| A.I. Artificial Intelligence | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Screenplay by | Steven Spielberg |
| Screen story by | Ian Watson |
| Based on | "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" byBrian Aldiss |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Janusz Kamiński |
| Edited by | Michael Kahn |
| Music by | John Williams |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures[a] |
Release date |
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Running time | 146 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90–100 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $235.9 million[3] |
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (or simplyA.I.) is a 2001 Americanscience fictiondrama film directed bySteven Spielberg. The screenplay by Spielberg and screen story byIan Watson are loosely based on the 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" byBrian Aldiss. Set in a futuristic society, the film starsHaley Joel Osment as David, a childlikeandroid uniquely programmed with the ability to love.Jude Law,Frances O'Connor,Brendan Gleeson andWilliam Hurt star in supporting roles.
Development ofA.I. originally began after producer and directorStanley Kubrick acquired the rights to Aldiss's story in the early 1970s. Kubrick hired a series of writers, including Aldiss,Bob Shaw, Ian Watson andSara Maitland, until the mid-1990s. The film languished indevelopment hell for years, partly because Kubrick felt thatcomputer-generated imagery was not advanced enough to create the David character, which he believed no child actor would convincingly portray. In 1995, Kubrick handedA.I. to Spielberg, but the film did not gain momentum until Kubrick died in 1999. Spielberg remained close to Watson'streatment for the screenplay and dedicated the film to Kubrick.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released on June 29, 2001, byWarner Bros. Pictures in North America. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $235.9 million against a budget of $90–100 million. It was also nominated forBest Visual Effects andBest Original Score (forJohn Williams) at the74th Academy Awards. In a 2016BBC poll of 177 critics around the world,A.I. Artificial Intelligence was voted the eighty-third greatest film since 2000. It has since been called one of Spielberg's best works and one of thegreatest films of the 21st century, and of all time.[4][5][6][7][8]
In the 22nd century,rising sea levels fromglobal warming have wiped out coastal cities and altered the world's climate. With the human population in decline, advanced nations have createdhumanoid robots called mechas to fulfill various roles in society.
InMadison, New Jersey, David, an 11-year-old prototype mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Henry Swinton and his wife Monica, whose son Martin is insuspended animation after contracting a rare disease. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates hisimprinting protocol. Wanting her to love him in return, he befriends Teddy, Martin's old robotic teddy bear.
After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room, but as Monica turns over, the scissors accidentally poke her in the eye. While Henry attends to her wounds, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. During a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs Martin, causing both of them to fall into the pool. While Martin is rescued, David is accused of endangering others.
Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction. En route, she instead spares David by abandoning him in the woods full of scrap metal and obsolete mechas. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recallsThe Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find theBlue Fairy to become human, which he believes will regain Monica's love.
David and Teddy are captured by the "Flesh Fair", a traveling circus-like event at which obsolete mechas are destroyed in front of jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life, and the audience revolts and allows David to escape with Gigolo Joe, a prostitute mecha on the run after being framed for murder. David, Teddy and Joe go to the decadentresort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", aholographic answer engine, directs them to the top ofRockefeller Center in the flooded ruins ofNew York City and provides fairy tale information that David interprets as suggesting that a Blue Fairy can help him.
Above the ruins of New York, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire. David finds copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy before Joe rescues him in anamphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe with anelectromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction onConey Island. The two become trapped when theWonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing that the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.
Two thousand years later, humanity isextinct andManhattan isburied under glacial ice. Mechas have evolved intoan advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. 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.
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Stanley Kubrick began development on an adaptation of "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" in the late 1970s, hiring the story's author,Brian Aldiss, to write afilm treatment. In 1985, Kubrick askedSteven Spielberg to direct the film, with Kubrick producing.[12]Warner Bros. agreed to co-financeA.I. and cover distribution duties.[13] The film labored indevelopment hell, and Aldiss was fired by Kubrick over creative differences in 1989.[14]Bob Shaw briefly served as writer, leaving after six weeks due to Kubrick's demanding work schedule, andIan Watson was hired as the new writer in March 1990. Aldiss later remarked, "Not only did the bastard fire me, he hired my enemy [Watson] instead." Kubrick handed WatsonCarlo Collodi'sThe Adventures of Pinocchio for inspiration, callingA.I. "apicaresque robot version ofPinocchio".[13][15][16]
Three weeks later, Watson gave Kubrick his first story treatment, and concluded his work onA.I. in May 1991 with another treatment of 90 pages. Gigolo Joe was originally conceived as aG.I. mecha, but Watson suggested changing him to a male prostitute. Kubrick joked, "I guess we lost thekiddie market."[13] Meanwhile, Kubrick droppedA.I. to work on a film adaptation ofWartime Lies, feelingcomputer animation was not advanced enough to create the David character. After the release of Spielberg'sJurassic Park, with its innovativeCGI, it was announced in November 1993 that production ofA.I. would begin in 1994.[17]Dennis Muren and Ned Gorman, who worked onJurassic Park, becamevisual effects supervisors,[14] but Kubrick was displeased with theirprevisualization, and with the expense of hiringIndustrial Light & Magic (ILM) andStan Winston Studio.[18]
"Stanley [Kubrick] showed Steven [Spielberg] 650 drawings which he had, and the script and the story, everything. Stanley said, 'Look, why don't you direct it and I'll produce it.' Steven was almost in shock."
