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