[Nicolai P. Zwar]

As I noted, I’ve seen A.I. – Artificial Intelligence three times so far, once in its original theatrical run, once on DVD, once on Bluray. I do have my issues with the movie, but it’s also a tremendously interesting film. I wish I would be able to enjoy it more than I do.
It was a Stanley Kubrick project which Kubrick himself thought was more suitable for Spielberg. Spielberg took many things from Kubrick’s pre-production, so the idea of a Kubrick/Spielberg collaboration alone is fascinating. The concept of an “A.I.” child is an interesting one, though I wonder if it is really about “Artificial Intelligence” or rather “Artificial Emotions”, or “Programmed Emotions”, because that seems to be at the root of David’s struggle and problems… in any case, an interesting subject.
I think the setup of the movie is great, and the middle part has some of the best scenes Spielberg ever did, the scenes with Jude Law have a wonderful quality, a mix of hard science fiction and dreamlike fairy tale story telling. John Williams’ music is terrific. Yes, it obviously takes its starting points from John Adams and Philip Glass (some parts feel like almost quotes from Glass), but it’s still 100% Williams, he weaves the inspirations into a new whole, excellent score, one of his finest. (I was never happy with the original soundtrack album though, which really shortchanged Williams’ music.)

But the ending… sheesh… the ending of the film undermines so much. I don’t mind the idea of that ending, but the execution. If ever the rule “show, don’t tell” was heavy-handedly broken, it’s this. I remember the first time I saw the movie… I mean, there’s David, under the ocean in New York, before the Blue fairy statue from Coney Island… and then centuries pass by (I love those batteries these things have… Supertoys last all Summer long)… ice covers New York, and when David awakens, it’s a new world, humans are long gone, Mechas have far, far evolved and are now the dominating species… and for them, David is of course of enormous interest and value, since he springs from a time of their origin. So far so good… but then… then the talking starts… it’s Ben Kingsley’s voice, a great voice, and I really love to hear him narrate as the gentle super-Mecha, but the kind of cringy nonsense he is babbling tests my patience.

They love David, he’s so important for them, but he cannot become human, but they can reconstruct the Swinton family home from David’s memories… and then goes on, explaining they have learned to recreate humans from genetic materials, including apparently their souls, but only for one day (what kind of a weird cloning science program is that?), and once they have done this, they cannot do this ever again (WTF… why not?) and conveniently, Teddy has a strand of hair from Monica, so they can now do what they just told us they could do, and then David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes as Teddy watches over them. That last image with Teddy watching is really sweet, but the entire scene before that is just awful.

I am willing to accept a lot in films, but not once did I buy anything that Ben Kingsley Mecha told David. And the movie really spreads this out and let’s the Ben Kingsley Mecha talk this nonsense for what seems like as long as David must have been under the ice. What is he saying? I mean, they can clone humans as grown adults (okay, weird, but an old sci-fi trope, so far I can go along), get the memories of these humans somewhere from outer space (what??), insert these memories into the grown clones (stop it, please!), but these clones live only for one day (say again??), and that entire procedure can only be done once(WTF??)? I really did not buy any of this… that is just suddenly a complete nonsensical magic explanation out of nowhere, it sounds completely insane. That’s so totally far fetched ridiculous, it would have been less magical fantasy if the Blue Fairy just had suddenly become real and made David a boy. That’s the issue I have with the ending, and it undermines a lot for me.
The ending fails because it strived for an emotional resolution the film’s own logic and terms didn’t earn and didn’t want.
But the rest of the movie is very good.