Flesh Fair: What's Wrong With A.I.

advertise.

	EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE

Flesh Fair: What's Wrong With A.I.

James L. Cambias puts Kubrick's last movie AI under the microscope, and boy, he doesn't like what he finds. It makes him angry.

I never saw Steven Spielberg's film A.I. during its theatrical release, so when it became available on DVD I was eager to rent it. Thanks to Netflix, my wife and I sat down to watch the posthumous collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.

It was one of the few movies I've watched that actually made me angry to watch. It's well-made and obviously cost a bundle to film, but it fails in so many ways it made me mad. If by some chance you haven't seen the movie and don't want the plot spoiled for you, stop here and rent it.

Ready now? Good.

I sat down to analyze what made me so angry about A.I., and came up with four main categories: Failures of Logic, Failures of Science, Failures of Character, and Failures of Theme. Some of these failures are trivial nitpicks, others are major flaws. All of them suggest a startling lack of attention on the part of the moviemakers.

Failures of Logic

One recurring failure of logic in A.I. is the state of the world.

The film sets up a fashionable eco-catastrophe future as justification for the whole robot-kids plot, but it doesn't make any sense at all. If this is a resource-poor future (as we're told in the opening), then why is society willing to waste resources on pleasure robots?

Why do we have robot demolition shows, and garbage trucks dumping tons of robot parts in the countryside? Why is there a whole city devoted to sexual excess? (What's the matter with Las Vegas?)

Nobody in the film seems bound by any sort of shortages or constraints. The cops buzz around in flying submersible police cars. The crowd at a low-rent redneck robot demolition festival are all well-fed and neatly scrubbed (much more so than, say, stock car race fans in our world by Lap 200).

But there's a bigger problem: if hundreds of millions of people are dead or starving because of massive flooding in coastal regions, one must ask why a childless couple have to adopt a robot at all. There would be ample supplies of _real_ children in need of homes. Even in our own world there is no shortage of children for adoption, despite a lack of global climate catastrophe. Yet nobody in the film ever thinks about that, apparently. Maybe a brown kid would clash with the curtains.

(Digression: I've never believed in "surrogate child robots" anyway. They turn up in a surprisingly large number of stories, and all I can think is that the authors weren't very involved in raising their own kids. For one, part of the fun in raising a child is watching them grow and change.

A child who is always six, say, would be a dreadful thing once the novelty wore off. For another, I generally have to pay other people to look after my child for brief periods. People don't spend money to rent children. If a childless couple want something that will stay small and cuddly forever, they should get a cat.)

Aside from the on-again, off-again climate catastrophe, smaller failures of logic abound. If people hate robots, why are robot sex partners such a big business that a whole city is devoted to them? Why do the robot slavers gathering strays for their demolition show do it in a freaking balloon? (I can think of many many modes of transport more suitable for chasing people than a balloon. Feet, for starters.)

Why do the geniuses who built the robot do nothing whatsoever to help him get back to them other than planting a few clues couched in mystic gibberish, all based on a story which they don't know the kid's mother read to him?

Why is the robot demolition carnival called a "Flesh Fair" when there's no flesh to be seen except in the hot dogs? (In all of these cases, I suspect the answer is "because it looked cool," which is part of the problem.)

Failures of Character

The characters in the film are all robots. At least, they all perform senseless actions because they are programmed to in the script. Consider: the father (Henry? It says something about the movie that I can't remember his name) is an executive with the company which manufactured the robot child.

He is the one who decides to try the robo-kid as a substitute for his coma baby real son. And yet, as soon as thair thawed-out real son tricks the robot into snipping a lock of Mommy's hair with real sharp scissors, and after the two of them fall into the pool because some numbnuts preteens want to see if the robot can bleed, Dad suddenly turns into a villager from a Frankenstein movie -- "the Robot is evil and must be destroyed!" Why doesn't he call Tech Support?

His wife is no better. She starts out, understandably enough, completely creeped out by the robo-kid (so was I). After spending several scenes being nervous and not liking him, she goes ahead and bonds with him for no reason at all.

Then, once her real son is back and strife develops, she is suddenly mysteriously sympathetic to the robot. So sympathetic that she abandons him in the woods. Thereby leaving him vulnerable to exactly the kind of abuse and hard times he promptly suffers through -- instead of letting him be mercifully deactivated or erased or whatever.

What was she thinking? That a robot would live happily in the woods? Oh, and if we're in such a ravaged and impoverished future, why are there lush woods? Why aren't they being cut down for firewood or shanties by the displaced millions?

But the biggest problem is with Roboboy himself. The moviemakers gave themselves a main character who simply cannot change, grow, adapt, or (apparently) learn. Which is weird because the buildup by the Brilliant Scientist is all about how human the kid's going to be -- isn't learning and changing part of being human? I give Haley Joel Osment credit: he played the character absolutely straight, just as wooden and alarmingly cheerful after 2,000 years in a glacier as the day he was made.

This is a problem because stories are ultimately about how characters change. Either Roboboy changes because of his experiences, or else others are changed by meeting him. None of that happens.

His parents don't change -- they're shallow morons when we meet them, and they're just as shallow and idiotic when they abandon David, having learned nothing at all. From then on it's a picaresque story, so David doesn't stay in one place long enough for anyone to get to know him. The only person he does interact with at length is another robot, who also can't learn or change.

Failures of Science

Okay, I can buy global warming and rising sea levels. At least they didn't go the Waterworld route and drown the whole planet. I can buy sentient human-shaped robots. Here's what I can't buy: Robots On The Run -- Gigolo Joe is on the run, accused of a murder he didn't commit.

