I didn’t mind the first 90 minutes of AI. It just happens to have one of the stupidest god damn endings of all time.
Minority Report I feel similarly. The first 90 minutes make up one of the best scifi action movies ever. But the ending is so god damned stupid! The movie was begging for a dark ending. But a happy ending would be fine if it didn’t gloss over the entire philosophical question with kneejerk humanism. The problem with pre-crime isn’t that it’s used to prevent murders, it’s that the presentients were slaves and people were convicted automatically based on the premonitions without trial. My ‘happy ending’ would be that the presentients aren’t used as slaves but instead are paid millions of dollars for their services, and anyone accused of murder is given a trial before automatically just having the headset strapped to them. Instead they just scrapped the whole system. (But Agatha gets to grow hair! That gives me much happyfeelings!)
I loved AI from the start, and I’m glad it’s being re-appraised.
At first the shotgun marriage between Spielberg and Kubrick feels awkward, true, but as the film progresses the paradox only amplifies the film’s meaning. The movie is ultimately ABOUT contrasts—human vs. nonhuman, human cruelty vs. human softness, misery vs. yearning, life vs. death, etc.—and the contradictory virtues of both Spielberg and Kubrick are each needed to give the movie the poetry it finally achieves.
It’s another sci-fi movie about using knowledge responsibly, but what separates AI from, say, JURASSIC PARK, is the specific moral scope of the parable. By asking us to invest our emotions in a robot boy, Spielberg/Kubrick raise tough metaphorical questions about cloning, the Internet, stem cell research, and even class envy and race division. Most interesting, though, is the suggestion that our natural descendants may be our machines; that someday we might pass on our humanity through our brains, our science, rather than through our DNA.
The ending is about as grim a conclusion as I can imagine—bleaker, perhaps, than anything Kubrick himself ever filmed. The main character exhausts his very reason for existing, and is sentenced to an eternity of reminiscing about a joy that can never again be experienced. The fact that the scene doesn’t actually involve any human beings, however, raises all kinds of questions about what was actually experienced, about our obligations to our machines, and about what our treatment of (and identification with) machines says about own own ethical character as a species. It took a second viewing for me to grasp how the one-day thing actually EXTENDS the cruelty of the conclusion. More importantly, it extends the movie’s questions about what it means to be human and what it means to die. Is the resurrected Monica actually human? Or is she something closer to David, the robot? If we program something to APPEAR to love, does it actually feel love? How can we know? Are either of these beings actually experiencing human emotions or some variations on them? If not, why do we as audiences identify with them anyway? Ultimately, the scene deals with how we go about defining humanity itself.
Bottomless, that one.
I would consider Minority Report a great movie. But not A.I.. I did love A.I. but i don’t think it’s great.
I wanted to like Minority Report, but was greatly disappointed. There were Dickian elements, but the film was overwhelmed by the sets and props and the very stylised photography. The humour of PDK was largely absent. Tom Cruise was about as humourless as it gets.
I was on the fence about Minority Report when I first saw it, but with each subsequent viewing I respect it more and more. I still can’t figure out why my opinion on this film has changed so dramatically??
Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Films of the decade: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Neither are as good as WAR OF THE WORLDS (much to my surprise, I might add).
edit: @BUGSY_PAL: Yeah, PKD’s great sense of humor gets replaced by Spielberg’s crappy and incredibly hoakey sense of humor which is abundantly on display herein. Some seriously dorky moments.
Maybe A.I. is better than Minority Report, according to the fact that there’s a very “Asimovian” feel to the first one, i think Spielberg, like Asimov, is an optimistic, progressist and humanist (even if the end of Foundation surprised me for it’s dark doubtful moment and the end of A.I. is still a mystery), that’s why the film works better maybe than the adaptation of P.K.Dick, who was an anguished and paranoïd pessimistic and his novel shows it, the story ends in a totally different way.