Kubrick askedSara Maitland to give the film mythic resonance. She recalls "He never referred to the film as 'A.I.'; he always called it 'Pinocchio.'" Kubrick's version ended the same way Spielberg's does, with advanced mechas reviving Monica, but only for a day.[20]
In early 1994, the film was inpre-production withChristopher "Fangorn" Baker asconcept artist andSara Maitland assisting on the story, which gave it "a feminist fairy-tale focus".[13] Maitland said that Kubrick never referred to the film asA.I., but asPinocchio.[18]Chris Cunningham became the new visual effects supervisor. Some of his unproduced work forA.I. can be seen on theDVDThe Work of Director Chris Cunningham.[21]
Aside from considering computer animation, Kubrick also hadJoseph Mazzello do ascreen test for the lead role.[18] Cunningham helped assemble a series of "little robot-type humans" for the David character. "We tried to construct a little boy with a movable rubber face to see whether we could make it look appealing," producerJan Harlan reflected. "But it was a total failure, it looked awful."Hans Moravec was brought in as a technical consultant.[18] Meanwhile, Kubrick and Harlan thought thatA.I. would be closer to Steven Spielberg's sensibilities as director.[22][23] Kubrick handed the position to Spielberg in 1995, but Spielberg chose to direct other projects and convinced Kubrick to remain as director.[19][24] The film was put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment toEyes Wide Shut (1999).[25]
After Kubrick's death in March 1999, Harlan andChristiane Kubrick approached Spielberg to take over the director's position.[26][27] By November 1999, Spielberg was writing the screenplay based on Watson's 90-page story treatment. It was his first solo screenplay credit sinceClose Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).[28] Pre-production was briefly halted during February 2000 because Spielberg pondered directing other projects, which wereHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,Minority Report andMemoirs of a Geisha.[25][29] The following month, Spielberg announced thatA.I. would be his next project, withMinority Report as a follow-up.[30] When he decided to fast trackA.I., Spielberg brought back Chris Baker as concept artist.[24] Ian Watson reported that the final script was very faithful to Kubrick's vision; even the ending, which is often attributed to Spielberg, saying, "The final 20 minutes are pretty close to what I wrote for Stanley, and what Stanley wanted, faithfully filmed by Spielberg without added schmaltz".[31]
The original start date was July 10, 2000,[23] but filming was delayed until August.[32] Aside from a couple of weeks of shooting on location inOxbow Regional Park in Oregon,A.I. was shot entirely using sound stages at Warner Bros. Studios and theSpruce Goose Dome inLong Beach, California.[33]
Spielberg copied Kubrick's obsessively secretive approach to filmmaking by refusing to give the complete script to cast and crew, banning press from the set, and making actors sign confidentiality agreements. For instance,Jack Angel, who voiced Teddy, recorded his lines entirely out of context, only receiving direction to sound likeEeyore fromWinnie the Pooh, except "very wise and old and stoic". However, Spielberg asked Angel to be on the set every day to make line alterations wherever he felt necessary.[34] Social robotics expertCynthia Breazeal served as technical consultant during production.[23][35] Costume designerBob Ringwood studied pedestrians on theLas Vegas Strip for his influence on the Rouge City extras.[36]Visual effects, such as removing the visible rods controlling Teddy and removingHaley Joel Osment's breath, were provided in-houses byPDI/DreamWorks.[37]
Julianne Moore andGwyneth Paltrow were considered for the role of Monica Swinton beforeFrances O'Connor was cast.Jerry Seinfeld was originally considered to voice and play the Comedian Robot beforeChris Rock was cast.[38]
A. O. Scott notes Spielberg's homages to Kubrick, "sly references toA Clockwork Orange,The Shining and predominantly2001: A Space Odyssey" as well as Collodi'sPinocchio.[39] The lines Dr. Know quotes are fromW. B. Yeats's "The Stolen Child":
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.[40]
The film'ssoundtrack album was released byWarner Sunset Records in 2001. The originalscore was composed and conducted byJohn Williams and features singersLara Fabian on two songs andJosh Groban on one. The film's score also had a limited release as an official "For your consideration Academy Promo", as well as a complete score issued by La-La Land Records in 2015.[41] The bandMinistry appears in the film playing the song "What About Us?", but the song does not appear on the official soundtrack album.
