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Ebert ads A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) to his Great Movies list.

I really like AI. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a favorite, but I did enjoy it both times I saw it, and I'd probably buy it if I ever came across it somewhere fairly cheap.
 
Neither great, nor bad, ultimately failing to reach its full potential. Still the best genre movie from a rather weak year in science fiction (2001).

Wouldn't really add it to a "Great movies" list though.
 
Love this movie. I know a lot of people thought otherwise, but I thought the melding of Spielberg and Kubrick was pulled off beautifully. I love the slightly dreamlike quality it has, and all the fantastic imagery. It's the first scifi film in a long time I truly felt mesmerized by.

Interesting that Ebert still doesn't see any genuine growth or humanity on the part of David though, and feels that everything he did was just an act of empty, lifeless "imitation". To me what made the movie resonate was the possibility that we actually WERE seeing a hint of humanity and consciousness poking through-- no matter how basic or primitive it may have been. And that ultimately his "programming" was really no different than the programming we get from our own genes and such.

I don't buy that the story was only supposed to be a reflection on the human parents, or just some sad tale of a mindless robot who discovers he has no mommy. lol
 
I haven't seen the movie in ages, but I still recall disliking Spielberg's choice of the sentimental ending. The fact that that is what has stuck with me about the movie doesn't do it any favors in my mind. I'll probably see the Blu-Ray of it at some point in the future, though, and see if it is better than I remember.

Ensign_Redshirt said:
Neither great, nor bad, ultimately failing to reach its full potential. Still the best genre movie from a rather weak year in science fiction (2001).
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Agreed that it was a weak year, although it also had Donnie Darko as well as two films which look interesting (though I haven't seen them): Vanilla Sky and the animated Metropolis.
 
I admire Ebert for revisiting and revising his critical opinions of past films.

I like that he at least stakes out a position on what artificial intelligence is that's not sentimental and anthropomorphizing. Machine intelligence, in whatever sense it comes to exist, will only resemble humanity to the extent that it's designed to imitate human behavior and simulate the appearance of consciousness. Too much of what we consider to be "human intelligence" and the essence of being human are adaptive evolutionary responses, shaped by the specific history and environment of the species, and are as meaningless to machine nature as they are unlikely to be replicated by some other species on some other world.
 
I remember finding Law underwhelming and some middle portions of the film feeling pretty middling (doesn't he join some kind of robot freakshow or something along those lines)?

In some parts of my brain the film gets jumbled together with Mission to Mars, probably for the disappointment and 'hey, aliens!' ending (although I can also no longer reliably tell apart Mission to Mars from Red Planet).

Ebert's reading of film is interesting, but probably counterintuitive. You can suggest some interesting sci-fi ideas as to the why of the film's ending, but was Spielberg hinting at that or was he overdosing on sentimentality with a one-last-time scene with the mother? The film feels it's playing its schmaltz far too straight to believe it has a bit of underhanded analysis of robot logic going on.

Ensign_Redshirt said:
a rather weak year in science fiction (2001).
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Indeed, and a bitter irony that. The best sci-fi film I saw in theatres that year was... 2001, which had a really nice super-wide-screen showing.
 
I thought it was alright while I was watching it. Then it came to the end........ oh wait, no sorry. There's some more. Well I guess that drags it down a little bit...... wait, it's still going? ok then............ hm well this is starting to lose the plot entirely.......still going............ yeah, this is just lost.......... oh wait, still more to go........ ok, that sucked.

If the movie had ended maybe half an hour earlier, I'd probably like it more, but I thought it sort of went off track towards the end and got weird. But I've only seen it once though.
 
Dennis said:
I like that he at least stakes out a position on what artificial intelligence is that's not sentimental and anthropomorphizing. Machine intelligence, in whatever sense it comes to exist, will only resemble humanity to the extent that it's designed to imitate human behavior and simulate the appearance of consciousness. Too much of what we consider to be "human intelligence" and the essence of being human are adaptive evolutionary responses, shaped by the specific history and environment of the species, and are as meaningless to machine nature as they are unlikely to be replicated by some other species on some other world.
Click to expand...

