From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 01:27:19 MST
Last night I rented the movie A.I. on video cassette. I presume that
Schpielberg knows more than I about what Joe public is likely to buy, but by
the end of this film I found myself wanting to string him up by the toenails
and tap his balls with a cold spoon. Titanic - good, Private Ryan -
excellent, Schindler's list - bravo, A.I. - come here so I can slap your
fool head off.
>From a Transhumanist perspective, this movie was about as awful as I could
have imagined - a truly uninspiring waste of magnetic storage media. Shame
on you Ray Kurzweil for giving it the general thumbs-up that essentially
inspired me to rent it. I honestly can't reconcile that view with your
brilliant essay - The Law of Accelerating Returns.
>From the opening, I found myself feeling disappointed. Polar ice caps all
melted - world's low-lying cities flooded, the gap between the have's and
the have not's widened - eww, Schpielberg's been disasterbating all over my
television screen - I feel so violated! Ever heard of Julian Simon, Steven?
Thought not.
Then a conference room full of engineers. "Well boyz, we're making a fortune
selling these here sex-bots, but I have another idea - let's make a robot
that can really love - unlike this ‘low end' beauty who doesn't even seem to
get offended when you drive a sharp object through her hand."
Next it's cryonics - called cryogenics of course. See Freezer-Boy packaged
in a touchingly frosted Plexiglas cryostat thingy - sans the LN2 and
sleeping bag. And there's his poor tragic mom sniveling away her life in the
apparent far-fetched dream that her son will get better one day. She uses
her handy-dandy transducer to play some nice music for the boy who's
auditory neurons are apparently firing just fine, despite being frozen
solid.
Dad says hey, got an idea! Let's bring home an ultra high-tech Mecha Child
to help cheer up depressed mom. She's a bit bitchy at first, but warms up to
the idea after the creepy little feller - who moves like Kwi Chang Kane,
jumps out and startles her several times and displays some voyeuristic
toilet tendencies. She's apparently sold when she finds out he can make a
great cup of coffee.
Mom utters the magic words that flip on Mecha Child's ‘luuuv circuit' and
things seem real nice for a couple of days. Then, uh oh, Freezer-Boy's been
cured and he's coming home tomorrow! This is sure to spoil the fun for Mecha
Child - you can just tell. Apparently we now have A.I. and Nanotechnology,
but daily life is pretty much same, same.
Freezer-Boy comes home and finds that someone has been sleeping in his bed.
He decides to make artificial life really difficult for Mecha Child. "Eat
spinach and did you spawn from hell! Go snip momma's hair while she's
sleeping, she won't mind a bit. Let's find out who teddy loves more - come
here Teddy." At first I was puzzled as to why Teddy had to have such a
coarse, Fred Sanford kind of voice, until I realized that a sweet voice
would have allowed him to easily steal the show from artificially
not-so-intelligent Mecha Child.
Next some mean boys at the birthday party terrorize Mecha Child. "Save me
little brother! Oops, sorry I nearly drowned you in the swimming pool. But I
panicked - please just love me!"
Dad says - Mecha Child too dangerous now - it's back to the factory for
destruction. Mom has second thoughts, but eventually caves and abandons
Mecha Child in the woods. I just knew she was a bitch. Mecha Child - David,
who now thinks he's Pinocchio in search of the Blue Fairy, if you can
believe it, just keeps right on loving her just the same - much like a dog,
or a pet rabbit might be expected to do.
At this point Schpielberg really gets his futuristic rocks off with some
stunning dystopian and grotesque imagery. Robotic motorcycle goons on the
rampage round up the poor stupid A.I's who have been living in the wild. I
though the grinning neon wolf's-head bikes were particularly bright when
it's later revealed that the A.I.'s haven't even the capacity to fear public
dismemberment, being fired out of a cannon, or dissolved in acid.
I'll skip forward because this part of the movie didn't seem entirely
realistic.
David eventually finds the blue fairy, busts up the head of a younger
version of himself, tries to commit suicide, gets saved by some silver fish
and a sex-bot named Joe - "hey Joe whaddaya know" - finds another blue
fairy, gets pinned underwater in a flying police helicopter, and goes
catatonic after two thousand years of praying to an inanimate object.
The human race dies out, of course. Anorexic decedents of the (sex-bots?)
revive David and grant his sole wish to bring back his abandoning bitch Mom
for a day of cutesy bonding. But of course, it can only be ONE DAY because
two millenniums after acquiring nanotechnology and advanced A.I. no one
seems to know how to make a cup of coffee strong enough to keep Mom awake
past midnight. (Hey, but wasn't coffee David's specialty? Oh well.)
David is apparently not interested in spending eternity among the advanced
anorexic beings, so he cuddles up next to Mom and shuts himself down. What a
sweet, lovely, deathist ending to a classic piece of cinematic refuse. I
hope this review hasn't spoiled the movie for any of you who were planning
to rent it ;-)
Want to see a good movie tonight? Dig up 'Sirens' with Elle Macpherson, Sam
Neill, and Hugh Grant. A witty, light-hearted romp to lift your spirits.
Russell Evermore
Independent Researcher/Polymath
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