A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Steven Spielberg
Haley Joel Osment
Frances O'connor
Sam Robards
Jude Law
William Hurt
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Sometime in the distant future, after the polar icecaps have melted, major flooding has devastated most major cities. Technology has advanced to the point where people depend for many tasks on robots with highly sophisticated artificial intelligence; including companion robots which replace friends, lovers or children. David is a companion robot programmed to be the loving son of Henry and Monica Swinton, whose own son, Martin, lies comatose and apparently brain dead in a nearby hospital. Just as the Swintons learn to adjust to David and his capacity to love eternally and unconditionally, Martin makes a miraculous recovery and returns home. Soon sibling rivalry makes David a hindrance to the family's unity and he is cast out of the family. Alone with his robotic teddy bear and unable to adjust to a world that has no use for his ability to love, David journeys out into the forests to find a way to become a real boy.
Director
Steven Spielberg
Cast
Haley Joel Osment
Frances O'connor
Sam Robards
Jude Law
William Hurt
Keith Campbell
Adrian Grenier
Jack Angel
Clark Gregg
Ty Coon
Michael Shamus Wiles
Chris Rock
Ben Kingsley
Theo Greenly
Wayne Wilderson
Brent Sexton
Kevin Sussman
R David Smith
Mark Staubach
Kate Nei
Jason Sutter
Bobby Harwell
Eliza Coleman
Curt Youngberg
Laia Salla
Michael Fishman
Paul Barker
Enrico Colantoni
Dillon Mcewin
Matt Winston
Kathryn Morris
Paula Malcomson
Adam Alexi-malle
Duane Buford
Tim Rigby
Robin Williams
Kelly Mccool
Andy Morrow
Ashley Scott
April Grace
Diane Fletcher
Laurence Mason
Sabrina Grdevich
Miguel Perez
Matt Malloy
J Alan Scott
Brendan Gleeson
Jeremy James Kissner
Lily Knight
Clara Bellar
Justina Machado
Vito Carenzo
Michael Berresse
Adam Grossman
Brian Turk
Claude Gilbert
Haley King
John Prosky
Jake Thomas
Max Brody
Jim Jansen
Erik Bauersfeld
Al L Jourgensen
Tim Edward Rhoze
Ken Palmer
Eugene Osment
Billy Scudder
Tom Gallop
Ken Leung
Jeanine Salla
Rena Owen
Daveigh Chase
Michael Mantell
Meryl Streep
Crew
Brian Aldiss
Richard Alonzo
Richard Alonzo
Gregory Alpert
Fred Arbegast
Greg Aronowitz
Karen Asano-myers
Fred Astaire
Chris Baer
Christopher Baker
Terry Baliel
Christian Beckman
John Bell
David Beneke
R Christopher Bergschneide
George Bernota
Barbara Bonney
Ronald Bouma
Darin Bouyssou
Marc Brickman
Lisa Brookes
Emery Brown
Linda Kay Brown
Tom Brown
Greg Bryant
Jeff Buccacio
Greg Burgan
Theresa Burkett
Connie Cadwell
Sebastien Caillabet
Bob Capwell
James Carson
Rick Carter
Martin Charles
John Cherevka
Dale Chihuly
Patricia Churchill
Lee Clay
James Clyne
Doug Coleman
Kyrsten Mate Comoglio
Gil Correa
Bill Corso
Richard Cory
Brian Cox
Mark Creery
Travis Crenshaw
Ken Culver
Bonnie Curtis
Glenn Derry
Kim Derry
Rob Derry
Mariano Agostino Diaz
Dawn Dininger
Dean Drabin
David Drzewiecki
John Michael Eaves
Tony Eckert
Terry Eckton
Jeff Edwards
Mike Elizalde
Christian F Eubank
Sven E M Fahlgren
Scott Farrar
Corwyn Faucher
Pete Fenlon
Eric Fiedler
Jene Fielder
Scott R. Fisher
Tim Flattery
John Fleming
Erica Frauman
Rick Galinson
Mark Garbarino
Mark Goldberg
David Grasso
Josh Gray
Laurah Grijalva
Chris Grossnickle
Chris Haarhoff
Nancy Haigh
John Hamilton
Keith Hanes
Kevin Haney
Jan Harlan
Joel Harlow
Rich Haugen
Eric Hayden
Matt Heimlich
Kurt Herbel
Hal Hickel
James Hirahara
Grady Holder
Will Huff
Peter Hutchisoon
Richard Hymns
Horishi Ikeuchi
Craig A Israel
Clark James
Francesca Jaynes
Mark Johnson
Richard L Johnson
Robert Johnston
Ronald Judkins
Michael Kahn
Janusz Kaminski
Janusz Kaminski
Hiroshi Katagiri
Avy Kaufman
Stubby Kaye
Philip Keller
Kathleen Kennedy
Rodrick Khachatoorian
Dave Kindlon
Jay B King
Pamela Klamer
Jeffrey D. Knott
Stanley Kubrick
Richard Joseph Landon
Michael Lantieri
Elan Lee
Kim Lincoln
Martin Lopez
Russell Lukich
Lindsay Macgowan
Kristie Macosko
Brian Magerkurth
Shane Mahan
Mark Maitre
Bob Mano
Dawn Brown Manser
Warren Manser
Keith Marbory
James Martin
Gary Martinez
Masako Masuda
