I've never understood the hate for A.I. it had a huge emotional impact on me

Am I the only one who feels really sad when teddy walks in and realizes he has no one left? I honestly think that is one of the saddest visuals in the movie.

Spielberg's most philosophical film ever. I will never understand why is it so underrated.

Am I the only one who thought that they were aliens?

Teddy is the unsung hero of this movie.

This ending is so deeply ironic. David was designed to unconditionally love a mother & he was created to fulfil Monica's needs (she longed to be a mother again) and here a fake Monica is created to fulfil David's needs to be someone's child. And this Monica is an idealised version of the real person created to unconditionally love David. We see David make her some coffee, we see them play hide and seek together, we see Monica give David a haircut - or at least that's what it looks like (If you recall in the 1st Act, it's David who cuts Monica's hair), we see David tuck Monica in bed (and not vice versa), we see them celebrate David's birthday (as opposed to Martin's) and here we see Monica looking at David's paintings whereas in the 1st act, it's David who's observing Monica's family photos. All the events are repeated, except now the roles have interchanged. David is the one who's needs are being fulfilled. He's playing the role of the human this time. This is Spielberg / Kubrick's bleakest, most challenging and contradictory ending because it shows how self-delusion can result in wish fulfilment. The cloned Monica is nothing like the one we saw from before but David doesn't care, he's found his mother again, he thinks his wish has come true, even though that's untrue. A.I. (like Collodi's dishonest tale) takes an artificial creation on a journey of humanity and in doing so, it tries to understand the very nature of the human condition. In the end, when the fake Monica dies, David self-terminates and accepts death because he understands that he no longer has a purpose in the world - something the supermeccha's have yet to accept. This is the when he "enters the place where dreams are born" - now is when you can say he's human, a mortal. Recognising death is what makes us alive (something Joe indicates when he says - I am I was). This results in a hugely important and seemingly paradoxical thought: freedom is not the absence of necessity, in the form of death. On the contrary, freedom consists in the affirmation of the necessity of one's mortality. It is only in being-towards-death that one can become the person who one truly is. Concealed in the idea of death as the possibility of impossibility is the acceptance on one's mortal limitation as the basis for an affirmation of one's life. A.I. deals with the exact same themes as 2001: A Space Odyssey - sentience, mortality and god - and does it better. This is the greatest sci-fi film since Tarkovsky's 1979 masterpiece Stalker.

Watched this at midnight. In tears by 3am. Lost it when David was given a day with his mother and nothing more. I was happy to see them 'reunited' but ultimately upset that he went all this way and spent all this time to quench a seemingly impossible desire for a fleeting resolution. I had no clue how they were going to end this journey but when I saw how Spielberg and by extension, Kubrick, ended it, I thought of my own mother and the little time that she has left. Love is one hell of a drug.

I won't lie. I was caught off guard by the ending to this movie. And I cried. There I said it.

I actually liked the ending. I found "the rejected robot child is all that remains of humanity" thing rather powerful.

I'm so grateful that Spielberg took the time to explain the ending of this amazing movie to all the psuedointellectuals who think they know enough about Kubrick to know what he would've wanted. Spielberg and Kubrick's friendship extended back to the late 70's. Few filmmakers understood better what he would've wanted. So shove it, Terry Gilliam and Salman Rushdie.

One of the greatest, emotional sci-fi film endings ever. Huge ideas, incredible ironies, and a deep, deep intrinsic sadness. I always cry when I watch it. Terribly underrated - mostly by numbties who lack empathy (and let's face it: there are plenty of people like that in the world, and it is a huge problem for our civilisation).

This movie was extremely sad I cry every time I watch it😕

the ending is how we should live everyday of our lives, as if it was our last.

The ending make me cry. Knowing one day I would give anything to see my mom again.

The film has aged majestically.

Learning about what Spielberg did for Kubrick really touched my heart

Teddy, YOU DA REAL MVP

...and if you really analyse the ending, you realise how ingenious it really is. It's NOT a happy ending. The recreated Monica was created to make David happy, just as he was created to make the original Monica happy! David's love for her was so strong that he basically killed himself, because he couldn't bear to spend another day without her! No way is that a happy ending! :'(

That ending gets me every time, no matter how hard i try.