“Minority Report” was initially seen as a minor classic – I think it topped Ebert’s best 10 list the year it came out – and I’m inclined to agree. On one level, works as a parable about what was going on in post 9/11 America when the film was made. This was at a time when popular entertainment was timid about these matters, it predated the reimagining of “Battlestar Galactica” by a year or two and Paul Greengrass’s clear-eyed “United 93” by a year. It also works as a noir, and has all the earmarks of one.
“A. I.” probably deserves another look. Much of the initial reaction was similar to some posters here: many felt it should’ve ended with David diving. I think the ending works as it stands, and I don’t think it’s a particularly happy ending at all. I don’t think “A. I.” is perfect by any means. It’s not Spielberg’s best film, and it doesn’t rank as one of the three best Kubrick films. But on balance, it works.
the ending of minority report IS A DREAM. john anderton is locked in suspended animation. isn’t it odd lara finds the murder weapon in a box on burgess’ coffee table?? isn’t that a hint that NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING?? the ending really pissed me off at first but i’ve slowly come around to a new interpretation. i think spielberg brilliantly subverted expectations
No Spielberg is a terrible Hollywood director that conpires to destroy real cinema. Burn all of his films!
Naw Malik, didn’t you like Duel? (ok that’s stretching really far back, I know)
i’m not a huge spielberg fan but i don’t know how anyone can hate raiders…
I was just joking. I just don’t expect much fair minded discussion on Spielberg here.
ha ok i think that’s a fair assessment
A.I. and War of the Worlds are masterpieces. Minority Report is still quite good. 2000s Spielberg is very underrated, and much, much better than 1990s Spielberg.
Ruby, are you serious about the ending of MINORITY REPORT being a dream?
Has anyone else ever considered that possibility that the ending is a dream?
i am serious. i’d like some other opinions on it.
I think it is fantastic interpretation. And I agree with Lehtonen. A.I. is masterful and I’m tired of it being so ignored.
Can you offer some evidence to back up that interpretation? Is there anything specific within the film itself?
Are AI and Minority Report on their way to becoming rediscovered as masterpieces
No. Naive and terribly un-camp, adventure mediocrities although in the case of A.I., there’s the Pinocchio allegory which somehow makes up for the “wooden” acting throughout. Let’s call it an interesting failure.
War of the Worlds is an insult of the highest order, a “damned spot” in the spectrum of literature adaptations and in Spielberg’s career. Something H. G. Wells himself would SPIT onto, from wherever he is right now.
No one who respects Wells’ philosophy would in their right minds even remotely like this abomination of a film.
Its obvious that Dimitris needs to see A.I. again, because there is no wooden acting anywhere in the film, just like there aren’t any aliens in the film (not assuming you think this). The film is an incredibly depressing view on humanity and very misunderstood. Give it another shot.
i remember alot of hints. notably, when anderton visits the prison, the attendant says the prisoners there dream whatever makes them happy. also in the big climax everything happens faaar too easily, even for hollywood. i have the dvd so i will give it a rewatch and get back to you with specifics.
I really wish I gave a damn enough to put more thought into this, but here’s a little bit of my take on Minority Report and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.
I really enjoyed Minority Report, as I too thought it worked on both a near-future science fiction level, as well as on a noir level. I remembered there being quite an element of consequence if Cruise’s or Morton’s character were to get caught, so I remembered there being some quite effective suspense. It has been a while since I’ve seen it though, and I really ought to revisit it sometime soon. I enjoyed it mostly because I identified moreso with the dilemma Samantha Morton’s character faced, her being a drugged-up human tool, really, suddenly having to go on the run, how she serves such an important function to an organization that doesn’t recognize or value her as a human being, and then suddenly they turn on her when she ceases to perform her function.
A.I. on the other hand I am militantly ambivalent about. It’s a darn shame that Kubrick didn’t live long enough to realize the vision this movie could’ve had, ‘cause I really could’ve seen this story having an edge to it similar to the one A Clockwork Orange has: arriving at a valuable, essentially life-affirming epiphany through incredibly harsh means.
