History Film / AIArtificialIntelligence

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

''A.I.: Artificial Intelligence'' is a 2001 American {{science fiction}} film written and directed by Creator/StevenSpielberg. Adapted from the Creator/BrianAldiss short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long", the film notably originated as a project by Creator/StanleyKubrick before he eventually personally handed it over to Spielberg.

''A.I.'' had started development under Kubrick in the early 1970s, with him hiring a long series of writers to try to bring his vision to life (even Aldiss himself), but it 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. Eventually, the film's treatment was written by Ian Watson (of ''Literature/InquisitionWar'' fame), and in 1995 Kubrick gave the role of director over to Spielberg, believing it to be closer to his directorial taste. The film was then put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment to ''Film/EyesWideShut'', and would not be properly restarted with Spielberg leading until Kubrick's death in 1999. In addition to directing, Spielberg also wrote the screenplay from Watson's treatment, making ''A.I.'' one of only three films he wrote as well as directed (the others being ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' and ''Film/TheFabelmans'').

In a rather interesting footnote in video game history, an officially licensed game based on this film was considered at one point as an initial launch title for the original UsefulNotes/XBox, which was released the same year as the film. Due to the massive amount of media attention given to the film, Creator/{{Microsoft}} even considered making the proposed game the [[KillerApp primary tentpole title]] for their new console. But when the game was cancelled, they were forced to pin their hopes on a different game instead--ultimately settling on [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved a certain first-person shooter that you may have heard of]].

!! This film contains examples of:

** When we first see David's silhouette, the light distorts it to resemble the body shape of [[spoiler: one of the future mechas.]]
** At the beginning of the movie, Martin was frozen until he could be healed and reunited with his parents. [[spoiler: At the end, David is frozen until he could be reunited with his mother.]]

* ItOnlyWorksOnce: [[spoiler: The Future Mechas have found that spacetime itself seems to store past information, and once a particular pathway is used, it can't be used again. They found this out when their clones only lived for a day and died when they fell unconscious, as their existence "faded away into darkness."]]

* NarratorAllAlong: [[spoiler: One of the future robots, voiced by Creator/BenKingsley, is the narrator of David's story, having read his memory beforehand.]]

* 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.]]

* SafelySecludedScienceCenter: Professor Allen Hobby's research facility is hidden in [[spoiler: the flooded and otherwise-abandoned ruins of Manhattan]], presumably because [[FantasticRacism hatred of mecha]] has become so widespread that Cybertronics needed a place to develop new models without angry mobs showing up. It's here that [[RobotKid David]] is created [[spoiler: and where he is eventually lured back to in the climax - revealing that an entire product line of Davids and Darlenes have been completed.]]

** The beginning of the Flesh Fair scene involves an elaborate, drawn-out, single-camera shot involving fair workers and Teddy. This is generally regarded as an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s [[TheOner style of cinematography.]]

** Gigolo Joe dancing down the street and on a puddle is a [=Shout-Out=] to ''Film/SinginInTheRain''. This may, by extension, be a [=Shout-Out=] to ''Film/AClockworkOrange'' which very prominently featured the title song.

* SunkenCity: New York

* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Inverted, [[spoiler: the "sinful earth" dies first, David outlives it.]]

--> "Cirrus, Socrates, particle, decibel, hurricane, dolphin, tulip."

** [[spoiler: Other!David, whom protagonist David destroys on the spot, insisting he is the real one. Professor Hobby doesn't even acknowledge this. Granted, it's obvious that David isn't coming back and probably wasn't even imprinted (he behaves as David did before his own imprinting), but you'd think Hobby would at least care that David just beat another copy of himself into spare parts in a jealous rage.]]

->''"She loves what you do for her as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh nor blood. You’re not a dog, or a cat, or a canary. You were designed and built specific like the rest of us. And you’re alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said or broke. They made us too smart, too quick, and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because, when the end comes, all that will be left is us…"''

* OddFriendship: David and Gigolo Joe.

* EvilLuddite: Played with in the case of Lord Johnson-Johnson and the patrons of his show. He's certainly a Luddite - he's just as motivated by fear of a world where mechas replace humans. How evil he is depends on how one views the mechas.

%%* AdaptationInducedPlothole: The short story misses the problems listed under IdiotBall, by having the Swintons get David before they have a child of their own.

* ArtificialHuman: A truly heartbreaking example here.

* DefiantStoneThrow: Against the mecha-slaughtering circus master.

* EatingMachine: David discovers the hard way he isn't one.

* 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. Right next to the pool[[invoked]]. 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.

* RagnarokProofing: When David is discovered after 2000 years under the frozen sea, he is seen still mostly functional. And New York City is intact under a sheet of ice. Mind you ice sheets ''move'' and would have long ago torn the city up and pushed the rubble into the sea. The vehicle he is in is unharmed, and the old ferris wheel which collapsed over him looks like it had the majority of its aging between the flooding of New York and falling over.
** Justified 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]].

* TechMarchesOn: Doctor Know, an information service that charges per question, and by "question", we mean "[[LiteralGenie anything ending in a question mark]]".
** 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 nowadays, and the automotive industry seems to be working very hard to implement them as soon as possible).

