"A.I." Proves That Hollywood Cannot Answer Tough Questions

Spielberg's sci-fi legacy takes a tumble with this confused approach to artificial intelligence.

July 11, 2021

On October 25, 1986, 55,078 people braved a frigid winter night at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York, to watch Game 6 of the World Series. The Boston Red Sox, winner of 95 games, were massive underdogs against the vaunted New York Mets, who won 108. New York had finished the league as the NL’s best offense; they were first in hits, team batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and allowed 205 fewer runs than they scored. The Red Sox finished first in the American League in only two statistical categories: doubles and strikeouts. Boston won the AL East division by 5.5 games; the Mets won the NL East by 21.5.

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Alas, baseball is an October game; anything can happen. On that night, it had been 68 years since the Red Sox had last won a World Series, but loss was never a simple pill to swallow. Every defeat seemed more devastating than the next, from Enos Slaughter’s mad dash that clinched Game 7 for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 to losing another Game 7 to them in 1967. In 1975, they faced Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. They won Game 6 on Carlton Fisk’s iconic walk-off home run but lost the following night when the Reds scored the Series-winning run on Joe Morgan’s bloop single. In 1978, they surrendered a 14-game division lead to their hated rival, the New York Yankees. The Yankees swept the Red Sox in a four-game series at Fenway late in the year, outscoring them 42-9. A tie-breaking playoff game determined the division champion; the Yankees won at Fenway again, this time on a game-winning home run by Bucky Dent, a career .247 hitter who had hit just five home runs all season long.

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As the Red Sox led the Mets in the series 3-2, it seemed that their supposed curse was finally at an end. After decades of agony, watching the Yankees win 20 championships following the infamous sale of Babe Ruth over 60 years before, they would have their crown.

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Fate had other ideas.

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With two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning, New York trailed Boston 5-3. Reliever Calvin Schiraldi looked to close out the series for Boston, but Mets catcher Gary Carter and pinch-hitter Kevin Mitchell hit back-to-back singles. Third baseman Ray Knight then singled, driving in Carter and allowing Mitchell to advance to third.

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5-4 Boston.

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Now, Mookie Wilson was at the plate, facing Red Sox closer Bob Stanley. Stanley threw a breaking ball in the dirt that got to the backstop, allowing Mitchell to score.

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5-5

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It was deuces wild: 2 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs. Wilson hit a ground ball up the first baseline. Schiraldi went to cover first to record the final out, but there was no out to make. The ball rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner; Knight scored, the Mets won the game, and the World Series two nights later.

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Stanley threw the wild pitch that allowed the tying run to cross home plate. There was still a seventh game in which Schiraldi would surrender three runs, allowing New York to gain the lead that Buckner helped them cut down by scoring one of Boston’s two eighth-inning runs. If Buckner had completed the play, it would have guaranteed only an additional extra inning, not a Boston victory. Red Sox manager John McNamara left Schiraldi in despite his already having blown the save. He also chose not to replace Buckner with Dave Stapleton as he had done in each of Boston’s three prior series victories. Buckner was 37, had gotten drilled in the hip earlier in the game, and had no business taking the field, sentimentality aside.

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Yet, it was Buckner who shouldered the blame. Livid Red Sox fans, jaded by another humiliating autumn defeat, harassed Buckner and his family, even leveling death threats against a man who played for them the following season. The abuse became so severe that Buckner moved his family to Idaho. He returned to Boston on Opening Day 2008 to throw out the ceremonial first pitch; he got met with a two-minute standing ovation… only after the Red Sox had won two World Series in the last four seasons.

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If Boston had still been winless, their “forgiveness” would never have occurred, and thus we learn a painful lesson in humanity: “love” is fickle. Sports teams fulfill a need, so their players do as well, and if that need does not get met, we withdraw our affection. We bay for blood, call for heads, and demand trades and cuts no matter how long a player has been with the organization or helped its success. Winning is all that matters. “Love” exists in a bubble. Any deviation and the bubble pops.

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Although it is difficult to admit, we are not much different in our personal lives. After all, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, and studies have shown that 60% of men and 45% of women will be unfaithful in their marriage. Society has concocted numerous theories to explain this inherent moral flaw, including a push for ethical non-monogamy. Unfortunately for that movement, studies indicate that couples are just as happy in monogamous unions as in non-monogamous ones.

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It is simply a human flaw: love exists, but not everyone can grant it, and those who can face its delicacy.

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It makes the question heavy-handedly posed at the beginning of A.I. Artificial Intelligence pointless: “Even if we could program a robot to love, could a human bring themselves to love it back?”

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It is an intriguing spin on a typical narrative, where the ethics of creation center solely around an android's ability to feel human emotion. Instead, it points the finger at us; science will out, but can humanity withstand that science? The answer lies in every relationship we forge, no matter how selfless, considerate, or giving we are: it depends.

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A.I. is the story of David, a Mecha (meaning "mechanical") child, who is given to Monica Swinton by her husband, Henry. The couple’s biological child, Martin, is sick and waits for a cure in suspended animation. In the meantime, Henry’s company has allowed him to bring David home as a pseudo-replacement until Martin is better. David is programmed to develop a child-like love for whoever activates his imprinting protocol, which Monica does.

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We know she has lost a child. We know her heart has shattered. We know she wants her family, and thus herself, to be whole again. We know because she rushes into the hospital to visit her ailing son so she can read to him while he remains in stasis. We know because the father is eager to move the process along. We know because it is impossible not to know regardless of those things. Loss creates a need for gain, no matter the loss or gain.

