The conversation surround-
ing the future of Artificial 
Intelligence weighs heavily on 
the possibility of artificial life 
becoming a sentient threat to 
the human race. Steven Spiel-
berg’s (“The Fabelmans”) “A.I. 
Artificial Intelligence” chang-
es the tone of this conversation 
and turns a mirror to man-
kind, a reminder that humans 
are solely responsible for what 
they bring into the world. 
“A.I.” opens on a catastroph-
ic 
picture. 
Surging 
waves 
swallow the screen as a nar-
rator tells the familiar tale of 
a planet ravaged by humans. 
With only the developed world 
left with a fighting chance, 
humans turned to an invention 
that would maximize economic 
profit and minimize resource 

consumption: mecha (human-
oid robots).
The idea for “A.I.” comes 
from the minds of cinema leg-
ends Spielberg and Stanley 
Kubrick (“The Shining”), both 
recognized for their influence 
on the sci-fi genre. Kubrick 
conceived “A.I.” about two 
decades before passing the 
project to Spielberg, deciding 
he would be better suited to 
handling the intensely senti-
mental material. Elements of 
“The Adventures of Pinocchio” 
and even Mary Shelley’s “Fran-
kenstein” can be found in “A.I.” 
— a story driven by the love for 
and the desire to be loved by 
our creators. Although Kubrick 
did not live to see the final 
cut, his influence on “A.I.” is 
present and valuable to one of 
Spielberg’s darkest and most 
lachrymose 
tales 
of 
heart-
break, humanity and brutality.
In the world of “A.I.,” Mecha 

become more than just a means 
to survive, and the cybertronic 
industry begins mass-market-
ing them for human use. David 
(Haley Joel Osment, “The Sixth 
Sense”), a prototype Mecha 
built to resemble a young boy 
and programmed to feel love, is 
given to grieving couple Henry 

(Sam 
Robards, 
“American 
Beauty”) and Monica Swinton 
(Frances O’Connor, “The Con-
juring 2”) after their ailing son 
Martin (Jake Thomas, “Lizzie 
McGuire”) is placed in cryos-
tasis.

I hate backdoor pilots. These 
self-contained episodes in popu-
lar series are meant to act as the 
introduction to spin-offs for less-
er characters. I could be in the 
middle of a show’s season, fully 
immersed in its protagonists and 
their arcs, only to be met with an 
entire episode centered around 
characters I don’t care about. On 
the off-chance I’m intrigued, I 
have to hope the new production 
succeeds. All this is for the pos-
sibility of a spin-off that prob-
ably won’t make it off the ground 
because it could never measure 
up to the original. 
My life started to feel like a 
backdoor pilot around my fifth 

rewatch of “Doctor Who.” It 
was the first show I remember 
being really obsessed with, but 
it certainly wouldn’t be the last. 
I fell in love with its eccentric 
characters and out-of-this-world 
adventures. Watching regular 
people traipsing through the 
galaxy with the coolest being in 
the universe made me ache for 
something that special in my life. 
Looking around at the mundan-
ity of real life, I couldn’t find the 
same passion for any humdrum 
experiences on planet Earth. It 
was all so boring. 
Instead of going out and try-
ing to find adventures of my 
own, I chose to marinate in sto-
ries of other people’s incredible 
lives while mine passed me by. 
What happened, Mr. Feige?
Just a year ago, you lived on 
top of the world, pumping out 

box office monster after box 
office monster, living life like 
there was no tomorrow. And 
now look at you. You’ve got 
Marvel’s first-ever flop on your 
hands. With “Ant-Man and the 

Wasp: Quantumania,” you’ve 
somehow managed to make the 
impossible possible and unite 
critics and audiences in an 
unmitigated “ugh.” That luke-
warm reaction isn’t even the 
worst of it (god knows you’ve 
dealt with that before) — the 
real worry is the creeping real-
ization that this might be just 
the beginning.
For years, “Marvel Fatigue” 
seemed nothing more than the 
wishful thinking of pretentious 
cinephiles, becoming for 2010s 
movie reviewers what the apoc-
alypse was for 1840s preach-
ers — all smoke, no fire. That is, 
until now. There is real, palpa-
ble exhaustion from audiences 
all over the U.S. Take it from 
box office numbers, take it from 
personal anecdotes, take it from 
any source you like, this house 

of cards is about to collapse.
But all this brings me back to 
my original question, the same 
question Bob Iger must have 
hastily scrawled on a sticky note 
before nailing it to your office 
door: Kevin, what the HELL 
happened? Maybe you could 
shrug your shoulders and claim 
it’s because “Ant-Man” was bad, 
that’s all. But if that were all it 
took to damage the Marvel Cin-
ematic Universe, it would’ve 
been dead on arrival in 2008. 
No, this problem is more com-
plicated. This problem is some-
thing especially unique to our 
modern era — or should I say, 
postmodern era. 
Yeah, yeah, the transition was 
corny, but so are your movies, 
Kevin, so don’t be a hypocrite. 

Meeting people I’ve only ever 
seen in my Zoom physics classes. 
Meeting a celebrity after months of 
seeing them on social media. Find-
ing out an online figure I followed 
for years is an abuser, a sex pest or 
just an all-of-the-above terrible per-
son. The world is slowly revealing 
its ill-intentioned machinations. A 
universe projected or simulated, a 
facsimile or dream of higher beings. 
There’s this disconcerting feeling 
I’ve picked up from many of these 
situations, one that I find a common 
thread in — but while of course all 
of them find their origin in some 
sort of artifice, we can take it deeper 
than that. We can sift through these 
layers of reality and burn away 
every last one, but in order to cast 
these shadows out for good, we have 
to trace them back to their source. 
We have to dive into Plato’s cave. 

Let’s say you chained up several 
people from birth so that they were 
always facing the wall of a cave 
(kind of a fucked up thing for you to 
do, but just roll with it for the par-
able). All they have ever seen is that 
wall of the cave, with one exception. 
If you were to place a torch behind 
them, shadows — like puppets — 
would dance for them on the wall. 
Those bound would not know any-
thing of light, darkness or life — they 
would perceive those shadows as 
their truest reality. But let’s say you 
freed one of those cave-people (how 
nice of you). Without the rest of the 
cave-people knowing, this person 
turned around to see the torch and 
the shadow-casting objects in 
front of it. Furthermore, they 
venture outside of the cave into 
the world. For a moment, the 
outside world’s light burns their 
eyes, but they eventually adjust. 

Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Do audiences dream of electric Spider-Men?

Design by Sara Fang

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

MAYA RUDER
 Daily Arts Writer 

The Modern Pinocchio: Steven Spielberg’s 
‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’

RAMI MAHDI
Daily Arts Writer

Design by Sara Fang

My life: The backdoor 
pilot

MINA TOBYA
Daily Arts Writer

SAARTHAK JOHRI
 Digital Culture Beat Editor 

Plato’s parasocial 
parable of the cave

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 — 5

