained in posters, trailers and other movie publicity materials.
By studying the information on the sites, a story set in the world of the movie involving the murder of one Evan Chan became apparent. Solving various puzzles and hints, some involving email, physical meetings in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, telephone calls and telephone answering services, allowed the unlocking of more websites which gradually revealed the story of whodunnit and why.
Trivia
- The November 6, 2005 episode of The Simpsons, "Treehouse_of_Horror_XVI" featured a parody of the film entitled "B.I.: Bartificial Intelligence."
- The World Trade Center towers are shown standing 2000 years into the future after humanity has ceased to exist. This is noted to have been the last major film in which the towers were portrayed prior to their destruction on September 11, 2001.
External links
- Official film site
- {{{2|{{{title|A.I. (film)}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- Supertoys Last All Summer Long or the copy on the Kubrick site
- Cloudmakers.org, a discussion group and guide to the game
- screen shots
- The Kubrick FAQ's entry on A.I.
| Films by Stanley Kubrick |
|---|
| Short films: Day of the Fight | Flying Padre | The Seafarers Feature films: Fear and Desire | Killer's Kiss | The Killing | Paths of Glory | Spartacus | Lolita | Dr. Strangelove | 2001: A Space Odyssey | A Clockwork Orange | Barry Lyndon | The Shining | Full Metal Jacket | Eyes Wide Shut Productions: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence |
de:A.I. – Künstliche Intelligenz es:Inteligencia Artificial (película) fr:A.I. Intelligence artificielle it:A.I. - Intelligenza Artificiale nl:A.I. (film) ja:A.I. no:A.I.: kunstig intelligens pl:A.I. Sztuczna inteligencja pt:A.I. ru:Искусственный разум (фильм) sv:A.I. - Artificiell Intelligens zh:人工智能 (电影)
