Tales From Development Hell: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
- cepmurphywrites
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
The notion of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg collaborating on a film feels like something from an alternate history. It happened, however, at in the year Stanley Kubrick had made famous, with A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).
Perhaps sometimes we forget this was the case because of Kubrick’s death before the film finally entered production. Without knowing the long production history, and how long Spielberg had been involved in that, it feels more like Spielberg picked up a project of Kubrick’s and made it, well, Spielbergian. That had been part of the intention when Kubrick brought Spielberg onto the project but despite this, a major area of criticism was the “sentimental” elements that many assumed had been added by Spielberg in defiance of Kubrick’s vision.
How would it have differed had both men been alive to produce and release the film?
A.I. Artificial Intelligence has its origins in the 1969 short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss, first published in 1969. Kubrick had bought the rights and begun trying to adapt it in the early 1970s, before Spielberg had even made his theatrical film directing debut.
Kubrick had a habit of starting development on a project and either letting it lie dormant or abandoning it completely. A.I. was no exception, and in fact maybe has the longest period between Kubrick starting to adapt it and the film being released. After all, production outlived Kubrick himself. As of the late 1970s, Aldiss himself had been hired by Kubrick to adapt his own short story. It is from Aldiss we get our understanding of why development came to a sudden halt in the late 1970s: Star Wars (1977).
Per Aldiss, Kubrick was turned off adapting “Supertoys” following the success of George Lucas’s film, which he personally disliked, believing it to be inferior to his own 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick did not believe he could compete with Star Wars without compromising what he saw as his own “reputation for social integrity”, as Aldiss put it quoting Kubrick. “Supertoys” was shelved, and Kubrick moved onto another project, adapting Stephen King’s novel The Shining. That film would have a quicker, but still tumultuous, production, in the UK, where all of Kubrick’s films had been made since he moved there from the US in 1961.
The UK was a popular location for shooting Hollywood films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. George Lucas had filmed Star Wars there, and despite a certain disdain for hard-won, union mandated tea breaks, he returned there to film not only the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back (1980) but also Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Lucas would not direct Raiders, instead those duties would be fulfilled by his friend Steven Spielberg. Elstree Studios would be where the interior scenes of Raiders would be filmed, and on the set next door was where Kubrick was filming The Shining (1980). Kubrick, despite his dislike of Star Wars, struck up a friendship with Spielberg, which was mutual, despite Kubrick’s daughter Vivian reporting the Raiders filmmakers to the RSPCA for their treatment of snakes on set.
Spielberg’s next film was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which Kubrick wound up taken with and saw as the sort of sci-fi film he wanted to make with “Supertoys”. Even as early as the 1980s, Kubrick already felt Spielberg could capture what he wanted for the Aldiss adaptation.
Despite E.T. providing renewed inspiration, the “Supertoys” adaptation was back on hold as Kubrick moved on to the Vietnam War picture Full Metal Jacket (1987), with the East End of London being tidied up to portray a war ravaged Huế. By the late 1980s, A.I., as the adaptation had become known, was back on, but Aldiss was fired by Kubrick. Bob Shaw had a cup of coffee as the new screenwriter because of the notoriously demanding Kubrick’s work schedule. Ian Watson was brought on board in 1990, which incensed Aldiss as there was no love lost between the two writers.
It is here that the inspiration of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio also comes into play, with Kubrick providing Watson with a copy and calling their film the “robot version.” 1991 saw a complete treatment for the film written by Watson, then Kubrick put the project on hold once more as he moved on to an adaptation of the Holocaust novel Wartime Lies as The Aryan Papers. The reason for the further delay was because Kubrick did not think the visual effects necessary to tell the story effectively were yet ready. The Aryan Papers would wind up unproduced. This was because it was learned that it would be competing with Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) at the box office. However, another Spielberg film released that year would breathe new life into A.I.
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) became the highest grossing film of all time, dethroning Spielberg’s E.T., which dethroned Lucas’s Star Wars, which dethroned Spielberg’s Jaws, but I digress. It also set a new standard of special effects with its unprecedent use of CGI. Production of A.I. was back on, reported to begin in 1994. Special effects were originally to be supervised by some alumni of Jurassic Park, including Dennis Muren, but Kubrick eventually created his own special effects team, apparently being unhappy with the work of Muren and the team at Industrial Light & Magic. In what is entirely a coincidence, ILM was founded by George Lucas to create the special effects for Star Wars.
We get our first indication of some of the eventual films’ imagery around this time, with Kubrick getting a helicopter shot of a North Sea oil rig that he intended to replace with the spires of a sunken Manhattan poking out of the water. Kubrick also intended to render the main character, an artificial child named David, entirely via CGI, not believing a child actor could effectively portray him. Some ideas included changing the proportions of his face to be anatomically impossible like spacing his eyes impossibly far apart. This did not seem to be set in stone, however, since he had Joseph Mazzello (who had appeared in Jurassic Park and had been cast in the unproduced Aryan Papers) screen test for the role of David.
Production finally seemed to be moving ahead, then Kubrick put the project on hold once again. Or, rather, he and producer Jan Harlan handed the directing position to Spielberg in 1995. They both believed that the story was better suited to Spielberg’s directing ability. That Kubrick always referred to as Pinocchio per fantasy writer Sara Maitland, brought on to assist with the story and per Kubrick’s instruction give it a fairytale feel, really makes it difficult to disagree with that notion. Spielberg declined the offer at that time, however, and moved onto other directing opportunities. Kubrick then put the project on hold again and moved on to Eyes Wide Shut (1999), which would be his last film. He died six days after presenting the final cut of the film to Warner Bros.
