AI: Artificial Intelligence Review Part 4

An In Depth Look at the Forrest Scene Part 1

In the previous review, I talked about the final event—the pool party—which led to Monica eventually leaving David in the forest with Teddy. I mentioned one of the obvious problems with the sequence—the lack of attempts made to fix David before abandoning him—but I only alluded to the main issue because the subject is surprisingly complicated.

The forest scene itself is just shy of three minutes, and the actors both do a wonderful job selling the scene, but in the end, I couldn’t buy it. This scene is meant to bring the audience to tears, but I only felt confused and a little irritated. It’s taken multiple attempts at writing down my thoughts to really articulate why.

To grasp what went wrong during this scene, I must first rewind a bit and discuss what we’ve seen thus far. The basic issue is that there are multiple conflicting plot points coming to a head here. This makes for a very confusing scene, despite the actors’ tears. First, we must begin by remembering two elements: the film’s thesis statement and the bait-and-switch being used to sneak that thesis into the audience’s brains.

The real message of the movie is “Nobody knows what ‘real’ really means.” Remember, this is Teddy’s line at the end of Brian Aldiss’s short story, Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. As the movie progresses, the clear anti-God narrative becomes apparent, so the word “real” is, both in the short story and in the movie, serving as a placeholder for the concept of endowed value.

In other words, if the word “real” doesn’t matter, then endowed value doesn’t exist. If “real” has no objective meaning, then neither does human value. This is a very unpopular idea, and if the audience catches that this is the moral of the story, then they will disconnect from the film.

So, Spielberg—and by…

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