This is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful retellings of Pinocchio ever. Ever. My heart aches when I watch it. I didn't know that they were Mechas and that makes it even that much more bittersweet. All this is left of us is an image of us.

brilliant movie, brilliant ending.

Every bit of this movie was incredible and a masterpiece!

I was mesmerized by the surrealism of this scene. I was so emotionally invested in David and his path to be with Monica and have her love him. Is this not what we all truly want. To be understood and loved. Crying, I thought at that moment when your in heaven God would sit with you and tie a bow of resolution to life's unfinished affairs.

for all you people saying how can those "aliens" be mechas. if you would have watched the movie carefully, one of the advanced mechas says to the other that david is one of the "originals" and that he has had contact with humans. thus making them later, advanced models. they liked david because he had direct contact with humans before the earth froze over. its kinda like how we still live in this planet and we never have encountered dinosaurs or neanderthals just saw frozen, or fossilized specimens.

one of the best sci-fi movies! It's ending is really powerful!

To hear those last words by monica to david is the most beautiful moments in cinematic history. I crumble everytime

Regardless of whether it was Kubrik's or Spielberg's decision to end the movie this way, I love the ending. Without the sentimentality and the tear-jerking, heart string pulling ending, I would just want to die. Beautiful movie, and one of my all-time favorites.

There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with this movie. It does it's job; it entertains, and keeps your attention for 2 hours. It also inspires lots of emotions as well.

The ending of this film was heartbreaking. Truly one of Spielberg's greatest masterpieces.

loved the ending, David finally had one last happy moment with the one he considered his mom. beautiful ending!

Wow, he was criticized for that? It was probably my favorite thing about the film. Few blockbusters ever dare to take their stories into this kind of territory, a distant future with a society that doesn't resemble us or our cultures at all. Filmmakers are always trying to give us things to relate to or recognize in Sci-fi or fantasy worlds. I thought it was bold that everything looked and felt so... alien. It is one of the most uncanny and IMHO realistic depictions of the distant future. What I mean is, if mechs take over the world, their aesthetic would be cold, utilitarian and modular, not byzantine, elegant or even beautiful, and the only reference to human culture would be ancient ruins. This truly feels like we stepped into a world constructed by inorganic lifeforms. It is stunning and utterly haunting.

That ending left me devastated. David's love for his mother is so powerful. He wanted nothing more than to see her.

I dropped tears on this movie.this is good

that movie just tears me up inside. i cry like a baby

This is an important movie in so many ways, regardless of how Spilberg and Kubrick disagreed...I doubt anyone with any heart would not be involved in the plot, and not cry at the end... we are all humans, and this movie, more than any other i ever watched, brought the best of humanity in me...

Too true - the ending is not necessarily "happy", except in an existential way. Here is a mecha who will essentially live forever who but despite the pain, chooses the opportunity to be happy - truly happy - for only one day. This film is actually very existential in almost a European way. Far above a trite "live for the moment" platitude, it asks what it the nature or the essence of true being? What is it to be "alive" and is our idea of love and of happiness a kind of transcendence above mortality that is paradoxically only accessible through a human body? I liked that this film was a mix of what some critics disliked: "Kubrick's chilly bleakness with Spielberg's warm fuzzies" - it gave the film such a strange feeling, for there was this constant collision between nihilism and that all to rare value these days - sincerity. A lot of detractors missed the point: this was a fable (hence the device of the storytelling narration) about fables, but its topic was too close to certain technological realities for some critics to see that it was what Kubrick aimed for: "a picaresque Pinocchio" The ending is more complex than some might allow: David becomes "real" by experiencing an emotion more intensely in one day than many humans might experience throughout their entire lives.

I cried when he and his mother died and teddy was alone:'(

I actually thought the ending was beautiful. You people are a harsh bag of haters, aren't you?

The best ending I have ever seen. The scene with his mother is extremely well done. It is simply sublime

Masterpiece. I feel that it was the perfect marriage of the two visions and styles of two different kinds of geniuses in cinema, one cerebral and the other romantic. Don't forget that Kubrick CHOSE Spielberg to take it on. It was as if, perhaps, at the end of his life, Kubrick gave his final film, a dark tale yearning for light, to Spielberg so he could add that flare and sensitivity he was known for. Like David, like the Tin Man, like Pinocchio, it was a beautiful cerebral being looking for its heart...

