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Re: a few things
On Sat, 18 May 2002, ryan richards wrote:
> Basically the flaw was that it was too easy to pull apart what
> components were Spielberg's and what were Kubric's.
Oh? Many people thought the epilogue with the super-evolved mechas (which
some mistook for aliens) was Spielberg's addition to the story, but
Spielberg himself has always insisted it was Kubrick's idea. That's one
example of how some people have thought it was easy to "pull apart" the
film's components, when in fact it might very well not have been.
Still, I admit there are places where I can't resist saying "That's
Kubrick!" and "That's Spielberg!" At the beginning, William Hurt tells a
female mecha to undress ("That's Kubrick!"), but then he tells her to stop
before she has finished undoing her blouse ("That's Spielberg!").
Then again, what if the more obviously Kubrickian elements were actually
inserted by Spielberg as an homage to Kubrick's films? How often did
Kubrick actually repeat himself in his own films?
See how complicated it can get?
The one thing I feel pretty sure was added to the film by Spielberg is the
scene where the robot discovers a room full of identical copies of
himself. And the only reason I know Spielberg added that scene is that
Brian Aldiss, the author whose short story the film is based on, wrote a
follow-up short story with that scene, and Aldiss says Spielberg bought
the rights to the sentence which mentioned those identical copies of the
main robot. Bought the rights to the *sentence*, not the story. (At the
time, Spielberg had inherited from Kubrick only the rights to the first
short story; Aldiss didn't write the follow-ups until much later.)
> That isn't to say, however, that the ideas weren't profound and mostly
> probably prophetic. Has anyone ever posited the idea of a robot boy
> desiring to become human? Probably, but I can't think of who offhand.
You mean, apart from scifi and fantasy writers?
--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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