Did you see A.I. yet? What did you think? I saw the 1:20am Saturday night. It’s now 5am.
*** WARNING *** SPOILER ALERT
Don’t read on if you don’t want any spoilers.
So, what did you think? Me, overall I liked it. It’s not awesome. I don’t think I’d buy it on DVD for example. It doesn’t feel like a multi-watch moive although it might be neat to see a few of the effects scenes again.
It was interesting reading Ebert’s review. He basically claims in his review that robots can’t love, they are just machines and so he could never actually have any real sympathy for David, the main character.
I don’t agree with that idea at all. Just because something has been created by Man doesn’t mean it’s not sentient or that it’s not feeling real emotions or even that it’s not a *being* deserving all the same protections that other sentient beings deserve.
I had this disscussion with one of my dates. When you simulate a building in a computer that’s clearly a simulation, not an actually building. But, if you successfully simulate thinking in a computer, is that a simulation of thinking or is it actually thinking? I contend that it’s actually thinking.
So then the question becomes, if it’s actually thinking, then is turning it off murder? If not why? Obviously those that are religious would say basically “because it doesn’t have a sole” but those who are not religious it would seem would have to come up with some reason why a bunch of chemicals in the form of a brain running some process known as “conscieness” are more important than a computer running the same process.
Anyway, back to the movie. I thought Haley Joel Osment, the kid, did a great job playing a not quite human robot kid. He was pretty creepy. Also, it did bring up quite a few interesting issues with the safety stuff. If you had an artifical kid and a real kid and they got in a fight and the real kid got hurt would you have the artifical kid destroyed like a bad dog?
The Rouge City scenes were kind of neat thought after the movie I got to thinking, which will come first, robot love machines or can’t tell from the real world sensory VR? In the movie it’s assumed that robot lovers would be better than real (which I agree) but real VR (of the Star Trek Holodeck kind) would be even better if not downright addicting.
It was also really neat to see New York underwater and stuff though of course baloney. First, I believe that even the people that believe if the world heats up and the ice caps melt that it will only be 30 feet or so. Although that would be New York underwater it would only be the first 3 stories of the buildings that are at sea level. There are hills in New York so than means not even all of Manhatten would be underwater. Second, according to this guy, the geological record shows that when the tempature goes up the ocean level does NOT rise.
The last part of the movie was pretty lame I thought. I pretty much wish it had ended when David went into the Ocean. That seems like the best place to end the movie. Before Joe pulls him out even. I didn’t get the end scenes before they find him. Was it supposed to be New York carved out of ice? It was kind of neat to see but also just to strange and full of the most holes.