Just watched I, Robot

[SeaCat]

As some of you know by now I am a fan of early Science Fiction. I have heard so many things about I, Robot that I finally broke down and rented it.

From what I remember of Asimov's story, the movie didn't follow it too closely, then they redeemed themselves by saying it was taken from the story. This aside it had some good parts to it. My wife enjoyed it, and I would recomend it for anyone who wants a movie where they don't have to think much.

That being said it did kind of interest me on how one part of the theme was about a robot, (Artificial Inteligence) trying to find out "who" they were. (Much like A.I.) The other part of the theme was often mentioned in early Science Fiction. How one group or another was trying to take over the world in order to save people from themselves.

Kind of earie isn't it how the early writers, or at least the good ones who made you think seemed to always bring that up? Did they know something we don't? (Hmmmmm, thinking about it I seem to notice more than a couple of paralells between their ideas and what we're seeing now.)

Other movies I have liked lately.

The day after tomorrow. Shit for a story but great effects.

Van Helsing. Same as above.

The last Samarui (sp). Good movie, great action scenes as well as scenery shots. Would have been better if they used the correct armor but hey. It's Hollywood.

The Alamo. Good movie. Acting could have been better in some spots but hey.

Shrek 2. Too funny.

Not movies but I loved them.
Robin Williams Live at the Met.
Blue Collar Comedy Tour, as well as Blue Collar Comedy Tour on the road again. (Sorry Cloudy. I feel the way you do but these guys are just too funny, if more than a bit raw.)

Cat

 

[shereads]

A.I., the only movie I've ever seen that exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia.

There was a tipping point where A.I. could have been a great movie: the scene where the boy robot is trapped, presumably for eternity, in the post-apocolyptic submerged kiddie park at Coney Island, praying to the statue of Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.

I thought that scene was the end of the movie, and I was so stunned by the ironic representation of faith that I was in tears - and fully prepared to forgive every flaw in a collaborative effort that should never have happened.

But Spielberg just couldn't resist the opportunity to add some benevolent aliens.

The half-hour that followed was the biggest WTF in movie history. Couldn't you just feel poor Kubrick writhing in his grave? I'll bet Spielberg had suggested the aliens and Kubrick had responded by putting two fingers at the back of his throat and gagging.

When Kubric died before post-production, Spielberg thought, "Stanley would have loved the aliens if he had understood my vision. In Close Encounters, everybody loved my benevolent aliens."

The Blue Fairy/Virgin Mary scene had to be Kubrick's ending for A.I.

I don't know what happens to Speilberg sometimes. He can be brilliant, and he can ruin his own brilliant work by succumbing to a Limberger level of cheesiness. Remember the cemetary visit tacked onto the beginning and end of "Saving Private Ryan," like a pair of plastic bookends on a shelf of rare first editions? Even the cinematography in those scenes looked like something from a made-for-TV movie. I wonder who talked him out of having Private Ryan beamed up by aliens?

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Kubrick's ending wasn't the trapping at the bottom. The whole film was a gigantic religious metaphor and the originally envisioned ending was much, much, much more stark than "left at the ambiguous bottom".

The original ending would have been great--hell the whole film was great, it was just Spielberg. That has to be either accepted at the beginning or not. This wasn't a Kubrick film, everyone needs to be cool with that. How unfair to hold one director's vision to anothers.

 

[shereads]

Kubrick's ending wasn't the trapping at the bottom. The whole film was a gigantic religious metaphor and the originally envisioned ending was much, much, much more stark than "left at the ambiguous bottom".

The original ending would have been great--hell the whole film was great, it was just Spielberg. That has to be either accepted at the beginning or not. This wasn't a Kubrick film, everyone needs to be cool with that. How unfair to hold one director's vision to anothers.

I didn't actually find the Blue Fairy scene to be stark, or even negative believe it or not. The boy was doomed to remain unchanged, so his faith would continue to bring him hope no matter how long his prayer might go unanswered. His situation could only be experienced as stark or hopeless from the perspective of a real boy, the thing he wanted to be and wasn't. Roll credits. Perfect ending.

The issue with the floaty aliens isn't exclusively mine. Half the theater erupted in laughter when the aliens appeared, and a lot of people left. It just came out of nowhere, like a lazy way to provide a happy ending. If Lassie can't bring help in time to save Timmy from the abandoned mine shaft, let aliens rescue him!