Whereas Spielberg oppressively seeks to make the audience identify with “David” the robot as something that he is not (as a little boy), that attention paid to the main character takes away from, I believe, a far more valuable theme that’s present in the film, materializing in the character of Gigolo Joe.
If a robot were designed, and eventually totally able, to satisfy a human’s needs, whether they be emotional, physical, prurient or otherwise, what would be the value of human interaction? Should there even be a reason to have such an attachment, emotional or otherwise, to this machine, even if it’s convincingly made out to look like a human?
I believe that’s where Spielberg takes a false step in his handling of this material, by trying to make the audience identify with the child robot as something that it clearly is not and never will be. It’s manipulative to no real satisfying end, but I believe Kubrick would have totally taken it to a logical, truthful conclusion. He would have made you realize that David was a robot, a non-living thing designed to fulfill one purpose and one purpose alone, either by having something bad happen to it, some other character in the movie point out that realization, or both.
A.I. basically is a retread of the storyline from the Astro Boy series, except without the rocket packs and lasers, and with a lot more false pathos. Though the story lines share a similar set-up, that these robots were both designed in the image of a child in order to help make up for the grief of a parent, the various Astro Boy television series (especially the latest one) make a much more convincing case for the possibility of its robot possibly having a soul, able to make rational, moral decisions for itself and to act on its own (Correction: Only Astro has the deceased child. I stated earlier both the show and the movie featured a deceased child). We’re told that Astro was in fact designed in part to fulfill this potential, whereas David in A.I. is manufactured for consumption in a specific sense, one of hundreds of models that are designed to fulfill one purpose and one purpose alone: to literally take the place of a human child, in order to fulfill a human’s need for emotional attachment.
Whereas we’re led (FAR more convincingly) to believe of Astro as its own free-thinking entity, it’s very clear in A.I. that David, Gigolo Joe and the other robots are merely there for consumption and for a fixed purpose, much like a PlayStation 3 gaming system or the E-Machines computer I’m using to type this out with.
Both the movie and the manga cartoon COULD have presented two sides of a debate on whether or not such machines could in fact possess souls. Astro Boy does a wonderful job of presenting an affirmative take on the situation. Kubrick would have done a masterful job of presenting the other side of the argument, that even though this robot-child is convincing and could fulfill part of the emotional pull of having a child, that it’s still true that this thing would NEVER grow up to be a child, that it is only a machine, eventually out-dated and disposable, and that we as humans should learn to let go of placing such attachment to such an object, lest we get to a point where it’s possible we could be tricked into thinking there is such space to have an attachment to such an object, and perhaps end up losing our ability to connect on a human level because of it.
Again, I wish I could give this more time, but that’s all I got at the moment.
wow very impressive!
Well, I looked at the synopsis of A.I., and I guess I muffed the part where the real kid doesn’t die, but instead eventually comes back home. I do remember now that the kid left David at the bottom of the pool during its birthday party, so, meh.
Just wanted to add that, that I recognized my error.
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.
i found this single reference in this thread, posted one year ago by someone called alex towers whose account is no longer active. there was no further discussion of it
“a dream (a la Taxi Driver)”
So TAXI DRIVER is a dream too?
Roscoe
True, Ivin, it is a pretty grim prospect at the end of the film. I do wish Spielberg had ended the film in the copter, though. It feels much sadder, and a lot more “human” for David to be praying to an unresponsive plaster god.
Davril, I don’t really have a problem with the ending as is, though. And cheap easy Freud it may be (I’ve never read Freud, nor did I bring him up), but there’s still something disturbing about the film presenting a child cuddling with his mother’s corpse as a happy ending. I remember thinking, when it was first released, that this was Spielberg’s way of telling us that he was putting childish things behind him, but no. MINORITY REPORT pretty much trashed that little reading.