Harlan and Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, asked Spielberg to take over directing duties of A.I. Even here, it was not a guarantee that the film would be made. Spielberg wrote the screenplay himself from Watson’s 1990 treatment, and it was his first solo screenplay since 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He was also fielding offers to direct adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Spielberg decided he would tackle A.I. first, followed by Minority Report (2002). He did not direct the other two adaptations. The film was eventually released in 2001, to mostly positive reviews, a modest box office success, and earned Academy Award nominations for visual effects and John Williams’s score.
Debate raged however as to how much of the film was Kubrick’s vision and how much was
Spielberg’s, particularly around the ending, which one review felt added Spielbergian “sugar” to “Kubrick’s wine”. The oddity is that the ending was the same as Watson’s treatment in 1990 which Kubrick intended to film. Spielberg himself responded to the criticism, citing that the sentimental elements most people accredited to him were in fact from Kubrick, whereas the darker elements of the film assumed to be the original Kubrick vision were often things Spielberg brought in. After all, if Spielberg was going to change anything to be more family friendly, would he have kept Jude Law’s character a robot sex worker? (That was actually a change by Watson, with the character originally being a robot soldier.)These accusations must have stung Spielberg, who considered Kubrick a mentor, but he remained steadfast that he had achieved Kubrick’s goals with the project.
How would the response have been different had the film been made earlier whilst Kubrick was still alive?
Given the stop-start nature of the project, let us assume that the film that gets made is still based on Watson’s 1990 treatment. Perhaps our divergence is Spielberg agreeing to directing duties in 1995 when originally offered.
There is still a script to be written, but instead of Spielberg going solo it might be he and Kubrick collaborating. It is interesting to speculate on a writing process that has Spielberg pushing to make the film more like Kubrick’s work whilst Kubrick pushed to make the film more Spielbergian. Ironically, it being made earlier might put it into further turnaround if there are problems with the script, either through disagreements between Spielberg and Kubrick, or by it going through a series of writers and script doctors like was happening already with Indiana Jones 4.
Let us forget that for a moment to focus on A.I. being a collaboration between Kubrick and Spielberg whilst the former was still alive. The cast would certainly be different, but some actors considered historically for roles might offer an idea. The mid-90s might be too early for Frances O’Connor, but Julianne Moore was also considered and might play the role had production begun earlier. Many actors appeared in voice roles in the film historically, with Chris Rock voicing a robotic comedian, a role for which Jerry Seinfeld had also been considered and might have been the more notable cameo in the mid-90s.
One thing that probably won’t happen with the production is Spielberg adopting many of Kubrick’s infamous secrecy whilst filming. He did not give cast and crew a complete script and did not allow press on set, both more Kubrick modus operandi than Spielberg’s. Kubrick might already be more focused on Eyes Wide Shut whilst Spielberg directs A.I. Presumably, if Spielberg is directing A.I. then The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Amistad (1997) are either not made when they were historically or, if they are, not directed by Spielberg. On the flip side, he may then have the scope to take on Harry Potter or Memoirs of the Geisha or make Minority Report earlier. He likely still makes Saving Private Ryan (1998), to which he was committed, as was star Tom Hanks, but the exact film may differ from the one we know, of course.
So, Spielberg makes A.I. at some point between his 1993 double success and Saving Private Ryan; Stanley Kubrick is still alive and presumably filming orgies for Eyes Wide Shut; and A.I. is released whilst both men can speak on their vision for it. It might still not cut it for fans of Kubrick’s work, but the difference now is that it is not seen as Spielberg stepping into a dead man’s shoes and doing his own thing. Kubrick is there to say, unequivocally, whether or not Spielberg’s A.I. is a better realisation of his vision than he could have achieved. This might be the difference between generally positive reviews and critical acclaim.
Critical opinion has improved for A.I. since its original released. Critic Mark Kermode apologised to Spielberg after rewatching the film years later, claiming that he was wrong in his original viewing back in 2001. He even called it an “enduring masterpiece” from Spielberg. There would likely still be those for whom A.I. is too sentimental, this viewer being one of them, but the myth that Spielberg had warped Stanley Kubrick’s dark A.I. Artificial Intelligence would never take hold, because Kubrick himself is there to refute it. Maybe it would then be more recognised as the unprecedented collaboration by two supremely talented filmmakers than it is even historically.
Any alternate version of A.I. made at any point since 1990 with either Kubrick or Spielberg involved might not differ massively from the version we got in 2001, but its reception certainly would. One review called A.I. “an uneasy mix of trauma and treacle”. That dichotomy turned into this half-arsed conspiracy theory about Steven Spielberg defiling Kubrick’s intentions for the film. It was always meant to be that way, Kubrick wanted a myth and a fairytale, and how often in human history have those had trauma and treacle in equal parts? Many reviewers refused to believe that a conflicting tone could be design rather than by accident. Kubrick’s A.I. became a myth itself.
Kubrick’s A.I. was a dark sci-fi epic with groundbreaking special effects hat his death robbed audiences of experiencing. Except it wasn’t, and it was never meant to be.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.