We're led to expect the mean old cops will smash him up for it without a fair trial. Except... he's a robot, for Christ's sake! Open up his head, jack into his brain and go through his memories. No murder here -- oh, look, here's a murderer confessing! Go pick up this guy! Now put the robot's scalp back on, pat him on the back and send him out again.

Permanent Robot Bonding -- Once David's mother says the magic words, he will love her forever. No way to change it short of killing him. Of course, we later see a whole bunch of Davids with the same basic personality. Why can't David be rebooted from the system disk? It doesn't work that way, the script says. Why not? Because we said so, says the script, now shut up and watch the movie.

Rising Ice Levels -- So New York is underwater because of the greenhouse effect. Okay. Then we have a sudden ice age (why? because they said so). Do the sea levels go down, the way they're supposed to in an ice age? No! The waters covering New York magically turn into ice, remaining at the same level. Huh? Where'd the extra water come from? Or if this is a real big-league ice sheet, why didn't it grind New York into a moraine the way glaciers are supposed to?

Fighting Crime Everywhere! -- why do the police need flying submarines? Is underwater crime a problem in this future? And if they have antigravity, why are the robot slaver guys bobbing around in a freaking balloon?

Infinite Power Supplies -- they can make a four-foot-tall robot with a power supply that lasts for 2,000 years but greenhouse gases are still a problem?

Cloning From Hair -- the godlike CGI aliens clone David's Mommy from the lock of hair he was tricked into snipping. Oops. There's no genetic material in hair. And how the hell do they recreate her personality from genetic material? Even if David got a few root cells with Mommy's genome in them, they don't contain her memories.

And why does the clone only last for a day? I know, we get the amazing handwaving "space-time continuum" explanation, but it's still just plain stupid. It's especially stupid given that at the time the film was made, clones like Dolly the Sheep already existed, and lived longer than a day. Mistakes about future technology are forgivable; errors about current technology are not.

Failures of Theme

This is the biggie. I could probably have swallowed the failures listed above -- God knows they're common enough in film -- but what really made me grind my teeth was the way the movie failed to develop its themes properly. There are three themes at work in this movie, and it manages to swing and miss all three times.

The first is the idea of robots as property. Is it right to create a sentient being and then use it as a toy or a slave? We see this in several places in A.I.: is it right for David to be a permanently adoring child to parents who don't love him? Is it right to destroy sentient robots just for amusement?

All through the movie, it's made pretty clear that robots are people too, and using or abusing them is morally wrong. Okay -- so then how do the CGI alien guys grant David's wish to see his Mommy again at the end? They create a sentient being (Mommy-clone) doomed to die, just so a cute robot can spend a day with her. I guess slavery is okay if aliens tell you it is.

The second is the theme of love. What is love? David loves his Mommy. We know this because he keeps saying it. Joe is a Love Machine for lonely women. Can either one experience real love? I note that Joe, who at least has pride in his work, is a lot more unselfish and "loving" than clingy, needy little David. Anyway, part of love is ending.

People change, people die. That's the tragic aspect of love. But David cannot learn or change, so he goes right on loving his Mommy (in a creepily Freudian way) until the aliens help him out with their little necro-incest pimping at the end. I guess the moral is, "if you stalk her long enough, she'll like you."

Third and last is the question of what is it to be a "real" person? And this is where I think the movie swung so hard it spun around and landed on its ass in front of a hooting crowd. Here's what should have happened: David's obsessed with being a real boy. He goes through all kind of adventures. He spends centuries frozen in a glacier.

Then the alien creatures dig him out. He tells them he wants to be real, and they tell him "You are real, David. You are as real as anyone. We are the descendants of humans and robots alike, and we are certainly real." David finally figures it out. I was waiting for that moment -- the payoff to all the Pinocchio imagery and the quest and everything -- and it didn't happen!

The film was made with a lot of what a colleague calls "Local Dexterity" -- each scene is watchable, and the story carries you along. It's the equivalent of good, readable prose in a story. Certainly Steven Spielberg has plenty of local dexterity. But anywhere above that, the movie gets remarkably sloppy. The parts don't relate to one another well, and many bits seem to be there just to look cool.

My personal suspicion is that there were too many cooks. A.I. went from a Brian Aldiss short story to an Ian Watson screenplay to a Steven Spielberg script, with input along the way from Stanley Kubrick. I think each of them had his own ideas about the story, and unfortunately some of those ideas were contradictory.

Films often fail with science fiction because one of the great strengths of science fiction -- interesting and well-developed background settings -- is treated as nothing but stage-setting, to be changed or discarded in the interest of telling the story. A.I does a lot of changing and discarding, but then fails at the "higher" goal of telling an interesting story.

Consistency and plausibility are sacrificed to plot, but plot is sacrificed to -- something. I'm not sure what. Steven Spielberg's desire to have a happy ending, come hell or high water? His determination to shoehorn every storyline into his favorite template of "you've got to have faith?"

Or was he just too busy with other projects, trying to do a decent job as a tribute to Kubrick, and failed to give the film enough attention?

So: what makes me angry about A.I. is that it was made with great competence but not enough attention to what the movie was supposed to be about. What makes me sad is that with only a little thought -- and I mean the equivalent of one evening spent with a few writers critiquing the script -- it could have been the champ.

It could have been a shining example of a well-made, intelligent piece of science fiction.

James L. Cambias

James L. Cambias is a science fiction writer and roleplaying game designer and can be contacted at 71 College St. #1 South Hadley, MA 01075 (413) 534-5675

FREE SF MAGAZINE
Sign up for the Crowsnest SF e-magazine - full of funny reports and gossip. Be the first to find out about hot science fiction happenings & news!