History Film / AIArtificialIntelligence

Released in 2001, this adaptation of the Creator/BrianAldiss short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" had started development under Kubrick in the early 1970s, under a long series of writers hired by Kubrick himself to try to bring his vision to life, but had languished in DevelopmentHell for years due to the limitations of CGI, which Kubrick believed would be necessary to bring the childlike robot hero to life. Finally, in 1995 Kubrick handed over the project to Spielberg, but it continued to languish until Kubrick's death in 1999. Spielberg directed the film and also wrote the screenplay, one of only two Spielberg films he wrote as well as directed (the other being ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'').

* PunnyName: If you tried to find out the identity of the {{Puppetmaster}}s running the AlternateRealityGame by querying DNS records, you'll get Geppeto in the name field.

* ChildrenAreInnocent: Played with, but with David, ultimately played straight. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that David has been programmed to be eternally innocent, and he cannot be anything other than what is dictated by his programming.

** Gigolo Joe dancing down the street is a ShoutOut to ''Film/SinginInTheRain''. This may, by extension, be a Shout Out to ''Film/AClockworkOrange'' which very prominently featured the title song.

* AGodAmI: [[ImpliedTrope Implied]] with Professor Hobby, David's creator. When one of his colleagues asks him what the moral implications of creating a truly sentient robot child would be, Hobby responds that God first created Adam to love him too. This is made much more heartwrenching later on when it's revealed that [[spoiler:David is made in the image of Hobby's dead son, making him David's Father in more than one way.]]

-->'''David:''' I thought I was one of a kind.
-->'''Hobby:''' [holding back tears] My son was one of a kind. You'll be the first of a kind.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When we first see David's silhouette, the light distorts it to resemble the body shape of [[spoiler: one of the future mechas.]]

** No one at the flesh fair thinks its odd a child is locked in the cage until a little girl points it out. While some of the guards may have known David was a robot, clearly not all of them did.

* YourCheatingHeart: One of [[SexBot Gigolo Joe]]'s clients was a married woman. This becomes a major problem for him when her husband kills her in a jealous rage and frames Joe for it.

* HumanitysWake: The Future Mechas at the end of the film are either the last creations of the extinct human species or of their own predecessors (robots building more sophisticated robots). They are marvelled by David because he actually knew living humans from before the end of their civilization. Their leader explains that he mourns their death because they consider humans to hold the key to the meaning of life.

* RobotKid: David was designed to be a robot boy with a child-like mind to give humans who couldn't have children or who didn't have a child license under the strict populaton control laws of the future someone to care for.

* RiddleForTheAges: What was going to be the thing Hobby had "in store" for David he mentioned before going out of the room to gather his team? Were they going to give him new parental figures? A way to reprogram David instead of having to destroy him? [[Spoiler: David threw himself to his attempted death before Hobby could return so we'll never know.]]

** Despite the movie taking place about one hundred years in the future, all cars still have manual steering (even though we already have pretty efficient self-driving vehicles now in 2015, and the automotive industry seems to be working very hard to implement them as soon as possible).

** Whether intentional or not the film has a few Disney related references, some blatant, others subtle. There's the entire [[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio Pinocchio]] plot but then we have Monica (David's mother) playing "Once Upon a Dream" from ''Disney/SleepingBeauty'' to her '''cryogenically frozen son'''... She's then also humming the tune later before going to a party with her husband and as they're leaving her shoe slips in a ''Disney/{{Cinderella}}'' moment. There is a possible reference to ''Film/{{Tron}}'', the bikers sent to collect robots for the flesh lights are on Tron-esque bikes and have TronLines.

** Subverted by the plot of the AlternateRealityGame accompanying the film, [[spoiler:which reveals that 40 years after the movie's events, an A.I. used nanomachines saturated into the world's oceans to freeze the planet after TheSingularity. The entire ocean froze down to bedrock rather than just sheets of ice on the surface, meaning there would be no glacial movement]].

* GoOutWithASmile:
** The Nanny-bot at the flesh fair.
** [[spoiler:David, at the end.]]

* HumansAreFlawed: Gigolo Joe's opinion.

* KidsAreCruel: martin and his pals at the pool party .

Released in 2001, this adaptation of the Creator/BrianAldiss short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" had started development under Kubrick in the early 1970s, under a long series of writers hired by Kubrick himself to try to bring his vision to life, but had languished in DevelopmentHell for years due to the limitations of CGI, which Kubrick believed would be necessary to bring the childlike robot hero to life. Finally, in 1995 Kubrick handed over the project to Spielberg, but it continued to languish until Kubrick's death in 1999.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment / ShapedLikeItself: The title, obviously; it's a bit like calling a movie "FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation." The film was originally titled simply "A.I.", but apparently the studio discovered that moviegoers misread the poster as "A.1." and wondered why anyone would make a movie about steak sauce.

* FailsafeFailure: Shortly after Martin is cured, he's having a party with his friends, and the kids decide it would be a hilarious idea to test David's personal safety subroutines. [[WhatAnIdiot Right next to the pool]]. They do this by gently approaching his arm with a knife, at which point he takes a death grip on Martin and begs him to "Keep me safe", which freaks out Martin, overbalancing them both into the pool and nearly drowning Martin.