"Strange Days" deserves far more love than it receives. It's just delightful. It's got flaws for days, but what it gets right far outweighs its missteps. The cast is solid, the story based both in plot and characters, and a decade and a half later the setting manages to be both a dystopian sci-fi pastiche and a period piece, and it's just really great.

I own the DVD.

Somebody needs to tell a darker-and-edgier Pinocchio story with rage and rampages.

Oh wait. I think they did. I think they called it "Child's Play." Nvr mnd.

The difference is how they end:  one story suggests that an artificial being can have a soul, and the other teaches that an artificial being can NEVER have a soul and thus is inherently evil.   

Pinocchios:  Bicentennial Man, I Robot, Wall-E, AI

Frankensteins:  2001, War Games, original Battlestar Galactica, Metropolis, RUR

Oddly enough, Terminator is Frankenstein whereas Terminator 2 is Pinocchio.   (Terminator 3 and 4 are blatant cash grabs and outside the scope of this discussion.)

You're entitled to your opinion, but I maintain that AI is Pinocchio because AI IS PINOCCHIO.   It's right there IN the movie.   

Even without the blatant Pinocchio tie-in, David  begins and ends as a sympathetic character and never becomes a rampaging killing machine.  Ergo, Pinocchio, not Frankenstein.

As has been pointed out, none of the robots in the movie are evil, the evil is all done by humans.    AI is post-modern Pinocchio:  the puppets don't just become human, the movie says they're actually better than humans.

I guess I could see it as Frankenstein in the sense that the creations do eventually "destroy" the creators.    But the creators really destroy themselves, so it's a stretch.   I still vote Pinocchio.

Nah. The movie makes no moral assertions about David or any of the other robots. The thesis is set up in the prologue: If one builds a machine that — by any practical definition of the word — can love, does that not impose a moral responsibility on the machine's creator?

Just as Frankenstein was really about the doctor, not the monster — the subtitle was "the modern Prometheus," after all — "AI" isn't really about the little boy robot, but rather the person who creates him, and those with whom he interacts, and what their interactions say about them.

I'll go on record and say in my opinion it deserves both.  At least I do love it, even though I recognize it's a shockingly brutal movie at times.  I think that's probably one of the reasons I love it.   

Not because I love brutality in movies, but because when Strange Days gets dark and violent, it doesn't pull its punches.  The violence is ugly and disturbing as hell... as it should be.

It also got a lot of flack for being supposedly so demeaning to women, making them either victims or monsters.  Feminists didn't know what to make of that, when the director of the movie was a chick herself.   But that complaint only works if you completely ignore the presence of Angela Bassett, who's easily one of the all-time top female movie badasses because she's also a real character and not an automaton.  (Hey, whaddaya know, the same screenwriter wrote Aliens...)   

Plus Strange Days is also a twisty little neo-noir mystery with an extra-twisty ending, and a lot of funny bits as well.    I don't expect everyone to love it like I do, but it's one of those movies that I will always watch anytime, anywhere because I find it so damn fascinating.

So, DIF'ers, if you haven't seen it, get on it.   And if you think I'm wrong then I will see you in the audio arena, bitches.  Bring it.

So, when are you guys going to do 1776?

Dang, at our current rate of release, it would take a year just to do that list.   So... y'know, vote early and often...

Has no one suggest Willow yet? I would love to hear you guys talk about just WHY they couldn't get this sucker to work. Live action fantasy, unlike SF, has never really fared well and this was one of the few big budget attempts pre Lord of the Rings.

List

-

Twilight
Wanted

+

Casablanca
Pelham 1 2 3
Mad Max trilogy
Raw Deal

=

Happy happy joy joy.

The list isn't a divine manuscript, it can be added to and subtracted from depending on what ya'll feel like.

I'm not gonna lie Beldar...there's not a LOT of interest in Anime from the cast members, but stranger things have happened.  I wouldn't mind something larger and historical though, like an Akira or a Princess Mononoke.

DO I LOOK LIKE A COP!

RRGAGRAGARGARGARGAGRAGRRRRARGRAGRAGR.

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