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When the film must abandon that universality and relay its ideas through the family (about 10 minutes into the movie), it loses itself immediately. The opening scenes are an ode to technical genius and thematic indecision. The music creates an aura of mystery with ominous undertones, the creeping feeling that something isn’t right in these new circumstances. It also inspires hope for the Swinton household now that David has come into their lives. We cannot be sure how to feel because the music doesn’t allow conclusions. David's quirks (staring at Monica from behind glass doors or appearing right before her everywhere she turns) are just as cute as unsettling. It pulls us in a thousand different directions, an emotional and ethical quandary the narrative refuses to pose.

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David is innocent and well-intentioned, only adopting the persona programmed into him; Monica is resistant, feeling like she is replacing Martin. A.I. is so eager to abandon the ethical gold mine for the visual displays that the film's purpose gets lost. The Swintons' existence is unestablished aside from the basics; Monica’s needs are unexplored beyond the idea. In 20 minutes, the film forces her through the entire gamut of human emotion to answer a question that perhaps no film can answer with depth.

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Time jumps fast forward David’s brief life with Monica and Henry, first as he develops a bond with Monica on their terms and after Martin heals. The family dynamic gets altered with each choice the forwarding characters make. Henry brings David home, Monica enacts the imprinting protocol, and Martin rejects the new life to which he returns in favor of the one he knew before. Everyone gets challenged to accept David, but everyone must arrive at the same destination from vastly different paths. Aside from the vaguest generality, we get no insight into those paths; everything the movie must explore to answer its philosophical question never sees the light.

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After all, an introductory scene lays the groundwork, delivers the film’s purpose, and forces us to view the story in the light of that purpose. The professor, whose own loss fuels his creation of the Mecha children, assures his class that the proposed robot would be able to experience genuine human love. The question is never if the robot can love, always if the person can love the robot. If the story never answers that question, what purpose did it serve?

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Was it love for Monica to abandon David at her husband’s behest? Is the question that simple to answer considering the danger that his inherent lack of instinctive humanity poses? He does not mean to approach his mother in the night, scissors in hand, and frighten her; he does not intend to harm Martin when his self-preservation protocol kicks in and nearly drowns his “brother.” He does and is as programmed. Monica must weigh the family she’s always known with the one created partially by her husband’s intentions and somewhat by her desperation. The blame is not entirely hers, but the burden is, and the factors are too numerous to back anyone into an ethical corner; we cannot know if it was love, guilt, shame, or fear of a future burdened by conscience.

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We do know that a subdued approach to science fiction, equipped with realistic visuals, like those inside the room of a digitized search engine or across the glacial wasteland from which advanced Mecha robots emerge, offers deeper contemplation than more overt displays. We know it requires complex world-building, but it also needs a focused mind and a patient spirit.

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The genre is a movement of intent, always seeking to say something about us, our past, present, future, nature, or nurture. It needs room to breathe, unfurl itself deliberately, and expose its meanings within the story's context. A.I. would have been a successful film if it had respected its intentions: to answer whether a human could love a robot back. Its actual existence - that of a sentimental story shrouded in darkness lit by neon - is chock-full of fascinating ideas but poor execution.

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Rouge City, where David ventures with Teddy the electronic bear and male prostitute Gigolo Joe, is a reduced take on Blade Runner's Los Angeles. The thousands-year surge into glacial oblivion is a trick to stretch the story to saga length and deceive us into thinking its breadth equals depth, but it does not. If a film leapfrogs its thematics, skipping 20 months or 2,000 years, it will always struggle to establish the sense that every development is, in fact, developing.

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It is doubtful any film could balance genres and tones well enough to earn the device of a child robot trying to commit suicide, but on a technical level, A.I. gets close to that breed of brilliance. It knows the difference between love and need, the distinction between the trauma of loss and that of recovery. It says it plainly, both in words when Joe asserts that David only served a need to Monica and visually when we see her struggle with her ultimate choice, even if the true meaning of that decision gets lost. Unfortunately, knowing something does not mean you understand it, and for all the knowledge it possesses, A.I. lacks wisdom.

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It is the danger of temptation, the folly of admiration, and the damnation of distraction. Steven Spielberg respected Stanley Kubrick, the man initially slated to direct the film and an artist whose clinical approach starkly contrasts Spielberg’s sentimentality. The result is a film that shows the potential of differing styles converging on a single concept; when the film’s atmosphere forces us to accept a divisive narrative, we ask questions. The general tone inspires inspection, but beyond the initial probe, all questions asked and answered are done so independent of the movie. It must then succeed as a child’s adventure in a philosophical world. Despite its promise, it fails. As it obligates itself to vision and not interpretation, it is nothing but a sugary tale of a robot wanting to become a real boy, and we didn’t need a 146-minute sci-fi drama for that.

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In the end, A.I. stands tallest as a testament to standing by our choices. An audience cannot get asked a question and watch a film that refuses to explore it; a filmmaker cannot float an idea and demand that a viewer does all the heavy-lifting; a concept cannot thrive if forced to function on its limitations. We know that love is fickle. We know that if needs go unfulfilled, those we claim to care for will feel our wrath. We knew it during our first breakup over a petty argument that became the death knell it never needed to become.

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We knew it the first time our parents told us "No." We knew it when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball got through Bill Buckner, driving Ray Knight home for the winning run. A film that asks a long-answered question must grant us insight into the why, perhaps to some new yet unrealized end. A.I. wants to brush off the conclusion for homage, and we suffer for it. As the movie concludes, leaving us with that empty feeling of having watched something truly unique but without the conviction to follow through on its ideas, we think back to when Monica apologizes to David as she abandons him in the forest without an idea of what his identity means in a world unprepared to accept it.

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“I’m sorry I never told you about the world.”

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Us too, Monica. Us too.