* TragicDream

* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Possible aversion. It is unclear what happened to humans by the end of the movie, but it ''is'' apparent that they are extinct, and the silvery robotlike beings outlived them. Plus, they were also genuinely interested in studying humans and were utterly fascinated with them.
** The AlternateRealityGame reveals [[spoiler:about 40 years after David is trapped underwater, humans saturate the world's oceans with nano-machines to combat global warming. The nano-machines function as mirrors to reflect sunlight when activated, but eventually form a single neural network and [[TheSingularity gain sentience]]. The newly-born A.I. decides to destroy humanity as an act of self preservation and turns on all the nano-mirrors at once, causing a global ice age]].

* AdaptationExpansion: The only things in common with Brian Aldiss' short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" are the Swinton parents, Teddy, and David. See InNameOnly.
* AdaptationInducedPlothole: The short story misses the problems listed under IdiotBall, by having the Swintons get David before they have a child of their own.
* AdaptationTitleChange: ''A.I.: Artificial Intelligence'' is inspired by the short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long".

** Note the Statue of Liberty's torch on the way to Manhattan.

* AlienFairFolk: When the aliens/advanced robots from the future talk to David, they use a holographic image of the Blue Fairy from ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio''.

* 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.
** Note that this is [[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial not the first]] Spielberg film to have such a title.

%% ZCE * HumansAreFlawed: Gigolo Joe's opinion.

* InformedAbility: Dr. Know is basically supposed to be an {{Omniscien|ce}}t, holographic version of Website/{{Google}}, but he misinterprets a lot of what David asks.
** Then again, Dr. Know charges on a per-question basis, so misinterpreting questions so customers have to ask more may be intentional.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Lord Johnson-Johnson is a morally ambiguous character with a rather unpleasant personality, but his fears of advanced robots eventually replacing humans are well-founded and proven to be true.

* MechanicalEvolution
* MistakenForMurderer: Why Gigolo Joe is on the run.

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Subverted; David and his female counterpart are already in mass production even though David's still in the testing phase. Apparently they didn't think to keep track of their beta test.

* PinocchioSyndrome: Anviliciously and deliberately used here, complete with a Blue Fairy.

** Creator/JudeLaw's face was sprayed with latex, and his hairline was painted to make it look like a seam, thus make him bizarrely too-perfect to look real.* UnderwaterRuins: Of a mostly submerged New York City, no less.

''A.I.'' had started development under Kubrick in the early 1970s, with him hiring a long series of writers to try to bring his vision to life (even Aldiss himself), but it 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. Eventually, the film's treatment was written by Ian Watson (of ''Literature/InquisitionWar'' fame), and in 1995 Kubrick gave the role of director over to Spielberg, believing it to be closer to his directorial taste. The film was then put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment to ''Film/EyesWideShut'', and would not be properly restarted with Spielberg leading until Kubrick's death in 1999. In addition to directing, Spielberg also wrote the screenplay from Watson's treatment, making ''A.I.'' one of only three films he wrote as well as directed (the other being ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' and ''Film/TheFabelmans'').

''A.I.'' had started development under Kubrick in the early 1970s, with him hiring a long series of writers to try to bring his vision to life (even Aldiss himself), but it 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. Eventually, the film's treatment was written by Ian Watson (of ''Literature/InquisitionWar'' fame), and in 1995 Kubrick gave the role of director over to Spielberg, believing it to be closer to his directorial taste. The film was then put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment to ''Film/EyesWideShut'', and would not be properly restarted with Spielberg leading until Kubrick's death in 1999. In addition to directing, Spielberg also wrote the screenplay from Watson's treatment, making ''A.I.'' one of only two films he wrote as well as directed (the other being ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'').

* UncannyValley: A major theme throughout the film. We often forget that David and even Gigolo Joe aren't human, until they break the spell by doing something that's sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly non-human.
* UnderwaterRuins: Of a mostly submerged New York City, no less.

* PluckyComicRelief: Dr. Know's comical appearance and accent provide a brief comical respite to David's otherwise relentlessly bleak and hopeless quest.

* AGodAmI: {{Implied|Trope}} 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.]]

* Technophobia: Lord Johnson-Johnson doesn't just demolish robots to create a spectacle, he does so on account of his Luddite worldview where (perhaps correctly) he fears a future where advanced robots have completely supplanted humans.

* NoodleIncident: Before hunting down Gigolo Joe, Lord Johnson-Johnson asks his subordinate to confirm that Joe isn't human, alluding to an otherwise unexplained (but probably fatal) "Trenton incident."

[[caption-width-right:300:Please make me a real boy...]]

What do you get when you cross a Creator/StevenSpielberg movie with a Creator/StanleyKubrick movie? You get ''A.I.: Artificial Intelligence''.

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 (even Aldiss himself), 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. Eventually, the film treatment was written by Ian Watson (of ''Literature/InquisitionWar'' fame), and 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 from Watson's treatment, one of only two films he wrote as well as directed (the other being ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'').

* AdultFear: David is saved from the flesh fair because the crowd isn't convinced he's not a real boy. Apparently a child had gone missing, so they [[EvenEvilHasStandards turn on the organizer instead]] when he tries to prove David is a robot by throwing a bucket of acid onto him. In particular, several mothers in the crowd are very disturbed by David's frantic crying.