SPOILER: AI On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Sam Vilain wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Oct 2001 12:25:45 -0400 (EDT) > Chris Devers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > It's worth noting that this was apparently not just another gratuitous > > Spielbergism. It was apparently part of the story as Kubrick was planning > > on telling it, and as produced by Speilberg was true to that. > > Can you back that up at all? I'd be interested to know. When the movie came out over the summer, there were several reviews that mentioned this, but I can't dig up anything substatial along those lines at the moment. However, this article -- apparently written before Steven Spielberg officially took on the film -- seems to back that up: <http://www.supersphere.com/Zinetropa/Article.html?ID=Cakewalk&NAME=robot> It mentions several possible directions that Kubrick might have taken the film, not all of which ended up happening (eg I don't remember the mother being an alcoholic), but it does indicate that everything that happened after the boy went underwater [SPOILER FROM HERE ON OUT] was part of the story that Kubrick & Aldiss (author of the original short story) were working on together: Aldiss and Kubrick continued revising by expanding their story's timeline: now, after an initial exposition much like "Supertoys," David would be found thousands of years later by other impossibly advanced robots who would recharge him in an attempt to better understand their extinct human heritage--long since disappeared from the planet. One wonders how Kubrick would have made that transition over such a vastness of time. Would it have mirrored his famous edit in 2001--that trajectory of white bone flung into blue sky, suddenly becoming a drifting space laser? Kubrick had already connected his vision to a time before recorded history; AI would have telescoped to the opposite bookend. Etc. The author of the article overall makes a pretty good case that AI was meant to be the final, threads-tying-up act to Kubrick's career, pointing out how Teddy had forebears [pun] in several previous movies, the themes being dealt with were revisits to earlier ones (Teddy == a more cuddly (& mature) HAL), etc. The look of the film may be more shiny/happy/Spielbergian, but I'm satisfied that in the meat of it the film is as Kubrick would have done it. It may feel a little different, but it makes the same points. -- Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
