 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
Saw it last nite. Spielberg did an impressive job copying the minimal and austere style of Kubrick. This stark and minimal feeling was very effective with the storyline. Even the humans seemed to be stiff and cold like the robots. Some might just call that bad direction, but the tone played right to me. Everyone feels alienated and lacks communication skills because they interact with unfeeling machines all the time. Osmet was outstanding. I've never seen a child actor do such solid and natural work. I think he might be a shoe in for the best actor oscar . . . William Hurt always seems so pious and aloof as an actor so the fact that he played the pious and aloof inventor of the robot was an excellent casting choice. I'm surprised he took the role. Robin Williams as the voice of Dr. Know was too noticable. Jude Law was amusing and was important as a vehicle to move the story. Good choice of using mainly unrecognizable actors for the other major roles, a very Kubrickian thing to do. 4 stars for the acting.
Man, what a thought provoking story. It brings up a lot of very hard questions. I can't stop thinking about al the implications of the ethics of putting feelings in machines. This was the movie's strength. I give it 5 stars for that.
The production design and artistry was impeccable. The distant, yet still recognizable future smacked of Syd Mead's futurist paintings. The submerged Manhattan scenes and aliens (robots?) were completely riveting. I thought the clothes were too much like todays clothes, but that was my only fault. 5 stars for the look of the film.
The story was so fascinating in regards to the philosophical implications as I mentioned earlier that Spielbergs heavyhanded handling of the Pinoccio aspects of the story kinda ruined it for me. Unfortunately, Spielberg always opts for the sentimental and saccarine and the last 20 minutes of this movie is no exception. This movie didn't deserve to end as a tear jerker! 2 Stars for Spielberg not pushing himself emotionally nearly as much as he did technically.
4 Stars overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it WILL not appeal to people that thought movies like Unbreakable, Castaway or Contact were boring. Lots of internal stuff going on here.
Follow Ups:
Are you watching the same cut I did?
Just because the advanced robots look like aliens doesn't imply
that they are.It was explictly stated that the skinny translucent things
were the advanced robots. How much more clear do they have to
make it?The fact that Speielberg has to SPELL OUT everything for the
numbskulls is a major fault of this movie.There was so much opportunity for the use of subtext and imagry
to tell the story. But no, you gotta have a dorky narrator putting
simplistic explanations on everything, or worse yet, characters
that have to explain who they are.The machine-become-man concept is not new. Maybe
Speilberg should have read a few SF novels and stolen some
endings rather than create one that I think even Disney could
have outdone.A lot of critics have dumped on the movie for the fact that
the lead character is a robot, and there is no way that the
human audience can feel for the robot, and there is no way
that the audience can expect the Mother and Father to love
the robot. It is a man-made thing and therefore man has the
right to destroy what he creates.There are two very interesting themes here that Speilberg
fumbles AND the critics totally miss.
1) DOES man have the right to destroy what he creates?
When a thing of beauty and maybe even life is created, do
we have any responsibility to it.
2) Can we define ANY form of sentient life by the axiom
"I think, therefore I am". IF so, then the robots have
as much right to life as the humans.Speilberg GETS CLOSE to exposing this issues, but then he
washes over them, confused. As if he could see part of the picture
(I tend to believe its part of Kubrick's vision) but
he can't handle it. He ran out of money? time? the ability
to communicate deep thoughts through cinema?Speilberg should be praised for this movie.
A director of his stature (deserved or not) should be ashamed he
screwed this up in so many ways.
God made Man to love him. Why would God love Man in return?So we make all these robots, following Asimov Rules of Order, plus we have them love us in their own way. Their morality (the morality of metal) frightens us. What will they consider to be acceptable behavior? Cutting a lock of hair? Dragging a child to the bottom of a pool?
Clearly humans were unfit to accept the robots. Humans are too fragile and the robots too tough. Plus the humans own motivations are suspect. Gods plans can be considered divine, but what common instincts drive people?
Yes, the skinny things at the end were robots, the gigalo robot said as much earlier, that someday they would be all that is left. Also interesting is that instead of millions of years of evolution, we see what 2000 years will do to these metal creatures.
