Jaws. Schindler’s List. Saving Private Ryan. These are just some of the titles that come to mind when considering the wordsSteven Spielberg and “masterpiece.“Over his career that’s now stretched almost half a century, the unparalleled director has crafted quite the astonishing filmography to choose from. He’s made almost as many tearjerkers and genre epics as commercial box office smashes. However, one film that rarely gets mentioned as part of Spielberg’s masterpiece milieu is 2001’sA.I.: Artificial Intelligence.Starring Jude Law and the preternaturallygifted Haley Joel Osment, this sci-fi drama saw Spielberg at the most ambitious point in his career, and its influence on modern day sci-fi remains more powerful than ever. Without Spielberg’s uncanny foresight twenty years ago, it’s hard to imagine where sci-fi would be today -A.I.definitely deserves a lot more credit than it’s usually given.
The film, which made a whopping $235 million dollars upon release (yet to mixed critical and audience reviews), was actually based on material Stanley Kubrick had been developing for nearly twenty years before his death. The reason the film never developed during Kubrick’s time was because the director feared that no child actor would be able to accurately portray David, the film’s childlike android, and computer imaging wasn’t yet advanced enough to do so, either. Kubrick handed the film over to Spielberg in 1995, but either were preoccupied with other projects at that point. It wasn’t until Kubrick’s death in 1999 that production on the project was finally galvanized. What we are left with is a reminder of either of these directors' genius, and how their different styles can actually work quite harmoniously together.
Although covered in the cold Kubrickian glaze, the story ofA.I.is ultimately a deeply human one - arguably, what Spielberg does best. Divided into three separate parts, each uniquely different in tone and style, we follow the story of a robotic child, David, who is adopted by a young couple as their own. Despite David’s love for his parents, and relentless attempts at adjusting to the human world, the lifestyle simply proves too much for him. He must undergo a journey to find real acceptance - will that be with humans, machines, or no one? Spielberg takes us on a journey that is just as heartbreaking as it is fresh and idea-driven, one that’s impossible to forget once you’re forced to reckon with its ending.
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The Untapped Possibilities of A.I.
Prior toA.I., thephenomenon of artificial intelligencehad taken on a very specific role within sci-fi films - that is, largely, to inspire fear within viewers (and its characters). How could such an all-powerful tool impose anything less than a dire threat to the future of humanity? In2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick shows us a computer system that is foolproof and incapable of error - we all know how that works out. InThe Matrix, the Mr. Smith AI programs are used to enslave mankind into a permanent state of docility. Even as early as 1927, Fritz Lang’s expressionist sci-fi masterpieceMetropolissaw an early AI cyborg that’s supposed to represent the “workers of the future” - her only motives are to seduce and destroy.
While taking great influence from all of these predecessors, Spielberg’s film takes the idea of AI to the next level. Instead of asking how AI might ruin us, he considers how it may become another inextricable part of our reality - what would happen if AI wasn’t the end of humanity, but humanity very well might be the end of AI? What does a human/AI society really look like, and why do we assume that there has to be a clash? Spielberg reckons with these ideas by showing us how AI’s turnout will never be as black-and-white as we’re predisposed to think, and how it can be used to reinforce a system of pre-existent human values. For example, Spielberg’s world envisions events like the Flesh Fair, where broken “Mecha” are destroyed in front of leering human crowds. Not only does David, but Jude Law’s character, a sort of cyborg gigolo, have to reckon with what their next move is - the future not only of AI, but for AI, is not so easily predetermined.
Sci-Fi Can - and Ought to - Have a Heart
Science fiction is oftenregarded as one of cinema’s starkest, most inaccessible genres, especially those films that grapple with such complex ideas astechnology and the future of its development. In these films, it’s often hard to find characters with whom we can really identify because they can appear to populate a universe so distinct from ours - or sometimes, the characters aren’t even human at all. Spielberg completely throws this standard out the window inA.I.In the film, it is David - the robot boy - who audiences are brought to empathize with most, not the humans. David’s story is ultimately one of desire to belong and find family, and that is what makes the ending toA.I.so particularly devastating. To call it schmaltzy, as some of Spielberg’s work is sometimes labeled, would be a complete misfire, although a large element of the film’s controversy exists throughthe different interpretations of its ending. One is decidedly tragic, and one is decidedly happy. Audiences are left to make this decision for themselves, a crucial element to what makes the film so special.
Recent sci-fi films have adopted this standard of imbuing Hollywood’s least-human genre with humanity, launching the genre forward in exciting new ways. Several titles that come to mind considering this trend areInterstellar, Mr. Nobody, Her, Never LetMe Go, and, most recently, Kogonada’s hauntingly beautifulAfter Yang. All of these films, byA.I.’s standard, tell stories of perceptibly human growth, loss, love, and family. Looking at the future through such a lens reminds us just how precious, and not necessarily dangerous, it is.
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Paving the Aesthetics of the Future
Perhaps it’s in the general aesthetic ofA.I.where the visions of Kubrick and Spielberg seem to crucially clash. Despite the profound humanism that propelsA.I.’s story, the film, especially in its first act, is coated with a blinding, lackluster sheen that gives the film a dreamlike quality. However, as David abruptly penetrates the safety of his parents' bubble, the film takes on that classic Spielbergian magical quality, complete with sprawling sets that stretch through both space and time.A.I.is also filled withallusions to other filmsand recurring symbols and characters of fantastical origins. For example, the Blue Fairy - a deity directly from Pinocchio, whichA.I.is a futuristic retelling of - is used to taunt David so that he can prove he is a real boy to his mother.
A.I.has proven to the sci-fi canon that it doesn’t have to be defined by one stylistic choice. Spielberg and Kubrick’s aesthetics couldn’t be any more opposing, but they come together in a way that only enhances both the mystery and quality of the film. It is great to see how sci-fi films now are following this stylistically innovative trend. For example,Alex Garland’sEx Machinacouldn’t be any sleeker or more modern looking, but it is likewise filled with Edenic, naturalistic imagery. Sci-fi is shedding its old skin as something that has to look and feel a certain way - with inspiration fromA.I.; it is becoming a genre of profound depth, heart, and variety.