This movie was amazing, wouldn't change a thing

I saw this film when I was very very young and thought they were aliens oh well. This film gave me nightmares and I couldn't sleep for ages. It was the first time I realised that humans might not be around forever and it terrified the hell out of me! It may be a good movie but I have only ever watched the end once and switched it off early since then.

The ending is perfect. The fate of a robot's emotional state is loneliness and that ending encapsulates it better than any other part of the film. Its petty so many people don't appreciate it.

I saw this movie like 4 times now. It never crossed my mind these were highly evolved mechas. I always thought them to be some sort of Alien scientists or archaeologists. This is just wonderful though!

I would watch that movie over and over and would still tear up at the end...The love that was present was overwhelming ...I think its one of if not the greatest movie ever made...The ending was unexpected but made it the best ever movie...

This Movie is the best i have ever seen in my life. Its story is so deep that i started to believe that david will become real boy. Absolutely amazing story.

@prodprod She suddenly loves him because she was created by David's memories. In his mind she always loved him and there were "the happy family".

A masterpiece created by Spielberg in the field of Sci-fi film.

I think that was the reason why the robots were trying to revive humanity in the first place. It was as the mecha said it: they had this awe for humans. And who could be closer to the supposed original creator then the humans themselves? But alas, they failed. And even the closest thing they had, David, died. The bittersweet ending is not only for David and his journey, but also for the future mecha - they wanted to please David because of his importance, but in doing so, they lost him.

I can't believe this movie & the kid actor Haley Osment didn't won an Oscar?! This movie is a truly Masterpiece !!! it's one of the best movies ever made !!!

I remember watching this a few years ago and being baffled by the ending, I thought it made little sense but watching this again made me realise that the creatures were future mechs not aliens. I still thought it was emotionally moving, how they brought back the kid's mom so that the little robot boy could experience the love he always wanted, still makes me think though why they couldn't have just made an AI of her.

spielberg's camera movement, how he uses lights, it's amazing, he is at least for me, the most incredible director in terms of transmitting emotions through an image!

I hope Spielberg makes another masterpiece likes this. One of my favorites movies of all time.

Thank you, Spielberg. This film as it is draws emotions from me on a level that I seldom come upon.

Last Scene , David and Monica's reunion was one of the best scens in movie history. And John William's "Reunion" track says it all. My favorite OST of all time.

I wached this movie with my mother as a child, after watching it a second time as an adult I get so many warm memories about my mother and myself (ie renting movies at blockbuster and spend the night watching the). This movie hit me harder as an adult because it made me realize the time with her is finite but at least I got to enjoy her as a kid and still do as an adult. So the ending for me was perfect, because is not about how much time you spent with a person but the quality of time you experienced with the person.

Watched it for the first time last night. Heartbreaking. I'm glad the ending happened as it did as the film really did open up the disturbing feelings when I read Grimm/Aesop fables a kid. Spielberg to me is a modern version of them but his lessons are from a less darker place.

I liked the ending

the ending was strong and i enjoyed it. it took on an "endless cosmic" feel, and really made the adventure into a true epic.

I just watched A.I. again & 2001: A Space Odysy recently and found both endings had similarities. Both main characters placed in an environment of familiar habitat to be observed by a higher intelligence.

I was 7 years old when I saw A.I and when I saw these tall creatures I knew they were future robots automatically. I Loved the Ice Age Ending when I was 7 and I still love it now! It would have sucked if the movie cut off leaving David stuck under water. Also that tracking shot of the ship flying through frozen New York was so COOL!

I watched the movie tonight and I cried SO much towards the ending lol. Especially when David was crying. I even blurted out "what the hell why is a robot crying!?!?" hahahaha. Like I was legit bawling my eyes out while saying that

The scene where Teddy passes the hair over to David so that ha can be reunited with his mother after 2000 years made my cry so much.

A.I was meant to fall into Spielberg's hands, so there shouldn't be any criticism for the ending.

The only problem I have with the ending is that, since they can keep rebuilding themselves, why couldn't the memories of the mechas be passed down from one generation of hardware to the next? The mechanical body wears out and the brain, knowing this would happen, keeps building a replacement for itself. In theory, a mecha could be "immortal," just as we back up our computers and put the old files into a new machine. The David and Teddy mechas would be interesting antiques, but all the files from previous generations ought to have been stored somewhere, unless there was a mecha vs. human or mecha vs. mecha war that wiped out a lot of history. You could write a movie or book about what happened in those 2000 years, the time of the demise of humans and the rise of the super-mechas.

