A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001) was the last project that filmmaker
Stanley Kubrick worked on.
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 script 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, and writing the script himself.
The film has a slightly "Kubrick feel" in which there is a high use of metaphors and its ethereal score.
Kubrick died before the film shooting started.
Partial credits
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. Robotic 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, 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, he is accompanied by his animatronic teddy
bear friend, named Teddy. David is soon captured and nearly destroyed by a group of religious 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 tricks.
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 sin city of Rouge (perhaps a 22nd century Philadelphia),
in search of the knowledge that will lead them to the Blue Fairy.
A riddle game with a cybernetic guru called Dr. Know (who is voiced by Robin Williams) eventually leads David, with Joe in tow, to his manufacturers'
offices, in 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. Naively believing it to be the real Blue Fairy, he makes his wish to be turned into a real boy.
The amphibicopter is damaged 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 time jumps in motion picture history, the action skips to two thousand years later. Manhattan is buried
under several hundred feet of glaciers and the human species is extinct. A race of
advanced androids (evolved from the human-created mechas of David's time) conducting an archaeological excavation discover David
and reactivate him. He is deeply upset to be permanently separated from Monica, and eventually the androids offer to revive her,
a la Jurassic Park, from a single strand 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 when Monica and David lie down
at the end of the day, to go to sleep.
This ending has gone through 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.
Website game
The movie had an unusual publicity campaign consisting of a "game" involving approximately 30 interlinked websites. The
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. This type of game is known as an Alternate Reality Game.
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.
External links
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