Williams called his score an "homage a Kubrick." He includes echoes ofGyorgy Ligeti's choral music, which Kubrick used in2001: A Space Odyssey. Per Kubrick's request, Williams included a quotation ofRichard Strauss'sDer Rosenkavalier in his score.[42]
The teaser trailer debuted on December 8, 2000, with the theatrical release ofProof of Life.[43] Warner Bros. used analternate reality game titledThe Beast to promote the film. Over forty websites were created by Atomic Pictures in New York City (kept online at Cloudmakers.org), including the website for Cybertronics Corp. There were to be a series of video games for theXboxvideo game console that followed the storyline ofThe Beast, but they went undeveloped. To avoid audiences mistakingA.I. for afamily film, no action figures were created, althoughHasbro released a talking Teddy following the film's release in June 2001.[23]
A.I. premiered at theVenice Film Festival in 2001.[44]
A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released onVHS andDVD in the United States byDreamWorks Home Entertainment andTouchstone Home Video on March 5, 2002[45][46] inwidescreen andfullscreen two-disc special editions featuring an extensive sixteen-part documentary detailing the film's development, production, visual effects, sound design and music. The bonuses also include interviews withHaley Joel Osment,Jude Law,Frances O'Connor,Steven Spielberg andJohn Williams, two teaser trailers for the film's original theatrical release, and an extensive photo gallery featuring production stills andStanley Kubrick's original storyboards.[47] It was released overseas byWarner Home Video.
The film was released onBlu-ray in Japan by Warner Home Video on December 22, 2010, followed shortly by a United States release byParamount Home Entertainment andTouchstone Home Entertainment (owners of the pre-2010 DreamWorks catalog) on April 5, 2011. This Blu-ray features the film remastered in high-definition and incorporates all the bonus features previously included on the two-disc special-edition DVD.[48]
The film opened in 3,242 theaters in the United States and Canada on June 29, 2001, earning $29.35 million at #1 during its opening weekend.[49]A.I went on to gross $78.62 million in the United States and Canada. Opening on 524 screens in Japan,A.I. grossed almost two billionYen in its first five days, the biggest June opening in Japan at the time, and sold more tickets in its opening weekend thanStar Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, although it grossed slightly less.[50] It went on to gross $78 million in Japan.[51] It grossed $79 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $235.93 million.[3]
OnRotten Tomatoes,A.I. Artificial Intelligence holds an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 201 critics, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A curious, not always seamless, amalgamation of Kubrick's chilly bleakness and Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism.A.I. is, in a word, fascinating."[52] OnMetacritic, it has aweighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[53] Audiences surveyed byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.[54]
Producer Jan Harlan stated that Kubrick "would have applauded" the final film, while Kubrick's widowChristiane also enjoyedA.I.[55] Brian Aldiss admired the film as well: "I thought what an inventive, intriguing, ingenious, involving film this was. There are flaws in it and I suppose I might have a personal quibble but it's so long since I wrote it." Of the film's ending, he wondered how it might have been had Kubrick directed the film: "That is one of the 'ifs' of film history—at least the ending indicates Spielberg adding some sugar to Kubrick's wine. The actual ending is overly sympathetic and moreover rather overtly engineered by a plot device that does not really bear credence. But it's a brilliant piece of film and of course it's a phenomenon because it contains the energies and talents of two brilliant filmmakers."[56]
A. O. Scott writes: "Mr. Spielberg seems to be attempting the improbable feat of melding Kubrick's chilly, analytical style with his own warmer, needier sensibility. He tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange asJohn Williams's unusually restrained, modernist score." He concludes: "The very end somehow fuses the cathartic comfort of infantile wish fulfillment -- the dream that the first perfect love whose loss we experience as the fall from Eden might be restored -- with a feeling almost too terrible to acknowledge or to name. Refusing to cuddle us or lull us into easy sleep, Mr. Spielberg locates the unspoken moral of all our fairy tales. To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish."[39]
Richard Corliss ofTime magazine heavily praised Spielberg's direction, as well as the cast and visual effects.[57]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of a possible four, saying that it is "wonderful and maddening".[58] Ebert later gave the film a full four stars and added it to his "Great Movies" canon in 2011.[59]
Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives the film two stars out of four in hisMovie Guide, writing, "[The] intriguing story draws us in, thanks in part to Osment's exceptional performance, but takes several wrong turns; ultimately, it just doesn't work. Spielberg rewrote the adaptation Stanley Kubrick commissioned of the Brian Aldiss short storySuper Toys Last All Summer Long; [the] result is a curious and uncomfortable hybrid of Kubrick and Spielberg sensibilities." However, Maltin called John Williams's music score "striking".