It was not a particularly fun experience watching this movie. But it is a deeper movie that lasts in your memory and makes you think.

I have a great memory of wanting to see this so much, I took a bus two hours by myself each way to do it.

Man I cried so much as a kid and as an adult watching this movie. It was perfect

Why did Teddy draw so much emotion out of me? 🥺

I always thought they were aliens - which is why I hated the ending. I'll have to watch it again.

Supermechas developed greater empathy than what is what humans are capable of now

David was built too well that was his problem his own perfection. The ending is a crying example of what makes us humans, what we love and hope for but how the world will eventually change around us to these dreams and hopes are no longer possible in reality as adults we choose to move on seek out better and newer experiences and change our expectations but a child isn't able to do that or else they wouldn't be a child in the first place, once we see things for how they truely are is the first step to adulthood and the loss of innocence.

love the film and love the ending. i always understood the beings at the end as advanced robots

I think the ending was amazing. I cried like a baby when he finally saw his mom. I mean its like Science Fiction at its best. It was already a futuristic film and then taking 2 or 3 thousand years ahead requires MAJOR skills. Good job S.S !

The ending of this film is a touching masterpiece. It is the only film I have seen that nearly made me cry. Not all films can be feel good and sugary.

After many years, now that AI is flourishing and become a reality in changing the way the job is done, this movie predict the possible future of our species and the “silicone base” intelligence. It is amazing.

In a peculiar survey of critical reaction, Variety reported that the two most common modifiers used by other members of the fully-opposable thumbs-down tribe were variations on “hypnotic” and “boring,” “fascinating” and “frustrating” - another way of erecting an intellectual posture while acknowledging A.I. wasn’t the easily swallowed formula pap they’d been weaned on. Could they get away with that sort of dull literal-mindedness writing about any other art-form but movies? Like most of Kubrick's films, A.I., a wondrously accomplished, ambitious and moving meditation on sentience, mortality and god, was denigrated to an almost incomprehensible extent when it first came out & a worrying number of mindless critics, desperately trying to justify their lack of understand & baseless generalisations, embarrassingly claimed that they “loved the Kubrick parts of it but hated the Spielberg parts,” as if an artistic collaboration like this film, which for my money stands as the greatest achievement of either artist, could be reduced to bits and pieces. There’s an irreducible complexity to a work of art. And those who say that it should have ended a few scenes earlier might as well be speaking to me in a foreign tongue. In fact my admiration of A.I. largely hinges on that visionary ending, which several critics unsurprisingly perceived as sentimental hogwash. Yes it is sentimental but A.I. distinctly exploits your emotional attachment to David to reveal a dark secret about the human condition - the illusory nature of love itself. It's not some mystical chemical bond between 2 individuals, it's an utterly solitary fixation. David doesn't even realise that his mother has been replaced. Similarly audiences, like David, were so desperate to construct their own narrative that they were willing to delude themselves into thinking that that creepy & deeply ironic paedophilic romance between 2 robots designed only to love one-another was their happy ending. This is precisely why Kubrick wanted Spielberg to direct the film because Spielberg is the master of sentimentality; he can get people to cry for an Alien who doesn't speak. The whole film itself plays out in this weird uncomfortable not-quite-happy, not-quite-sad tone, a result of Kubrick's chilly bleakness squaring off against Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism. Ultimately, A.I. achieves a level of profundity rarely seen in cinema, a haunting and evocative masterpiece that goes into the very heart & soul of what it truly means to be a human being.

Thank you for posting this. It really is true. I have heard tons of people (who thought the movie was a mixed bag) basically attributing all the "good parts" of the movie to Kubrick and naturally assuming that all the parts they didn't like were Spielberg's fault. It's funny, for all of Spielberg's mainstream success, in many ways he's underappreciated.

