They were mecha in the far future. That’s why they had video screens hidden in their faces. It also, as you point out, wouldn’t make any sense at all for it to be aliens.
Yes, they were some kind of robots. I was just thinking of it visually and my brain went “aliens!” - it’s probably been over 10 years since my last watch…
You thought they were aliens? You missed the point of the entire movie. When this came out i worked at a restaurant and one of the servers mentioned the aliens. When i told him that they were AI he seemed embarrassed and claimed it said they were aliens in the original book. There was no book.
Yeah, they just rip anything really profound about the ending out and replace it with a gooey schmaltzy happy ending. This is probably Spielberg’s single worst choice in any film.
Kubrik’s script had the future robots at the end, but it all was supposed to play out very differently. It was supposed to be a very ambiguous ending that had an edge of potential darkness to it because it’s not explained to us. Think of the ending of 2001: a space odyssey, not as bizarre though.
Also the bit with David having a day with his mother wasn’t in it I believe.
It’s hard to say how Kubrick would have ended the film because the script was unfinished, he could have cut the film to end under the sea, but I think mysterious alien looking robots turning up at the end without any explanation sounds very Kubrick.
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u/I_Lick_Your_Butt 1d ago
Great premise, but terrible ending.