Jjason Matthews
Robert Maverick
Richard F Mays
Bud Mcgrew
Paul Mejias
Jimmy Mena
Frank 'pepe' Merel
John Merton
Andrew Meyers
Kenny Meyers
Michelle Millay
Michael C Miller
Patty Miller
Sergio Mimica-gezzan
Thomas Minton
Joel Mitchell
Tony Moffett
Kevin Mohlman
David Monzingo
Mo Morrison
Dennis Muren
Shawn Murphy
Brian K Namanny
Peggy Names
Sylvia Nava
Candace Neal
Ve Neill
Al Nelson
Andy Nelson
Greg Nelson
John Neufeld
Steve Newburn
Jonathan Null
Joey Orosco
Latifa Ouaou
Thomas Ovenshire
Walter F. Parkes
Ralph Peterson
Brian Poor
Dick Powell
Joni Powell
Paul Prenderville
Margaret Prentice
Jeff Pyle
Richard Quinn
Ana Maria Quintana
Justin Raleigh
Peter Ramsey
David Rawley
Bob Ringwood
Christian Ristow
Brian Roe
James S Rollins
Pete Romano
Chris Ross
Hary Rotz
Amanda Rounsaville
Sandra Rowden
Thomas Rush
Mark A. Russell
Gary Rydstrom
Gary Rydstrom
Gary Rydstrom
Paul Salamunovich
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Score
Best Visual Effects
Articles
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Those words, from The Stolen Child, by William Butler Yeats, get to the heart of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the 2001 film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, based on a story treatment by Ian Watson, itself based on a short story, Super Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss, later developed by Stanley Kubrick. The odyssey of A.I. from Kubrick's development in the seventies through Spielberg's completed film in 2001 was a long one, but one that ended in the fusing of two filmmaker's styles, sometimes at odds, many times not, with each one complementing the other.
The verse from Yeats is first seen when David (Haley Joel Osment) asks an animated professor about the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio. David is a mechanical boy and wants to find the Blue Fairy so that he may become real. But David already is real, just not human.
A.I. tells the story of a couple, whose son is in a coma, that take on David, a "mecha" (mechanical robot), as a surrogate child while their own child exists in the in-between world of hibernation, lost in a void from which neither parent nor doctor is sure he can recover. David, too, exists in an in-between world, seemingly alive and human but really just a collection of very cleverly contrived wires and circuits and microchips. Nonetheless, Monica Swinton (Frances O'Connor), the mother of the comatose boy, develops a relationship with her mecha "son" and eventually hard-wires him to love her. Almost as soon as she does, her own son, Martin (Jake Thomas), miraculously recovers and returns home.
Once home, Martin gets the attention that David once got and David is quickly relegated to the edges. David sits on the floor, across the room, while Monica reads bedtime stories to Martin in his bed, a bed that just weeks earlier David laid in while Monica read to him. He longs to connect to her again and performs risky missions, like cutting off a lock of her hair while she sleeps, because Martin told him that will make her love him again. But did she ever love him to begin with or was there simply a need, a desperate need, to keep the illusion of a son going when all seemed lost?
Later, as an abandoned David wanders an unfamiliar landscape, searching for a non-existent blue fairy that will make him human, he finds a world that is, indeed, full of weeping that he cannot understand. He finds a guide in Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a mecha designed for pleasure fulfillment that tries to get David to the blue fairy that will make him real. But the world Gigolo Joe inhabits is fraught with peril and as he and David make their way, death and suffering surround them. Mechas and orgas (humans) share a world in which orgas resent mechas, the very things they created. As Joe says, "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." Perhaps he's right but not how he intends. If the mechas are all that's left, will humanity be lost or simply live on in the mechanical form of their creation?
