no people i talk to still dislike AI cept maybe ao scott
it combines the potential of Kubrick with the dopey aspects of spielberg
I wouldn’t call everything that falls on that list a masterpiece. After all, you’re talking about a 1000 movies. It doesn’t bother me in the least what shows up on anyone’s list. The only list that matters to me is mine and neither film is anywhere near getting on it.
-Everyone seemed to dislike AI upon its initial theatrical release-
Ladies and gentlemen, can we please ease up on the hyperbole in all these recent thread?
To answer the question, most films are better understood with the passage of time, and I do tend to think that AI is better liked as it comes to be viewed as somewhat of a success for Spielberg rather than somewhat of a failure for Kubrick, but:
A. I. is #30 on the Film Comment poll as well. However, this was really a sudden reversal of opinion. A number of critics wrote generally positive reviews of it: Jonathan Rosenbaum, Roger Ebert, Michael Wilmington, Todd McCarthy. etc. Minority Report isn’t on the Film Comment list, but the same is true for the reviews it received.
Minority Report deserves that status.
>>Ladies and gentlemen, can we please ease up on the hyperbole in all these recent thread?<<
After all, everyone knows I’ve liked A.I. from the very first.
Everyone in the entire universe disliked A.I., c’mon!
Heh, well both Minority Report and A.I. suffer from “Spielberg Third Act” syndrome. They’re both completely ruined by these tacky, “Love conquers all”-type endings that Spielberg just LOVES to incorporate in nearly all of his films.
Minority Report wasn’t that bad until, at the end, we HAVE to have a scene where the villain is exposed and “does the right thing” – which is a euphemistic way of saying suicide. And what makes it even more ridiculous is the elaborate way he goes about it. It’s just one of the many American films that use suicide as a plot device. Besides, this ending totally negates any Philip K. Dick influence it might have had because the film should’ve ended where Cruise throws the “imposter” out the window. End it right there with a shot of Cruise’s disillusioned face, but you can never expect Spielberg to indulge in anything resembling poetry or “succinctness”. Someday I’ll make my own edit of MR, heh.
Comparatively, A.I. wasn’t that bad, but once again the third act kills it. It’s just not needed at all, but it’s a running trend in very very many Spielberg films.
So you’d end A.I. with David diving underwater?
who cares about david i was more concerned for the teddy bear
Sure, that’d be better than the fourteen endings after that (we are still in hyperbole mode, right?). But yeah, it’s just so schmaltzy and empty the way they originally ended it, but perhaps that’s just me.
@Harry Long: Yeah I’d agree with ending the film there, with David quietly repeating his question to the blue fairy under the sea. Kubrick would have done that, Spielberg (understandably) had to show an emotional payoff.
Also while I do like Minority Report, I’d hardly call it a classic. Although has anyone heard that theory that the final scenes of the film are a dream (a la Taxi Driver) that John has after being entombed in the prison.
Liked A. I. the first time I saw it. Maybe not the top 1000, but it’s still a very esthetically-neat film (as far as I remember).
Minority Report… don’t know. Is it anything more than a SF thriller?
Well, Minority Report could’ve been so much more if more of Dick’s vision was incorporated. The scene with the eye surgeon was total Spielberg, as well as the ridiculous overhead shot traveling around the apartment complex showing these theatrical tenants arguing and then stopping comically so they can be retinal scanned and then continue fighting – like, what is this looney tunes? God, that is all Spielberg and it just hurts the film. He hurts his own films time and time again. Minority Report is like the Temple of Doom without being self-aware.
A.I. wasn’t that bad, but once again the third act kills it.
The film moves from being more human and personal to being more technological and general, from orga to mecha, so the ending it in robo ice age was more or less logical. The mother scene at the end was also logical, but a bit too… melodramatic?
“He hurts his own films time and time again.”
I would give him more credit than that. I would say as a long time producer he probably hurts others films as well
Well, Minority Report could’ve been so much more if more of Dick’s vision was incorporated.
Arguably, Spielberg is not the most suitable director for P K. Dick. Somehow I don’t see him shooting A Scanner Darkly…
On what do you base that.? Has Kubrick’s script been made available? I understood Speilberg might have tinkered with Kubrick’s script but that he’s didn’t rewrite it substantially.
Or are you just playing, “What would Stanley do?”
The ending is more than just emotionally satisfying; it completes the story arc with David finding what he’s quested for & then dying. In the birthday cake with green icing we have a continuation of the children’s stories about young man who can’t or won’t grow up that have been woven into the film from the beginning. We also have the memorable final image of Teddy (who apparently is going to perpetually keep watch over the defunct David) crawling up on the bed. There is story closure her, not mere emotional payoff.
I discovered A.I. when the DVD was sent to me for review. And I went into it very skeptically because I generally dislike Speilberg’s work. And I was enchanted with it.
Of the two, I’d go with A.I. being an undiscovered masterpiece. MINORITY REPORT was just crap from start to finish.
I’d have been fine with A.I. ending with David and Teddy in the helicopter, underwater, praying to the Blue Fairy forever. I thought the rest of the ending was a bit much, but still rather interesting. The final moment of David cuddling with Mommy’s corpse may be the biggest unintentional creepout in American cinema. Even Hitchcock didn’t put Norman Bates in bed with Mother.
