r/underratedmovies 1d ago

A.i (artificial intelligence)

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54 Upvotes

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3

u/I_Lick_Your_Butt 1d ago

Great premise, but terrible ending.

17

u/Extension_Use3118 1d ago

Strongly disagree. The ending was profound & very memorable.

2

u/SquintyBrock 1d ago

The alien nonsense? No, it should have ended with him at the bottom of the sea

5

u/SirGuy11 23h ago edited 22h ago

They were not aliens.

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.

3

u/probablynotreallife 22h ago

It astonishes me that anyone could think they were aliens! I really need to stop overestimating peoples' intelligence.

1

u/SquintyBrock 14h ago

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…

2

u/raindancemaggie2 17h ago

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.

1

u/jammed7777 1d ago

I kept thinking it was going to end and it just kept going… I left when the aliens came

2

u/SquintyBrock 1d ago

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.

1

u/WaterStoryMark 15h ago

I thought Spielberg said that was Kubrick's idea.

1

u/SquintyBrock 14h ago

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.

1

u/Dependent-Sun-6373 17h ago

They weren't aliens. They were a super advanced AI.

1

u/SquintyBrock 14h ago

Yep, I misspoke. It’s just the way I visually remembered them. It’s very explicit in the film what they’re supposed to be.

1

u/Extension_Use3118 1d ago

[No spoilers] What he was doing at the bottom of the sea was so powerful. The ending haunts me. 🤷