Word: spielbergisms
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...first sci-fi project since 2001, Kubrick had planned, as Spielberg says, "to take a step beyond the sentient relationship that HAL 9000 has with Bowman and Poole, and tell a kind of future fairy tale about artificial intelligence." When he suggested that Spielberg direct it, "I thought he was out of his mind. He was giving up one of the best stories he had ever told. But he said, 'This story is closer to your sensibilities than my own.' " Once Spielberg began work on the film, at the behest of the director's widow Christiane and her brother, Kubrick...
...Even when A.I. meanders or stumbles, it is fascinating as a wedding of two disparate auteurs. Kubrick took five, seven, a dozen years to make a movie; he optioned Brian Aldiss's short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," on which A.I. is based, in 1983. Spielberg has shot multiple films in one year, and in his spare time he helps run the DreamWorks film studio. Spielberg has the warmest of directorial styles; Kubrick's is among the coolest. One aims to seduce the audience; the other wanted to bend moviegoers to see it his way, or to hell with...
...forest. Quick as a face slap, David and the audience are in a strange new world containing refugee robots with half-faces and a jaunty "love mecha" named Gigolo Joe (Law). In Kubrick's script, says Law, "Joe was much more aggressive, more twisted." Here he is, in Spielberg's word, David's "scoutmaster." (This was the section Kubrick could not solve and which Spielberg, in developing it, has softened. The Kubrick version would have been rated R; this film...
...ages, Spielberg was dismissed as the original toy boy of films--a movie machine, a thrill technician. At 53, he has finally won his share of Oscars. But he still wants to prove that his heart beats, not ticks. Even more, Spielberg needs to show that he can conquer daunting odds; so he runs with a project that a most assured and intimidating director couldn't quite bring himself to film. One might call this an act of devotion. Or possibly hubris...
...Spielberg's hands, twists the notion of the Star Child: the nonhuman is more human, and in the sweetest way. All right, it's because man--playing God, playing tricks--programmed him to love, even as other film robots, like the Terminator, are designed to destroy. In the A.I. world, robots are made to give pleasure and, in David's case, offer joy. Gigolo Joe is a sex machine, David a love machine. The toy boy's sole purpose is to give and elicit affection. His obsession (in Kubrick's terms) or dream (in Spielberg's) requires...