RobertScorpio
Pariah
Yes...it kept ending (a problem I had with the third LOTR movie)...
Okay, throw the tomatoes....
Rob
A I..the movie
- Thread starter RobertScorpio
- Start date
Yes...it kept ending (a problem I had with the third LOTR movie)...
Okay, throw the tomatoes....
Rob
Couldn't agree with you any more! Folks, David's recreated mother isn't REAL, he never got his real mommy to love him, he was told he can never be human, what he got was the best the super mechas could do for him. And when she dies, he shuts down and dies himself, leaving Teddy behind in that artificial world created for David. How is this a happy ending???
"Oh, by the way, David, the DNA that was somehow in this cut hair of your mother's you have gives us the code to reproduce your mother as a grown woman with all of her memories. It also only lets her live for one more day because, um, humans can only exsist in time for a short ammount of time. Yeah, we know human children are combinations of both parent's DNA and those children live for scroes of years; and that when people die in accidents or non-genetic related events it has nothing to do with DNA so that would seem to contradict the "humans only can live so long per DNA's rules" but DNA is just funny like that."
I alway had an issue with the fact the Professor Hobby and his employees did not retrieve David. I mean they knew he sunmerged with the anphibacopter (since the cops were pulling up Joe and must have saw the sub submerge) and David had the headlights on trapped under the colapsed ferris wheel so he should have been easy to find.
It has a happy ending because Spielberg let's David have his unattainable goal: he gets to become 'human' (by dying) and receive his mother's everlasting love (through the Super Mechas recreation technology). Who knows why he dies. Perhaps it would be too much of a downer for David to experience the greatest day of his life and then have to experience his mother's death and live on without her for all time. It's definitely too much of a downer for Spielberg to let the film reach it's climax when David finds the Blue Fairy.
That Teddy and David are somehow salvaged without having degraded at all in 2,000 years is silly enough. That Monica can be recreated by an equally preserved 2,000 year-old sample of hair (which contains no DNA!), but only be allowed to exist for 24 hours is both silly and arbitrary. It's not technology indistinguishable from magic--it is magic--and magic at the arbitrary hand of Spielberg's screenplay.
'But David dies...' is not an adequate argument that the film has a downbeat ending. A downbeat (and true) ending would deny David what he seeks, because it is impossible to attain. Instead, Spielberg inserts ludicrous Aliens/Super Mechas (what they're called is irrelevent, since they represent a deus ex machina in the form of magic) to give David exactly what he wants. That it is not his 'real' mother is also irrelevent, for she is a perfect recreation according to the Super Mechas. And that perfect recreation, of course, deep down loves David with all her heart, because Spielberg can't let her stay with her decision to abandon David made in the first act.
If Spielberg had made Brazil, he would have delivered the 'love conquers all' version without studio interference! But thoughts such as those only leave you to imagine what a writer/director like Terry Gilliam could have done with the same material. Alas, Kubrick, in his decline, picked Steven Spielberg.
That Teddy and David are somehow salvaged without having degraded at all in 2,000 years is silly enough. That Monica can be recreated by an equally preserved 2,000 year-old sample of hair (which contains no DNA!), but only be allowed to exist for 24 hours is both silly and arbitrary. It's not technology indistinguishable from magic--it is magic--and magic at the arbitrary hand of Spielberg's screenplay.
'But David dies...' is not an adequate argument that the film has a downbeat ending. A downbeat (and true) ending would deny David what he seeks, because it is impossible to attain. Instead, Spielberg inserts ludicrous Aliens/Super Mechas (what they're called is irrelevent, since they represent a deus ex machina in the form of magic) to give David exactly what he wants. That it is not his 'real' mother is also irrelevent, for she is a perfect recreation according to the Super Mechas. And that perfect recreation, of course, deep down loves David with all her heart, because Spielberg can't let her stay with her decision to abandon David made in the first act.
If Spielberg had made Brazil, he would have delivered the 'love conquers all' version without studio interference! But thoughts such as those only leave you to imagine what a writer/director like Terry Gilliam could have done with the same material. Alas, Kubrick, in his decline, picked Steven Spielberg.
At best, it's an allegorical version of a "Make a Wish" thing where a kid dying of cancer gets to play football with Brett Favre or that girl got to see "Up" before she died. But I mean, yeah, it's "happy" in that moment... but ultimately it's still pretty depressing.
Yes, if you take the "mother" at face value, the proper ending is sentimental. I see no reason to accept what the super-mechas say. For one thing, there is no reason for the "mother" to come back for just one day, except that not even the super-mechas can fake her for longer.
Also, since David's digital memory can furnish much better data for a reconstruction than (nonexistent) DNA, the initial claim they can't reconstruct her is suspect.
The thing is, leaving the ending at the Blue Fairy, means not even considering the value of what David wants. By giving him what he wants, the movie dramatizes its nature. David mindlessly talking to a statue is pathetic, a kind of little boy cast out by meanies. The ephemerality and illusory nature of love in the true ending is a human tragedy.
