Joining with Spielberg in creating a futuristic worlds of “A.I.” are some of the most celebrated effects artists working today. The creature/makeup effects were created by Stan Winston, whose filmography includes some of the most ambitious and complex effects films of all time. Visual effects visionary Dennis Muren and Scott Farrar of Industrial Light & Magic supervised the film’s groundbreaking visual effects. Michael Lantieri coordinated the practical effects. And Christopher Baker provided conceptual art.
An obsession of the late filmmaking auteur Stanley Kubrick, “A.I.” focuses on a character that represents the future of thinking technology. “In the 1980s, Stanley Kubrick took me into his creative confidence to tell me an absolutely beautiful story that was impossible to forget,” says Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning writer/director and longtime friend of Kubrick’s, who ultimately wrote and directed “A.I.” “I think it was the careful blend of science and humanity that made me anxious for Stanley to tell it, and after he was gone, led me to want to tell it for him.”
“Steven wanted to embrace and pay homage to Stanley,” says “A.I.” producer and Spielberg’s longtime associate Kathleen Kennedy. “So he took Stanley’s contribution and added that to his own. There’s no question that this is a movie that has Steven Spielberg’s sensibilities all over it. But the subtext is all Kubrick.”
“A.I.,” says Jan Harlan, the film’s executive producer and Stanley Kubrick’s longtime colleague, “shows a new romanticism that hasn’t been seen on the screen so far: The idea of an artificial being feeling genuine love and a human truly loving an artificial being is quite new territory.”
The film takes place in a future when starting a family is subject to strict governmental restrictions. Says Harlan, “Circumstances have changed; technology has increased to an extent that most normal work is performed by robots and we are confronted with the idea of programming a child robot so that he is able to love.”
“David is the top of the line in mechanical development,” says Frances O’Connor, who plays Monica, David’s mother. “Unlike the earlier models, he can actually absorb information and images, and collate it in a way that is very human. He also connects these ideas to his emotions. And he starts to think about his own realness.”
Jude Law, who has starred in such films as “Enemy at the Gates” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” stars as Gigolo Joe, a “love mecha” (for “mechanicals”) that becomes David’s “scoutmaster,” as Spielberg calls the character. Together with Joe, David lights out into the strange, new world to find their true place in the society that created them.
“In the world of ‘A.I.,’ mankind has started to rely a lot more on mechanical devices – ‘mechas’ – to take over very simple jobs,” Law says. “Over the years this has developed into more sophisticated jobs, whether it’s just a robot to make you laugh in the same way that normally a TV entertainer would, or someone might have a masseur robot in their house. And it goes even as far as robots for pleasure-seeking. Joe is there to entertain and to fulfill the means of his customers. He is the male version of the sex mecha.”
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