But even then, as kind as they were, what were their motivations? Their morality? Where do you think they would go? Was this already the pinnacle of their existence? Were they just begun? I feel relatively confident that as slow as evolution is, if humans survive, the sky is the limit. I do not feel the same way about robots. What motivates them to evolve?
If the child robot is capable of sitting underwater for 2000 years praying to a statue, then what tangents will the new robots go on, and what logic loops will they enter?
It is man's imagination that wonders what advanced life forms would be like and what could they know and do they we cannot even conceive of that is the fascinating point of A.I. or any other sci fi novel or flick that focuses on Artificial Intelligence or man vs robot. Even the current crop of robot housekeepers, for example the cute little guy from NEC (Japanese company) are light years behind in terms of capabilities exhibited by the advanced robots that made their appearance at the end of the movie. I think the idea that the advanced robots were not hostile is a change from the usual pattern and the idea that they could make "dreams come true" is very god-like, you have to admit. On a human level, the (bonding) relationship that can occur between parent and child is another level not commented upon by the mass media reviewers, but I think is part of the movie's appeal.
I guess most critics have already said this. But I am just amazed at how the totally hokey would-be tear-jerker of an ending made it into this otherwise exceptional movie. Even in science fiction/fantasy, you cannot throw all rules out the window. But everything about this sequence was arbitrary. Could not this final meeting have been made to occur in a manner more continuous with everything that had gone before? Of course it could have. For most of this movie, I forgot my aversion to Spielberg's sentimental syrup. And then, to make up for it, he tries to put a full movie's worth into 20 or 25 minutes.
Ugh.
pleas send to me Re:2good hours- 1 very bad half hour. thank you
As far as I have been able to determine from what other people have observed in the movie, the creatures/beings at the end of the movie were actually "advanced robots," which definitely changes the thesis of the movie quite a bit, I think; but the question remains whose robots were they? They could have been survived from a time when humans were still around, or they could have been created by other robots, an interesting way to view it. Another possibility: the advanced robots could have been created elsewhere. It is not clear, to me anyway, why the advanced robots were so curious about the meeting at the end, where that was supposed to be and where David went at the very end, if anywhere.
I believe the beings which made David's dream come true were advanced, earth-based mechas. I think it stands to reason that the mechas of David's time would have evolved/advanced enough to recreate their own kind. Or the robot scientists would have eventually learned how to build a robot which could not only learn but self-replicate.The sci-fi/mathematics writer Rudy Rucker has many novels dealing with this very subject. I recommend his four-book Wares series (Software, Wetware, Freeware, and Realware).
Yeah, self replicating robots is a pretty interesting theory as to who those skinny guys were at the end of the movie. Common in Phillip K. Dick's books and infact, was the premise of "The Terminator" flix, albiet with negative implications instead of the benevolent scientific curiosity of the beings at the end of AI.The theory that robots with emotions and the ability to self replicate/repair is actually the next step in human evolution is commonly being discussed in think tanks today. Saw a fascinating documentary on this exact subject a few months ago on PBS. I'll buy into the idea that this is probably what was being depicted in the film.
John W Campbell wrote about that in the 20's or 30's. Check his story "The Last Evolution" (or was it "final"?). Also wrote about benevolent robots in his story "Night". Several anime have also explored these concepts, Armitage III OAV's (hopefully they will get these on DVD someday) for example. Ghost in the Shell, touched on a few of these ideas as well, though the manga goes much deeper into the nature of consciousness and identity than the movie. Wouldn't surpize me if we have a black project somewhere trying to work up a rudimentary version of Keith Laumer's dinocrhome brigade... sentinent battle tanks (remember reading his story "The Last Command" in history class eons ago... I was always reading everying but what I was supposed to be reading).
here's link to the 1999 press release for NEC's lovable robot that gets along very well with people...http://www.nec.co.jp/english/today/newsrel/9908/3101.html
Kawaii desu! They look like a fusion of Totoro (http://www.totoroproject.org/) and the kids on South Park. (^-^)
That was my impression too, but I don't remember it being explicitly stated that they were earth-based. It just makes a stronger case for the motivation in life forms to seek out their creator and ask the ultimate questions, rather than just to study them as subjects of foreign archaeology.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