I'm a fan of Spielberg's as a rule. But it's hard to imagine two creative minds less suited to work in tandem. Kubrick at his best is detached from his characters, like a spectator; there's a sense that he's watching them with understanding but not with a lot of sympathy, the way you might watch a child experiencing small hurts as major crises. Spielberg is passionately involved with every moment.

What was the original ending if you don't mind my asking?

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
I didn't actually find the Blue Fairy scene to be stark, or even negative believe it or not. The boy was doomed to remain unchanged, so his faith would continue to bring him hope no matter how long his prayer might go unanswered. His situation could only be experienced as stark or hopeless from the perspective of a real boy, the thing he wanted to be and wasn't. Roll credits. Perfect ending.

The issue with the floaty aliens isn't exclusively mine. Half the theater erupted in laughter when the aliens appeared, and a lot of people left. It just came out of nowhere, like a lazy way to provide a happy ending. If Lassie can't bring help in time to save Timmy from the abandoned mine shaft, let aliens rescue him!

Y'know... honestly? I've never, ever been in a movie theater where people have walked out on the movie before.

I'm a fan of Spielberg's as a rule. But it's hard to imagine two creative minds less suited to work in tandem. Kubrick at his best is detached from his characters, like a spectator; there's a sense that he's watching them with understanding but not with a lot of sympathy, the way you might watch a child experiencing small hurts as major crises. Spielberg is passionately involved with every moment.

What was the original ending if you don't mind my asking?

The original ending starts the same. The highly-advanced mechas are excavating Earth and find David and Teddy under the ice. Same sort of ultra-empathetic treating of him like a child and the dissolusion when the Blue Fairy crumbled. "What do you want?" comes up and David wants to see his mother, still. Its all he ever wanted.

So, they arrange it. Instead of it being a high-science cloning and program-scramble, its a hologram. And David is happy and its the most emotional thing ever. He goes to hug her, and she isn't real. He can't hug her.

Same sort of build up, but where Spielberg gave us what we wanted, Kubrick stripped it away. We wanted this boy to find his mother, we wanted him to be happy, we wanted his dreams to come true... and it doesn't happen. He gets to participate in the falseness of it, and that's the end.

 

[shereads]

Y'know... honestly? I've never, ever been in a movie theater where people have walked out on the movie before.

"Being John Malcovich" cleverly began with a scene that frightened away the dozen or so people who would have hated the movie. Puppets! Not just puppets, but puppets acting out an obscure medieval fable. At least a dozen people scrambled for the exit like startled cockroaches during the first five minutes.

The people who stayed turned out to be the most enthusiastic audience you could ask for at a comedy. I had to see the movie three times because the laughter drowned out a lot. I think the theme self-selected its audience pretty effectively, and the puppet show finished the job.

The original ending starts the same. The highly-advanced mechas are excavating Earth and find David and Teddy under the ice. Same sort of ultra-empathetic treating of him like a child and the dissolusion when the Blue Fairy crumbled. "What do you want?" comes up and David wants to see his mother, still. Its all he ever wanted.

So, they arrange it. Instead of it being a high-science cloning and program-scramble, its a hologram. And David is happy and its the most emotional thing ever. He goes to hug her, and she isn't real. He can't hug her.

Same sort of build up, but where Spielberg gave us what we wanted, Kubrick stripped it away. We wanted this boy to find his mother, we wanted him to be happy, we wanted his dreams to come true... and it doesn't happen. He gets to participate in the falseness of it, and that's the end.

That would have been just plain mean-spirited. I wonder if it made it as far as focus groups.

The Blue Fairy/Virgin Mary scene worked so well as an ending, because it was neither cruel nor too sweet to be credible. I could accept the Blue Fairy as a mother substitute for the boy, because he was elated when he found her - and it didn't occur to me that he would lose her/outlive her (the statue crumbling) as he would have lost his mother even if she had given him the love he craved. I could imagine the submarine-thing losing power and the lights going out, leaving him in darkness, but he would still have known she was there. His batteries would eventually have needed a recharge, and then he'd have gone to sleep. Like HAL, but without the trauma of being lobotomized.

The lack of resolution is what bothered me most about the aliens (that, and the fact that they looked like earlier Spielberg aliens, which snapped me right out of the story and into movie-making world, like Ted Dansen's cameo appearance in the middle of Saving Private Ryan's WWII France.) Nothing was resolved, at least not credibly. It seemed like the ending you'd make if you were on deadline and couldn't come up with anything that tested well.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I read the book many years ago and, as I recall, it was not a story but was a series of stories, all of them involving robots of one kind or another but mostly unrelated otherwise. Some of the stories included ongoing characters but each story stood alone.