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A.I.

evilsprout

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Jul 27, 2001
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Anyone seen A.I. yet? If you haven't, don't read on cos I give away parts of the plot...









OK, it's all very well and good, but don't you think it goes a bit crap when the soddin' aliens turn up?! If only Kubrick would have made it too, he wouldn't have had roboboy saying "I love you mommy" quite as often.
 
AI my arse

I know what you mean.....

They should have made two versions - the sloppy and sentimental (for average US viewers) and the much better Kubrick-style one for us cynics.

The first would be the one we both saw with aliens (boring....they always come in and short the crappy mess us biogs have made out) and plenty of 'mommy i loves you i do' ('sob' 'sob') lines in it.

The second would end when the 'boy' is sitting looking at the statue and simply fade with the lights of the police van - much more effective and I can't help feeling that this would be more in line with the Kubrick/Aldiss style of film making/writing.

A fine concept, though, I thought - throw away/lock in a cupbord when bored or off down the pub children. Well handy I must say!!



:eek!!!!: :devil: :devil: :devil:
 
CAUTION DO NOT READ IF INTENDING TO SEE MOVIE AND DON'T WANT

If you've seen Bicentennial Man (Robin Willliams), you've seen A.I. Simple as that - both feeble and protracted retellings of Pinnochio with overtures of the Meaning of Life.

The 'aliens' at the end, I felt, were the highly developed Artificial Life that has evolved from the robots of the film's opening, complete with the capacity for emotion that the David character is the first of his kind to achieve.
Evidently, humans, with their out-of-control emotional makeup have finally succeeded in killing themselves (a neat way of avoiding too much similarity to another filmic precedent, The Terminator).

As I've pointed out on another thread, the most uncomfortable thing for me with this film was seeing the twin towers of the WTC standing proud but caught up in another kind of disaster - a flooded and abandoned New York. Too close to 11 September for comfort.
 
I saw AI a few months back, and I agree the final 20 minutes or so were utter stupidity. And I think most of my fellow Americans did as well, since the film pretty well tanked it in the box office here.

Yes, the creatures were highly eveloved versions of the Mechaniods, not aliens. This was, however, very unclear. I only found that out after seeing the film by reading it on the glorious Internet. And I fear that the much reviled ending was from Kubrick himself. I think that Spielberg handled it, and much of the rest of the film, in a very ham-fisted way. Daniel sad. Daniel love mommy. Daniel want be real boy. Daniel see mommy clone. Daniel real boy now. Daniel cry. Daniel and clone mommy die. Kubrick would likely have been much more subtle, and less saccharine. And Robin Williams' appearance as the animated Einstien type character made me roll my eyes so far in to the back of my head I thought I'd need surgery to fix them. Unneeded comic relief. Did not see Bicentenial Man beacuse of him and the foul little girl who functions as a Pepsi shill on the side - pure torture!

I will buy the DVD this December, and watch it only to the point when Daniel sits, trapped under the ferris wheel at Coney Island, waiting an eternity for the blue fairy to make him a real boy as his batteries wear down. A beautiful, bittersweet ending that actually made my hardened heart soften a bit and strange liquid come from my eye sockets. As far as I'm concerned, there is no film after that point. My own version of the "Phantom Edit" (removal of Jar Jar Binks from Ep. 1) will save me from another diabetic coma. I suppose seeing the towers rising from the sea will be odd though, now that they are no more.

c_toast
 
A-I or A1 as my wife said on the phone (I thought she was ta

chicken_toast - well said, clearly better taste in the US than in UK as the cinema was packed with happy people when I went to watch it last night.

Ham fisted approach indeed - I could see the ways in which the ending could have worked, but not in this case.

Bicentennial Man - more rubbish. What's next!?

Personally I'm waiting for Band of Brothers to hit the small screen.

:rolleyes:
 
Well, I thought it was fantastic. Osment is a brilliant actor. And I loved the bittersweet ending, even.

Reviews on imdb.com were very polarised. One reviewer called it "an atrocity" for paying attention to a "hunk of metal" and ignoring the needs of a greiving mother. I still can't work out if that was a joke review or genuine. I guess if computers ever do get advanced enough to experience emotions, there will still be speciesist types who think that emotions only matter if the experiencer belongs to the species homo sapiens sapiens. Sigh.
 
One question: when David was asked what was the first thing he remembered, he replied "a bird" (or something). Why was that the first thing he remembered? :confused:
 
I believe 'the bird' was the winged human figure (outstretched, if slightly lowered arms) that was the roboticist creator's company logo (can't remember co. name) and a statue seen through the window of the office/lab in NY where the mechs (ie. David) first gained consciousness - hence the oldest memory being 'a bird'.
 
The worse thing at the end was the last line about [sic] "the land where dreams are made"... I guessed the "aliens" were mechs though, but it wasn't clear... They looked like aliens, did alien things... the CGI looked like Babylon 5...

A few points though... Why the hell didn't they close the kid's throat? He's a robot. He has no stomach. Why expose his innards to spinach-nihilation like that?

Also, why did the props people choose to use such distinctive Braun irons and Apple iMac speaker systems? It made the film look cheap.

The Flesh Fare thing was very, very silly, and the whole direction seemed an odd compromise between spielberg and Kubrick.

The blue fairy and obvious pinnochio similies made me want to vomit. Jude Law was pretty good though but why the hell is it so easy to steal police vehicles in the future.

Apart from that, great film.
 
Why did the boy's throat even allow access to his innards? Either close it off lower down, or watch ST: The Next Generation for a few tips on organic digestion from Data.

Also, why oh why wasn't the submersible crushed by either the falling Coney Island ferris wheel (yeah, I know it was under water), or by the sea completely freezing around the capsule during the ice age? Same for the blue fairy statue - not a speck of paint faded or out of place (and yet it crumbled to the boy's touch soon after).

And what about the teddy bear? Was he nuclear powered? He outlasted everyone else, and the poor fuzzy little fella was left on his own when (I presume) the boy David 'died'?


Anything else to be critical about has probably been blanked out by my unconscious.

On the film's good side, however....no, sorry, can't think of anything. Spielberg should be Spielberg, and Kubrick should be...left to rest in peace.
 
our present AI achievements

I like to know, what is the level of AI at present time anyway?
Is it from what I heard the intelligence of a one year old child?
Of course I guess this only exists in program/code form and not some physical being?:confused:
 
just saw the film today....i thought it was good up untill when he saty praying to the Blue Fairy statue, then the film went completely pear shaped!!! i thought it was similarish to Bladerunner ideas, and the Nomad Soul computer game for set design. i like the whole concept of A.I. mechs trying to be accepted as human but thought it was a tad too sentimental towards the end...if i hear that boy whisper just once more i think i'll scream!!!

anybody else spot the World Trade Centre is in the flooded Manhatten???!!!
 
Just a thought

Just got a point here to make about the film. Say if the David the robot boy was never abandoned by his parents and lives a fairly happy life with them, wouldn't this be a bit strange since the parents will get older as time passes, the boy will just stay the same. It wouldn't exactly be a normal life would it?
 
Indeed. In fact, as well as the "robot programmed to love you, oops you've just died of old age" ethical problem, and the supremely nickable police vehicles, there's also the whole problem of how/why Gigolo Joe went on the run in the first place. Sleeping with gigolo-bots must have been legal, or he wouldn't have had a licence, and, even though he was framed for the murder, for there to be no "violence restraint" mechanism in his programming, or at least a safety feature whereby either he cannot lie to the police, or they can access his memories, would be entirely insane. Surely?

Damn, not enough paragraps there, methinks.

:confused:
 
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