Summer Movies 2001 (Part 3)
(07/13/01)
Ah,
technology. Where would we be without
it? Not only would you not be able to
log onto the Internet and read my movie reviews every few weeks, your ancestors
would probably have been eaten by a sabretooth tiger without fire and weapons
to protect them. The fact that we
humans are capable of using tools and creating nifty gadgets to make our lives
easier is what allows us to live in the style to which we have become
accustomed. But now that technology is approaching
the stage where (to most people) it is almost indistinguishable from magic, where
do the accomplishments of humans end and the domain of intelligent machines
begin? Two recent summer movies have explored
humanity’s love-hate relationship with the technology that shapes our lives,
the first indirectly, the second directly.
Now, not only do you get my thoughts on these two flicks, you get a
semi-philosophical rant as a bonus.
After
many years of buzz and excitement, one of the most eagerly awaited movies of
the summer, “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” has finally been
released. Created by a team of American
and Japanese computer animators, it is the first movie to feature a cast of
semi-realistic, entirely computer-animated human characters. It also bears little resemblance to the
video game series from which it took its name and inspiration, which is surely
a frustration for fans of the games and a relief for me (if I see one more
so-called “action movie” that’s little more than a video game you don’t even get
to play, I think I’ll scream). In the
year 2065, the Earth has been all but decimated by invading aliens known as “phantoms.” The phantoms, who showed up after a meteor
hit Africa, can literally yank people’s souls from their bodies and have driven
the few survivors into heavily shielded cities. One of the few people brave (or stupid) enough to venture out
into the post-apocalyptic ruins is Dr. Aki Ross (voice of Ming-Na), who with
her mentor (voice of Donald Sutherland) is seeking out the few remaining living
things to collect eight spirits that can neutralize the force of the
phantoms. (Hey, no one ever said it had
to make sense, just that it had to look cool.)
Protecting Dr. Ross is a troop of soldiers known as “Deep-Eyes,” led by
a guy named Gray (voice of Alec Baldwin, though the character is a dead ringer
for Ben Affleck) who provides a convenient love interest.
The
story of “Final Fantasy” is very tired indeed, and comes off as a bizarre,
uneasy synthesis of “Aliens” (the Deep-Eyes are basically the exact same
characters as that movie’s ill-fated space marines) and “Princess Mononoke.” It tries to combine the action of the former
with the environmentally friendly, spiritually focused philosophy of the latter,
and fails; all that happens is that the action sequences seem strangely muted,
and the talky scenes just come off as ridiculous. It’s far too much story for a 90-minute movie, and the ending
makes little or no sense and really doesn’t play fair with the viewers. But it’s not like you’re going to this movie
for the story anyway; the best (and only) reason to see “Final Fantasy” is for
the astonishing visuals.
Because
the more you think about what must have gone into the animation of “Final
Fantasy,” the more awe-inspiring it becomes.
Something like 5 years went into the making of this movie’s animation,
and you can see it in every hair, every pore, and every wrinkle. The human characters (Gray and Dr. Ross in
particular) were so realistic that they fooled me a few times into thinking
they were real people, particularly in the long shots. In closeups, the animation seems to become
more sterile and less believable, and whenever I looked in a character’s eyes
the spark of life was missing, and I was reminded of what I was watching. It’ll be awhile before “people” like these allow
me to suspend my disbelief completely; maybe that’s a good thing? But “Final Fantasy” is a milestone, a
prophecy of things to come. For that it
is highly recommended that you see it, just so you can say you were there. Some critics seem to think this is the
beginning of the end for human actors, but I’d say that’s a long way down the
road, if it’s coming at all (I doubt anything will ever totally replace seeing
a fellow human being on the screen). But
perhaps if the creators had paid the same attention to coming up with a unique,
coherent story as they did to the animation, I might not be saying right now
that the jobs of real actors are safe for the time being. The Verdict: If this is the future of
movies, God help us all. 3 out of 5.
“Final
Fantasy” is a real-world preview of the myriad doors advanced technology can
open for us. But the entirely fictional
“A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” takes a much more radical, direct, and
pessimistic approach toward what we do when the boundaries between humans and
machines begin to blur. This eagerly
awaited “collaboration” between directors Steven Speilberg and the late Stanley
Kubrick (“A.I.” was Kubrick’s pet project for 20 years; Spielberg took it over
after Kubrick’s death, refined it, and had it ready to go in two) is really a
story in three acts, some of which work better than others, but all of which
are undeniably fascinating.
“A.I.”
takes place in a not-so-distant future where the polar ice caps have melted and
submerged the world’s coastal cities and self-aware robots known as “mecha” (a
term which watching too much Japanese animation has forced me to associate with
giant robots stomping Tokyo) are more or less accepted in many areas of daily life. It begins as the story of a couple whose
only child is in cryogenic stasis until a cure can be found for his terminal
illness. The father, who is employed by
one of the major mecha-producing companies, brings home David (the wonderful
Haley Joel Osment), the prototype of a robotic child programmed to honestly love
his parents. His “mother” (Frances O’Connor,
also very good) initially warms up to him, allowing him to “imprint” on her and
truly love her, but after some unforseen events decides to abandon him rather
than return him to the factory to be destroyed. This is the most emotionally moving, and perhaps best-crafted,
third of the film; the writing is brilliantly subtle, the acting superb, and many
scenes (David eating spinach, anyone?) are heartbreaking in their perfection. The second act begins when David (who knows
the story of Pinnochio from his mother) decides to become human so his family
will love him again and sets out on a cross-country odyssey in search of the
Blue Fairy. Accompanied by the “love
mecha” Gigolo Joe (Jude Law, whose creepily perfect beauty means he was born
to play a robot if you ask me) and a robotic teddy bear which is sure to be one
of the summer’s more memorable and endearing characters, David goes from a
congregation of cast-off mecha to a “flesh fair” where robots are destroyed for
the entertainment of humans to the submerged ruins of New York City and beyond. This is the most visually inventive and daring
portion of “A.I.,” and definitely my favorite. The final (and mercifully brief) act, about which I cannot say too
much here without ruining it for all of you, is the one place where Spielberg
really stumbles. This is the third of “A.I.”