It's a fairytale. Scientific accuracy was not only not necessary, it was superfluous.
The problem wasn't with the DNA. I don't remember the exact explanation, but the mechas say something about how the lifeforce or soul-- that remains floating around in the space-time continuum somehow-- can only be brought back for a short time to our universe. Perhaps because it's not the original body or something.
It's still a pretty ridiculous contrivance, but I guess it's the best they could do.
Couldn't agree with you any more! Folks, David's recreated mother isn't REAL, he never got his real mommy to love him, he was told he can never be human, what he got was the best the super mechas could do for him. And when she dies, he shuts down and dies himself, leaving Teddy behind in that artificial world created for David. How is this a happy ending???
Where are people getting this idea that David died at the end? Yeah he goes to sleep and "dreams," but I never took that to mean he died. You really think these super-mechas could bring back a long-dead human being from a strand of hair, yet they couldn't keep one little robot alive longer than a few days??
And while the mother's body may have been a recreation, she still had the same soul and memories as before (yanked out of space-time, as I said before). Yeah she was a bit confused and not entirely herself, but that was still at least SOME trace of the real mother in there.
So, yeah, I'd call that a happy ending.
That's an interesting take on it. It gets you around the bad science (well, some of it) and makes the ending more poignant. But I just can't buy that Spielberg is so duplicitous. It's not his writing style, and I don't read it in any of his shots. You're re-writing in your head to make sense of what is on screen.
We just have different views on this one.
Couldn't agree with you any more! Folks, David's recreated mother isn't REAL, he never got his real mommy to love him, he was told he can never be human, what he got was the best the super mechas could do for him. And when she dies, he shuts down and dies himself, leaving Teddy behind in that artificial world created for David. How is this a happy ending???
Where are people getting this idea that David died at the end? Yeah he goes to sleep and "dreams," but I never took that to mean he died. You really think these super-mechas could bring back a long-dead human being from a strand of hair, yet they couldn't keep one little robot alive longer than a few days??
And while the mother's body may have been a recreation, she still had the same soul and memories as before (yanked out of space-time, as I said before). Yeah she was a bit confused and not entirely herself, but that was still at least SOME trace of the real mother in there.
So, yeah, I'd call that a happy ending.
Except the mother never loved David. She activated him out pain without considering his budding sentience and abandoned him as soon as he became difficult. This is what I mean when I say the movie is confused. It seems on the one hand to be saying love is as artificial a construct as the mechas, and on the other presenting love as the fulfillment of David's life quest. Beyond that it seems a somewhat typical "aren't humans hard-hearted bastards" pseudo-science fiction story. I suppose it may have had something in there about the longing for love as a motivating factor of existence (the scientist who invents David does so in pain over his lost son, the mechas we get to know seem to universally hunger for love), except it just seems to lead to degradation and horror for most of the characters - until it leads to the fulfillment of everything for David, which means what? in context with the rest of the story?
Like many sci fi stories it dabbled with philosophical questions in a messy sort of way, seeming like maybe it was headed for depth and ending up being a fantasy retelling of Pinocchio, which would have been fine if it had found a point of view somewhere along the way.
Clones do not have the same souls as their hosts.
If your contrivance doesn't make sense it shouldn't be used.
This was not your typical clone. Somehow the mechas were able to infuse it with her original soul (they talk about their "discovery" of how the process works, so obviously we were meant to accept it as legitimate).
Yeah it's goofy, but no more than a lot of scifi concepts out there.
I don't think it's entirely accurate to say she didn't love David at ALL. Obviously it wasn't at the same level as her love for her real son, but it still tore her apart to have to abandon him. She could have just dropped him off at the factory to be destroyed if it was nothing but another fancy toy to play with.
And in any case, I just don't see the larger point of the movie being simply about "love." To me it's about the growth and development of David, and how the love he's programmed to have causes him to become almost human in the end -- which of course raises the question of whether we are truly any different, or whether our humanity (and the soul we want to believe we have) is nothing but programming too.
It's something I've always been fascinated by, and I thought the movie explored it beautifully. It may not be what Kubrick and Spielberg were going for, but it's what I take out of it.
Frankly, I don't see how she could love her real son at all. The kid was a little evil monster.
I also like how this movie just completley brushes aside the role of a father.
I also like how this movie just completley brushes aside the role of a father.
Frankly, I don't see how she could love her real son at all. The kid was a little evil monster.
I also like how this movie just completley brushes aside the role of a father.
Well David was mainly intended for the mom anyway. I didn't get the impression the father was particularly attached, or needed to have a new son to love like she did.
Frankly, I don't see how she could love her real son at all. The kid was a little evil monster.
I also like how this movie just completley brushes aside the role of a father.
Well David was mainly intended for the mom anyway. I didn't get the impression the father was particularly attached, or needed to have a new son to love like she did.
The father is ridiculously glossed over in this movie. Only a mother can love her child.
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