Okay, so the title of this blog entry might be a little unnecessarily harsh. However, I do think that the ending of Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence essentially ruins the rest of the film (which has a fittingly dark and mature tone given the subject matter), by "artificially" tacking on a typical Spielbergian "happy ending." I really wanted to like A.I., and throughout the film I enjoyed the interesting dynamic of human characters that were more "robot-like" than their mechanical counterparts. I started to really get into it, loving the Pinocchio connections, and if the film had ended with David underwater talking to the Blue Fairy and asking to be made into a real boy for the rest of eternity, I would have thought that the film was a near masterpiece of a tragedy. Unfortunately, Spielberg added on about twenty more minutes of absurdity, with mind-reading super-robots that could bring humans back from the dead but only for one day (for some unknown reason). This allowed David to finally see his mother once again and have her treat him like a real boy, turning the film from a tragedy into a perfect example of Spielberg's oft-criticized overly wish-fullfilling happy endings.
Despite there were a lot of things in A.I. that I found very interesting. The question of whether robots could ever feel emotion is a very compelling idea, and I thought that Spielberg did an excellent job of exploring that in this film. Since most science fiction films that involve robots attaining artificial intelligence usually have those robots then turn against humans and trying to destroy them (as in The Terminator series or I, Robot), I thought that the choice to show robots from a sympathetic perspective was very innovative. This became especially clear when the meccas were "mistreated" by their human counterparts, almost as an inferior or rejected race of people. The Flesh Fair as well as the interactions between David and Martin (and his friends) truly showcase the potential for human cruelty to those who are different from us. Although, is it even reasonable to call it cruelty if they're being "cruel" to what are essentially just machines?
Overall, I guess A.I. wasn't a total disappointment, since the film raised a number of deep and moving questions, and the performances were great across the board (especially Jude Law as Gigolo Joe, and that's saying something coming from me, since I don't usually like him as an actor). However, I do wish that I could just chop off the last portion of the film or pretend that it never happened. I wonder how similar (or different) the film would have been if Kubrick had directed it as planned, but I would bet that the ending is definitely one thing he would have improved upon. Either way, after giving it some more thought, I don't really believe that Spielberg "ruined" Kubrick's story, since he did many things very well. And perhaps, since I have only seen the film once, I will grow to appreciate it more upon repeated viewings. Maybe next time I'll just accidentally press "STOP" twenty minutes early...
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