A.I. is as ambitious a project as Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg ever worked on in either of their careers. Kubrick kept pushing it back, year after year, feeling technology hadn't caught up with the way he wanted to make the film. Originally, he even thought a robot could be constructed to play the boy and when that proved unfeasible, he held out hope that one day computer animation could conquer the task. By the mid-nineties, he asked Steven Spielberg to take over as director but Spielberg insisted Kubrick direct it and Spielberg produce. After Kubrick's death in 1999, there was no choice left: Spielberg would direct and write the screenplay from the treatment by Ian Watson.
Spielberg decided on Haley Joel Osment to play David after seeing his excellent performance in The Sixth Sense (1999). Osment did a superb job, making David both alien and deeply relatable all at once. Jude Law gives his best performance as Gigolo Joe, mixing dance steps with a very focused, direct way of walking and talking that signals the artificiality of his character but somehow possessing of a childlike naiveté underneath. When he's framed for murder early on in the film, his fear and panic seem real but in the sense of a robot mimicking those emotions without truly feeling them. It's a fine line to walk as an actor but Law pulls it off.
As for the styles of Spielberg and Kubrick, both are evident in the film even if Spielberg's style is obviously predominant as the writer and director. It's thematically that Kubrick makes himself known by choosing this story in the first place. The short story, which deals only with the married couple, childless and raising David as their own son, centers around the nature of artificial children. In many ways, it covers the same territory as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which the HAL9000 computer seems real, seems human and when he "dies," as his brain circuits are removed, seems truly afraid. As his "life" winds down, there is genuine sympathy for this computer, as the audience watches him beg for his life, knowing his sentience is coming to an end. David, too, is helpless against the whims of the human world. He knows he is lost and unloved unless he can become human, something simply impossible for him to achieve.
Science fiction often deals with questions of the humanity of machines. How real are they? What emotions do they have? Can they ever truly feel the same way we do? A.I. does a better job than most at answering those questions by having David view the horrors of the world while the viewer views David. His confusion and fear trigger in us the same emotions and compel us towards sympathy. What Kubrick began, Spielberg finished. By the end of the film, questions of humanity still linger and the emotions still tremble below the surface. Steven Spielberg can be proud of what he achieved with this decades long project. And Kubrick would have been pleased.
Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, Bonnie Curtis
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Steven Spielberg (screenplay), Ian Watson (story)
Music: John Williams
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Editor: Michael Kahn
Art Direction: Richard Johnson, William James Teegarden
Cast: Haley Joel Osment (David), Frances O'Connor (Monica Swinton), Sam Robards (Henry Swinton), Jake Thomas (Martin Swinton), Jude Law (Gigolo Joe), William Hurt (Prof. Hobby), Ken Leung (Syatyoo-Sama), Jack Angel (Teddy voice), Robin Williams (Dr. Know voice), Ben Kingsley (Specialist voice), Meryl Streep (Blue Mecha voice), Chris Rock (Comedian voice).
C-146m.
By Greg Ferrara
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Nominated for the 2001 Award for Best Production Design in a Feature Film - Period/Fantasy from the Society of Motion Picture & Television Art Directors/ Art Directors Guild (ADG).
Released in United States Summer June 29, 2001
Released in United States on Video March 5, 2002
Released in United States 2001
Shown at Deauville Festival of American Film (Avant Premieres/Previews) August 31 - September 9, 2001.
Shown at Venice International Film Festival (Venice 58 - out of competition) August 29 - September 8, 2001.
Stanley Kubrick was previously attached to write, direct, and produce. Kubrick died on March 7, 1999 at the age of 70.
Completed shooting November 17, 2000.
Began shooting August 17, 2000.
Brian Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" first appeared in a 1969 issue of Harper's Bazaar.
Released in United States Summer June 29, 2001
Released in United States on Video March 5, 2002
Released in United States 2001 (Shown at Deauville Festival of American Film (Avant Premieres/Previews) August 31 - September 9, 2001.)
Released in United States 2001 (Shown at Venice International Film Festival (Venice 58 - out of competition) August 29 - September 8, 2001.)
Nominated for four awards, including Featured Actor of the Year - Female (Frances O'Connor), Cinematographer of the Year, Production Designer of the Year and Digital Artist of the Year (Scott Farrar and Dennis Muren), at the 2001 American Film Institute (AFI) Awards.