New Yorker, aren’t these movies too cheesy for you?
for a person named after the sophisticated magazine
New Yorker
he has championed AI, Minority Report, PTA while dissing Lawrence of Arabia and Gone with the Wind
sounds more like People Magazine
>>The final moment of David cuddling with Mommy’s corpse may be the biggest unintentional creepout in American cinema<,
I didn’t think mommy was dead yet … though both she & David soon will be.
I suppose the ending of Notre Dame de Paris creeped you out as well? And how about Romeo and Juliet_?
Harry, why yes, in fact they did creep me out. As did Laertes jumping into the grave to get one last hug from Ophelia. They’re all rather grand passionate romantic gestures, rather than the final moment of a Spielberg Quest For Parental Adoration. None of them feature Mommy/Son corpse cuddling.
Well, the narrator says that should he shake her, she’d never rise. It always seemed to me that she’s dead.
I’m curious, what makes you think that David will soon be dead? Is there any indication of that? I always got the impression that he was going to live for a long long long time, virtually forever, kept alive by the aliens as their one and only link to humanity.
I’m beginning to suspect trolling, here.
I’d have been fine with A.I. ending with David and Teddy in the helicopter, underwater, praying to the Blue Fairy forever. I thought the rest of the ending was a bit much, but still rather interesting. The final moment of David cuddling with Mommy’s corpse may be the biggest unintentional creepout in American cinema. Even Hitchcock didn’t put Norman Bates in bed with Mother.
Not at all to offend you, Roscoe, but that’s the kind of latent freudism we should fight! Everyone says Freud is dead, yet because of what people think he said, they regard hugging your mom or your sister as sexually perverse.
For me A.I. was like Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’ insomuch as I didn’t rate them but every time they re-run them on television I find myself returning to them and enjoying them more and more. I even find myself sometimes, quoting or, to be more accurate paraphrasing the line delivered by Jude Law about Dr Know ‘because there’s nothing that he doesn’t’. It’s a slow burner and of course the last 15 minutes are crap in my opinion, kind of like the last 15 minutes of Bicentennial Man (sp.) We don’t really need the arc completed as the theme of unfullfilment is pretty much central to the film. Wouldn’t be suprised if we get a director’s cut one day.
‘Minority Report’ again, I’m cool with. To appreciate it more you can’t really compare it with Blade Runner but it’s more subtle and stylish than ‘Total recall’ which I enjoy for the hell of it.
For me A.I. was like Boyle’s ‘Sunshine’ insomuch as I didn’t rate them but every time they re-run them on television I find myself returning to them and enjoying them more and more. I even find myself sometimes, quoting or, to be more accurate paraphrasing the line delivered by Jude Law about Dr Know ‘because there’s nothing that he doesn’t’. It’s a slow burner and of course the last 15 minutes are crap in my opinion, kind of like the last 15 minutes of Bicentennial Man (sp.) We don’t really need the arc completed as the theme of unfullfilment is pretty much central to the film. Wouldn’t be suprised if we get a director’s cut one day.
‘Minority Report’ again, I’m cool with. To appreciate it more you can’t really compare it with Blade Runner but it’s more subtle and stylish than ‘Total recall’ which I enjoy for the hell of it.
“for a person named after the sophisticated magazine
New Yorker
he has championed AI, Minority Report, PTA while dissing Lawrence of Arabia and Gone with the Wind
sounds more like People Magazine"
-I was not championing them. I am not a huge fan of either one of these spielberg films but have just noticed that others have been acclaiming them and wanted to ask people’s opinion on this board. Not that I should have to defend myself, but with Lawrence of Arabia, a film which I like greatly, I was partially playing devil’s advocate as I have heard others refer to it as cheesy and wanted to ask the opinion of people on this board. Gone with the Wind is a decent film but I am not crazy about it, but I don’t see why I should have to be discredited based on my opinion of a film.
you are right I was mean
I apologize
OP – Since I haven’t watched AI since it came out, I still remember my reaction more than the smallest details of the plot. The emotional meaning was so overstated – a few times throughout – that I just found the ending with the voice-over to be ridiculous. It just seemed to lack any form of subtlety. I should watch it again after all these years and see if I suddenly think it’s a masterpiece for some reason…
Minority Report was good for about the first half. The ending was not very exciting – compared to the many chase sequences earlier on – so I find it to be another one of those anti-climactic Spielberg failures. Why suddenly abandon all the excitement and have Tom Cruise put all the puzzle pieces together? It’s a sci fi thriller not a friggin episode of Murder She Wrote. Heck, Total Recall had a better ending! Schwartz just happens to figure out how to save an entire planet in about 5 seconds, all this while killing about 50 armed thugs, and removing a man’s arms. He didn’t talk anybody into suicide, he just violently killed them all, himself.
The ending in A.I. is the ending the ORIGINAL KUBRICK TREATMENT. People saying “Kubrick would’ve ended with David praying to the Blue Fairy” do not what they’re talking about.
That was the one aspect in the film Spielberg left practically intact (much of his contribution was in the first two acts).
Plus I thought the ending was really kind of BLEAK. I mean, humanity has been EXTINCT for over 2000 years. David’s experience of “real love” is only for one day and with a CLONE nonetheless and he wills himself to DIE. How the hell is that a happy, schmaltzy ending? Explain to me how that is schmaltzy!
New Yorker
Everyone seemed to dislike AI upon its initial theatrical release, but it has managed to be incorporated into TSPDT’s list of the 1000 greatest films of all time. How do people feel about this?