that just didn’t work for me; Spielberg’s sentimentality and desire for a happy
ending seemed to take over, and the end result is a confusing mess that is only
marginally satisfying and just doesn’t ring true.
The
biggest problem with “A.I.” is the sections of the movie where watching Spielberg
working on Kubrick’s vision is like watching a train wreck. Spielberg’s penchant for cutesyness and his
attempts to inject humor into Kubrick’s deathly serious source material are the
biggest problem. “A.I.” is not “E.T.”:
the subject matter just doesn’t make for a feel-good, family-friendly film with
a happy message for everyone, and Spielberg forgets that far too often. The presence of the Robin-Williams-voiced “Dr.
Know” computer program and the Chris-Rock-voiced mecha are good examples of shiny
happy distractions that made me shake my head in disgust. The absolute WORST scene in the movie was
the end of the flesh fair sequence, which should have been a heart-pounding
escape sequence to match the rest of that scene’s gritty intensity but instead
turned out to be this “uplifting” Spielberg B.S. that was so sappy and
unbelievable that it quite literally made me start dry-heaving in the movie
theatre. To paraphrase a poster on the Ain’t It Cool News forums, “If Stanley
Kubrick could see this he would never stop vomiting.” I can understand Spielberg having his own style as a director,
but trying to make this very dark material even marginally cheerful was a bad
decision.
Despite these glaring
flaws, “A.I.” is nonetheless an intriguing movie. This is yet another summer movie where the special effects are
nothing short of astonishing and make it well worth the price of admission; the
“mecha parts dumping ground” where the cast-off robots come to replace their
failing limbs, in particular, had my jaw on the floor. So my lowest-common-denominator review of “A.I.”
is this: Some of it was cool, and some of it sucked, but it was cool more often
than it sucked. It’s worth a matinee,
if nothing else. The Verdict: I
can’t guarantee that you will like “David and Teddy’s excellent adventure,” but
I do insist that you see it. 4 out of
5.
While “A.I.” is far from
perfect, it is also the first truly thought-provoking major studio film I’ve
seen since 1997’s “Contact.” Gigolo Joe’s final speech to David, in particular,
mirrored the thoughts I’ve been having about improved CGI for a long time now. “They made us too good, too fast...In the
end we’ll be the only ones left.” While
we still have a long way to go before we get to the thinking-machine-inhabited
dystopia of “A.I.,” it seems more possible than ever today. Computers have reached the stage where even
the most primitive home PC has a greater capacity for memory and data
processing than even the smartest human being, and A.I. research is a very real
and very thriving field. What we have
here are machines that we built to be smarter, faster, stronger, and all-around
better that we can ever hope to be ourselves (barring a few billion more years
of evolution), and now we plan on deliberately creating a superior race of
self-aware machines which we will then expect to do what we tell them and play
nice? I fail to see how this is a good
idea.
I suppose I’m less
concerned with admittedly far-fetched science fiction scenarios of machines
taking over the world (besides, I like to think A.I. researchers have thought
through the moral implications of what they’re getting into and have a good
handle on how far is too far) than with the idea that we are slowly replacing ourselves
with machines. This is already apparent
in many areas of daily life. When most
people want to withdraw $20 from their bank account for movie tickets, they don’t
drive all the way to their local bank and stand in line for the teller; they
find the nearest ATM and interact with a machine rather than a real person. I’m not saying convenience is a bad thing, just
that I wonder how long it will be before this happens in all areas of public
life and robots are our store clerks, our waiters, our garbage collectors, and
so forth. Not only would this have some
serious social implications (think of the unemployment rates...), I think I’d
miss that little added touch of real human contact in my day-to-day life. The gadgets we create to make our lives
easier may be very cool indeed, but what about taking some of that time we
spend working toward the next technological advance and putting it toward what
really matters—the way we relate to each other?
Looking at “Final
Fantasy” and its so-close-to-real humanoid creations tells me that future may
be closer than I think. “Final Fantasy”’s
production team says their aim isn’t to replace human actors, only to present a
new alternative for moviegoers that makes it even easier to visualize the
impossible. I can appreciate that, and
the fact that no matter how digitized our creations become, the force of human
creativity will always be the first thing needed in the mix. For now, we also still need human actors to
provide character voices and the foundation for their motions. And even if CGI and voice replication
technology progress to the stage where human involvement isn’t necessary beyond
the animation stage, we humans are a pretty cool species. We’ll always have at least a little bit of
interest in real people doing real things.
Or, to echo the end of my latest OOC essay,
at least I’d like to think so.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Beth Kinderman. This is my original work, so please respect it.