Speilberg’s A.I. is one of my favourite films, but it got a bad rap for its apparently hokey ending. I’ve always felt it was a great film (and with one of the most innovative viral marketing campaigns ever, to boot). In particular, I always liked the ending, but I was never sure why. I recently stumbled upon this analysis of the ending of A.I. which provides a great interpretation which fits perfectly into the Kubrickean themes of the film. Now I’ll have to go and watch it again.
One thought on “Analysis of A.I.’s ending”
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I like a lot of what this reading has to say about the nature of mecha– but it is a stretch to pronounce that the creatures at the end were highly evolved mecha. This is a textbook “rescuing” of a text by creating an out for the author– a kind of second-degree Deux ex Machina, or perhaps Mecha ex Machina.
I think in the context of the Spielberg oeuvre, these are clearly aliens. Their physiognomy is nearly the definition of other in Spielberg– from Close Encounters right through to Taken. I’ll join you in watching the movie again– I loved it and actually saw it in theaters twice– but I don’t feel any need to produce a drastically de-ambiguized reading of the ending to make the movie “tougher.” It was fucking tough to begin with– few films have made me think more (or more deeply) about the nature of creation and its ever-present doppelganger, fallenness. In that sense, the reference to Adam is perhaps at the core of the film: the mecha never get to eat the apple and thus never enjoy the free will that lets humans choose (among other things) not to love a capricious, unknowable god.