I think that the end of the movie it was very well represented. I felt like part of the whole thing when David wanted to see his mother again, and it was pretty difficult to me to put me in his place, even though he is a robot, like, If I was designed to love and ended just like him, I would be sad to the rest of my existence, because he kept pacing for ages alone :(

I literally cry watching the last 20 minutes. It's sad to see Spielberg feel like he had to defend himself.

well i thought the ending was great it was very sad and humanistic. good idea IMO

When I was learning scifi film (Not in depth), my teacher kept saying those were aliens at the end but I hadn't watched this film then. After watching it for the first time I wasn't sure if they were aliens so I checked up Wiki Pedia, it says they were silicon-based highly advanced robots. Then I brought myself to this video... I think they were supremecha, it reflected what Joe once said the reason why human hated mechas, "When the end comes, all that will be left is us, that's why they hate us, that's why you must stay here, with me." The things the mechas didn't sound exactly like aliens... why would they envy human for our emotion and works, I think intelligent lives were capable to do so, they can appreciate but no need to envy..? Maybe this is deliberately to be made as ambiguous

An emotional movie on so many levels. No matter how much I fight it I always end up with tears.

It doesn't matter who people should blame for the ending, the content of the ending should be brought up itself. In my honest opinion it's a perfect conclusion to a powerful film, that reminds the viewer of the beauty of memories, and the cold reality of how others convey caring to one another.

The ending is beautiful. A.I. is a masterpiece from the beginning to the end.

The ending made the movie IMO... but robots? I thought they were Aliens, didn't see that one.

This movie is an obvious Pinocchio story, but told in a sadder way. In a perfect world, David and Monica would get to live together forever in their house, and Monica would never age and never ask why. Instead, through some form of sci-fi logic, Monica can only live one day, and when she falls asleep, it's all over. Then David, who is finally a "real boy" falls asleep for the first time, effectively dying next to his mother, while Teddy, the Jiminy Cricket of the film, lingers on. I watched this movie for the first time in 2003, and to this day I CANNOT watch it without crying my eyes out. The visuals, the narration, the wide-eyed innocence of David, played perfectly by Haley Joel Osment, the score by John Williams, all of it teams up to destroy me inside every time. And now that I just lost my own mother to cancer, I would give up so much to spend one last day with her the way David did with Monica.

Anybody who watched this movie when it first came out and was non plussed should go back and revisit. It's a masterpiece of thought, memory and love, what it is to be real and not. I'm blown away by it but then i'm older and maybe my life experiences have shaped the way i feel to a degree, its a seriously impressive piece of film making.

Incredible movie

I saw this with my true-believing Mormon friends as a high schooler. I think I was the only person in my Mormon date group who liked the movie.

It wouldn't surprise if Spielberg to this day still hasn't recognized how truly brilliant the ending to AI is

One of the greatest films ever made as far as I'm concerned. No film has ever made me bawl and weep quite like this. Kubrick and Spielberg created something truly miraculous with this film, and the dreamy-yet-eerie soundtrack only enhances that.

Damn right. I always loved the ending.

AI was emotionally outstanding .. few movies have hit me like this .. also execution was perfect

If anyone needed an explanation of the ending, I am surprised that they knew how to buy a ticket to watch the movie, or even how to hail a cab to get there in the first place.

I cried when I saw Teddy all by himself. Whats sadder is even Spielberg himself said he was surprised people cared about Teddy because Teddy is just an afterthought and he didnt bother with his ending 😭

I always believed that the blue fairy and her solution to David's dilemma was a little odd, in that the reproduced Monica "could only live for one day." The more believable solution would have been that she lived forever, just as the contemporary and future Mecha's do. But I suppose that this alternative was chosen because having David "fooled" by a pseudo-Monica for only one day -- and not eternity -- feels more authentic in that it suggests that David, like all of us, cannot be allowed to live a delusive life in perpetuity.

I think this movie will prove to be a cult classic Just remember Eutropius called it

thank you Steven for fulfilling Stanley s Movie no one could have done it better than you!! also i think Stanley would be satisfied with this movie!! God bless his soul

How was the ending of A.I. considered "happy"? By bringing back the mother he eliminated her from history, thus eliminating himself as he would not have experienced the series of events that made him "a real little boy". So not only did that happy ending not happen, but the viewer is led to believe that neither did the advancement of the supermecha, since David's advancements, the love he gained, and the love he gave were the reasons that the child-robot program even took off to allow supermecha to evolve. Otherwise, orga would've continued to destroy mecha and left no legacy behind at all. Am I the only one that drew those conclusions???