Jonathan Rosenbaum of theChicago Reader comparedA.I. toSolaris (1972), and praised both "Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick's intentions while making it a profoundly personal work".[40] In 2009, he describedA.I. as "a very great and deeply misunderstood film", noting thatAndrew Sarris,Stan Brakhage andJames Naremore "more or less" agreed with this assessment.[60]
Film criticArmond White of theNew York Press praised the film, noting that "each part of David's journey through carnal and sexual universes into the final eschatological devastation becomes as profoundly philosophical and contemplative as anything by cinema's most thoughtful, speculative artists –Borzage,Ozu,Demy,Tarkovsky."[61]
FilmmakerBilly Wilder hailedA.I. as "the most underrated film of the past few years".[62] When British filmmakerKen Russell saw the film, he wept during the ending.[63]
ScreenwriterIan Watson has speculated, "Worldwide,A.I. was very successful (and the 4th-highest earner of the year) but it didn't do quite so well in America, because the film, so I'm told, was too poetical and intellectual in general for American tastes. Plus, quite a few critics in America misunderstood the film, thinking for instance that theGiacometti-style beings in the final 20 minutes werealiens (whereas they were robots of the future who had evolved themselves from the robots in the earlier part of the film) and also thinking that the final 20 minutes were a sentimental addition by Spielberg, whereas those scenes were exactly what I wrote for Stanley and exactly what he wanted, filmed faithfully by Spielberg."[64][note 1]
Mick LaSalle of theSan Francisco Chronicle gave a largely negative review. "A.I. exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg." Dubbing it Spielberg's "first boring movie", LaSalle also believed that the robots at the end of the film were aliens, and compared Gigolo Joe to the "useless"Jar Jar Binks, yet praised Robin Williams for his portrayal of a futuristicAlbert Einstein.[66][failed verification]
Peter Travers ofRolling Stone magazine gave a mixed review, concluding, "Spielberg cannot live up to Kubrick's darker side of the future", but still put the film on his top ten list that year.[67]
David Denby inThe New Yorker criticizedA.I. for not adhering closely to his concept of the Pinocchio character.
Spielberg responded to some of the criticisms of the film, stating that many of the "so called sentimental" elements ofA.I., including the ending, were in fact Kubrick's, and the darker elements were his own.[68] However, Sara Maitland, who worked on the project with Kubrick in the 1990s, said that Kubrick never started production onA.I. because he had a hard time making the ending work.[69]
James Berardinelli found the film "consistently involving, with moments of near-brilliance, but far from a masterpiece. In fact, as the long-awaited 'collaboration' of Kubrick and Spielberg, it ranks as something of a disappointment." Of the film's highly debated finale, he claimed, "There is no doubt that the concluding 30 minutes are all Spielberg; the outstanding question is where Kubrick's vision left off and Spielberg's began."[70]
John Simon of theNational Review describedA.I. "as an uneasy mix of trauma and treacle".[71]
In 2002, Spielberg told film criticJoe Leydon, "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us... And what's really funny about that is, all the parts ofA.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts ofA.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film—all the stuff in the house—was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision... Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts ofA.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'"[72] Spielberg said, "While there was divisiveness whenA.I. came out, I felt that I had achieved Stanley's wishes, or goals."[73]
On re-watching the film many years after its release,BBC film criticMark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in a January 2013 interview for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He came to believe that the film is Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".[74]
Visual effects supervisorsDennis Muren,Stan Winston,Michael Lantieri andScott Farrar were nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Visual Effects, and John Williams was nominated forBest Original Music Score.[75][76] Steven Spielberg, Jude Law and Williams received nominations at the59th Golden Globe Awards.[77]A.I. was successful at theSaturn Awards, winning five awards, includingBest Science Fiction Film along withBest Writing for Spielberg andBest Performance by a Younger Actor for Osment.[78]
American Film Institute nominated the film inAFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.[84]
Kubrick, however, wanted a coda in which the new race of robots, because of a technological limitation, cannot keep the mother alive after reviving her. The movie would end with David in his mother's bedroom, watching her slowly disappear.
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