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Kubrick had met Steven Spielberg in 1979 during the on-location filming in England for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and they remained friends over the next two decades as Kubrick engaged Spielberg in conversations about A.I. and showed him thousands of storyboards (drawn by renowned comic book illustrator Chris Baker). Ultimately, Kubrick suggested to Spielberg that the movie's title card should read: "a Stanley Kubrick production of a Steven Spielberg film." He confessed that he thought the movie was closer to Spielberg's sensibilities than his own.
Upon Kubrick's death, the project seemed headed for oblivion, but Kubrick's wife Christiane and his long-time executive producer Jan Harlan approached Terry Semel (then the chairman of Warner Bros.) with the idea of reviving A.I. with Steven Spielberg at the helm. And Spielberg readily agreed.
The resulting movie feels like no other Spielberg movie. Occasionally it evokes E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but there's little sense of elation. Instead Spielberg gives us an unrelentingly sad movie. A.I. is filled with special effects and computer-generated graphics, but the movie's considerable visual delights are at the service of an overwhelmingly melancholy fable about a boy robot who wants nothing as much as the love of the woman he calls "mommy." This isn't a feel-good story designed to thrill audiences and send them home feeling warm and satisfied. By design, the movie remains emotionally elusive.
In the past, Spielberg might have felt compelled to make everyone in the audience happy, but with the ghost of Kubrick hovering behind his every move and choice, Spielberg allowed the story to drift into darker terrain, to a place where happy endings don't exist, a place where suffering lasts for a millennium, a place where love rarely takes root.
The movie is set in the distant future, after the earth's ice caps have melted and the ocean level has risen by a hundred feet, inundating coastal cities. New York City, for example, now sits several miles out at sea, its tallest skyscrapers rising above the ocean waves, but the rest of the city remains submerged and abandoned.
In the world of A.I., robots have taken over most menial chores. They look and act much like humans, but they only know what they've been programmed to know (with some limited abilities to learn on their own). Robot designer/engineer Professor Hobby (William Hurt) has a vision of a new breed of robots--one capable of experiencing love. Because of legal sanctions placed on pregnancy, a robot as Professor Hobby describes is now economically feasible. Couples without children may find a robot child to be an acceptable replacement for real offspring. So "David" (Haley Joel Osment) is created. He exists to be loved and cared for, and he returns that love. In fact, above everything else, he craves the love of his parents, especially the love of the woman he calls "mommy."
A.I. is primarily concerned with David's efforts to get love. But the road to acceptance proves to be difficult. Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O'Connor) adopt David because their own son is seriously ill. Cryogenically frozen until a cure is discovered, their son rests in a glass tube at a healthcare facility. Little hope exists that he'll ever resume a normal life. But one day, "The most wonderful thing in the world" (Monica's words) happens: their son recovers. Once he returns home, the Swintons try to continue with two sons but jealousies and misunderstandings follow. And soon the Swintons discover that love for a mechanical contraption that looks human can't compare with love for a real, live, flesh-and-blood son. So David becomes expendable.
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