A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Dir. Steven Spielberg (2001)

Background

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is the 2001 film directed by Steven Spielberg.  Spielberg adapted the screenplay based on the screen story by Ian Watson and the 1969 short story by Brian Aldiss “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long.”  The movie stars Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O’Connor, Brendan Gleeson and William Hurt.  In short, the story follows a childlike android named David who is given the ability to love.

Plot Summary

It is the late 22nd century and global warming has flooded the coastlines.  Mecha, a new class of robots, have been created.  One of the major scientists involved in Mecha creation wants to form a Mecha child capable of loving its human owners.  A prototype David is created and tested by one of their employees, Henry Swinton, and his wife Monica whose child is in a suspended animation due to an unknown illness.  David is equipped with an imprinting protocol that is irreversible and causes David to love whoever activates it.  Monica eventually activates this protocol. 

Martin is cured and returns home, but doesn’t want a sibling and messes with David.  Martin tells David that if he cuts off a lock of Monica’s hair, she will love him.  After Henry and Monica wake up to David with scissors, Henry, thinking the scissors are a weapon, tells Monica robots that love might also be able to hate.  Later, at a pool party, one of Martin’s friends stabs David with a knife.  David grabs on to Martin asking him to protect him and accidentally falls into the pool clinging to him.  Martin almost drowns and Henry and Monica decide they must get rid of David.Monica abandons David in the woods with Teddy (his robot Teddy bear) to live as an unregistered Mecha. 

The plot then switches to Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute Mecha, who is framed for murdering one of his clients.  David meets Joe when they are on the run from the “Flesh Fair,” a spectacle where unregistered Mecha are destroyed for entertainment.  The crowd turns on the hosts, thinking David might be a real boy, and David escapes with Gigolo Joe.  Joe and David make their way to Rouge City in search of the Blue Fairy, which David thinks will turn him into a real boy, allowing Monica to love him.  The two get information from a computer “Dr. Know” which hints that they should go to Manhattan.  Joe is almost captured but they escape in what seems to be a future technologically advanced police helicopter. 

In Manhattan, David discovers an identical copy of himself and meets his creator, Professor Allen Hobby.  Thinking he is no longer special, David falls from the building into the water and is saved by Joe in the amphicopter.  David reveals that he found the Blue Fairy underwater.  Joe is captured.  David and Teddy travel underwater in the amphicopter and find the Blue Fairy, a statue in sunken Coney Island.  When the Wonder Wheel traps them facing at the Blue Fairy, David repeats his wish to become a real boy until they are frozen.

The plot shifts forward two thousand years and humans are extinct.  A group of highly advanced Mecha find David and Teddy and think them very special for having known humans.  The Mecha recreate Monica and Henry’s house and revive Monica from the lock of her hair for one day (the amount of time her clone can last).  Monica and David spend a day together and Monica tells David she loves him.  She falls asleep (never to wake up) and David lies next to her. 

Themes and Analyses

Love

One of the major themes of this movie, which we have also discussed in class, is whether robots can love.  The movie seems to answer “yes,” but also raises another, more poignant question.  If robots can love, can we love them back?  Gigolo Joe, a robot designed primarily for sex tells David of Monica, “She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh nor blood. You are not a dog a cat or a canary. You were designed and built specific like the rest of us... and you are alone now only because they tired of you... or replaced you with a younger model... or were displeased with something you said or broke. They made us too smart, too quick and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That's why they hate us” (A.I. Artificial Intelligence).  Joe believes we cannot love robots the way we love other humans. 

Sexual Exploitation

Another major theme is the sexual exploitation of robots.  One sees such questions arise in other movies like Ex Machina, however, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is unique in that it is a male being sexually exploited.  Gigolo Joe was designed to please women and often speaks of how well he knows women.  In this way, Spielberg plays not only with sexual exploitation of robots but also gender dynamics.  In the clip below, one sees Joe at work as a male prostitute, programmed to understand what it is determined that women “want.” 

-Ali Maas

Work Cited

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Apr. 2017. Web.

07 Apr. 2017.

Scifier939. "A.I. -- Gigolo Joe." YouTube. YouTube, 24 Sept. 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2017.

Image - Witmer, Stu, Ashes In The Hourglass, Zach Closs, Dave, Ghostman, SmokeyPSD,

Rado, and Harry Rossi. "A.I. Artificial Intelligence." MUBI. N.p., 19 Oct. 2010.

Web. Image. 07 Apr. 2017.