Well yeah it's doubtful a machine, no matter how advanced, could ever duplicate real human thought and consciousness. At most, it would probably just be it's own kind of super-intelligence.

But the idea is still a thought provoking one, I think. As someone who doesn't believe in any kind of soul, and thinks our "consciousness" is just a result of our genes and wiring, it's always fascinating to me to watch scifi explore that idea with androids (whether with Data in TNG or David in A.I.).

I mean, if we were only programmed to think we had a soul, or to have a deep emotional attachment to another human being like David did, would we really know or act any different? I suspect not.

We just want to believe there's something deeper at work.
 
Kegg said:
Ebert's reading of film is interesting, but probably counterintuitive. You can suggest some interesting sci-fi ideas as to the why of the film's ending, but was Spielberg hinting at that or was he overdosing on sentimentality with a one-last-time scene with the mother? The film feels it's playing its schmaltz far too straight to believe it has a bit of underhanded analysis of robot logic going on.
Click to expand...

Yeah the final ending does get a bit schmaltzy, but frankly the whole movie has a slightly fairy tale quality to it, so I think it kind of fits, in some strange way.

David was almost a fairy tale character, so maybe he deserved to have a bit of a fairy tale ending.
 
I always have mixed feelings about this film, largely due to the ending, but the themes it explores are worth discussing.

I think David is really a prototypical tragic character. He aspires to be more than he is, perhaps with aspiration as part of his programming, but he is not at all capable of achieving it. He thinks the Blue Fairy will miraculously make him real because it is impossible for him to do this on his own. What he wants is impossible and so he is trapped, believing his mother will only love him if he's a real boy, but eternally incapable of ever being a real boy--and also unable to accept this reality.

I think it's a clever example of an infinite logic loop as a sophisticated android might experience it. Had he never found the Blue Fairy he would've latched onto some other false hope, because it was apparently beyond his programming to ever give up or decide that his programmed tasks are impossible.

It illustrates some of the dangers of attempting to create machines that emulate human emotions. In humans, compulsive thoughts are considered a psychological disorder and can be treated. In a machine, "compulsive thoughts" are the foundation of all programming. There is no cure because they work that way by definition.
 
Robert Maxwell said:
It illustrates some of the dangers of attempting to create machines that emulate human emotions. In humans, compulsive thoughts are considered a psychological disorder and can be treated. In a machine, "compulsive thoughts" are the foundation of all programming. There is no cure because they work that way by definition.
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That's a good point.
 
In my opinion, A.I. is one of the best SF movies of the 2000s decade if you turn it off at it's proper ending - with David under the water with his beloved Blue Fairy, forever. But Spielberg or Kubrick or both decided the film needed a whiz-bang "happy ending" so the rest of the nonsense happens and the film sinks as a result. I disagree with the OP: the ending serves no purpose that I can see.

So I guess I could say I agree with Ebert about 2/3 of the way.

Alex
 
23skidoo said:
In my opinion, A.I. is one of the best SF movies of the 2000s decade if you turn it off at it's proper ending - with David under the water with his beloved Blue Fairy, forever. But Spielberg or Kubrick or both decided the film needed a whiz-bang "happy ending" so the rest of the nonsense happens and the film sinks as a result. I disagree with the OP: the ending serves no purpose that I can see.

So I guess I could say I agree with Ebert about 2/3 of the way.

Alex
Click to expand...
Huh? That's what I remember as the ending, David underwater and then credits roll? Was a new ending tacked on? Am I forgetting what came after? Was there multiple versions? I'm really confused now?
 
The only problem I ever had with the "happy ending" is that the future robots looked like aliens from Spielberg's Close Encounters. That threw me off, because I couldn't figure out why aliens would care about giving David that one day with his mother.

Otherwise, it's a fantastic film. Haven't watched it in a long time, way overdue for re-watch.
 
milo bloom said:
The only problem I ever had with the "happy ending" is that the future robots looked like aliens from Spielberg's Close Encounters. That threw me off, because I couldn't figure out why aliens would care about giving David that one day with his mother.
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Oh---those were robots? I thought they were aliens too, which was just odd. But then I've only seen the movie once.
 
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