I hate this movie with near Finifterian vigor.

Goal for tomorrow: Drop the word 'Finifterian' into normal conversation and refuse to explain it.

Never seen it.

My contribution, ladies and gents...

If they had ended the movie with HJO at the bottom of the ocean forever, I probably would have dug it.  But instead, future robots dig him up and through no other reason than sentimentality, we ge the ultimate Spielberg ending, and that is not a good thing.

One of the panelists (I think Trey) suggested precisely that as an alternative ending. I love the fact that it's a really twisted and unsettling "happily ever after." That ending would have been genius.

That was me, I think. I said "there's your 2001 Kubricky ending."

That scene with the motorcycles always seemed out of place to me, like it came from a bad '80s Arnold movie (I think Trey mentioned Running Man). A thoughtful, beautifully made movie but with big story problems as the guys mentioned. I wonder, if it wasn't for Spielberg's wish to "pay tribute" to Kubrick by finishing a project he started, if Spielberg would even have made the movie in the first place. I remember reading about the movie before it came out and that's the vibe i got.

I've never done it and i don't want to sound like a know it all but flying a chopper sounds like juggling 3 balls, just practice and... you're doing it. Watch a few Magnum PI episodes and you've got the basic theory.

Or colour the spoiler text in black.

Why do I get the feeling that <smile> looks like this:

OK, Teddy is obviously Jiminy Cricket. Wise and not wanting to be human (doesnt have as many smart arse quips though).

David BECOMES human, when he gets the hate on the other David back at water world head office. Killing the robot (which he feels he is not), what could be more human? Eliminate the "other".

Perhaps that is what the uber mechs are wanting, an authentic human existence coloured by the actual history/actual emotions, rather than there twee "disney-mo-co" type similcrums.
+1 for loop reality, I never got why they didn't just simulate it for him internally.

And yes I thought that it was a pastiche of moods and styles, that were to hard to reconcile, I'm glad that you guys identified for me the Kubrickien observational concept though.

P.S. I loved this movie at the cinema, but my wife (who doesnt read hard SF) hated it. I think she felt emotionaly manipulated. But I had the existential torment goin on!

P.P.S It is obvious that Speilberg just knew that he would have to revisit this and tack on a new ending (ala' CE3K aliens inside mother ship), so he just did it on the 1st draft instead!

The guys and Trey discuss the water levels at the end of the film being higher after the polar caps melted, and why they still are high even after the oceans re-froze. The water wouldn't necessarily re-pool around the poles, it would just freeze where it is now. Also frozen water has a higher volume than liquid, so when frozen it would even reach higher over the buildings than when it was liquid.

Hey Trey. I am deeply ignorant in the subject so excuse any obvious factual flaws and thanks for clarifying. As far as I know even if all polar ice melted  and flowed into the oceans the water level would not rise nearly as much as in A.I. (or Waterworld for that matter, though it doesn't take much for it to become a huge disaster). I figured if the movie went with water implausibly high, as it does, it might also have gone for some disastrous event a la DAT causing a more flashfreeze scenario.

Something I thought of though, during normal ice age > heating > ice age cycles the ice tends to expand from the poles during ice ages, as you mention, and then contract back as the planet heats, causing a percentile change in the volume of ice around the poles. However if ALL ice melted from the poles, as we might presume is necessary for the sea levels to rise nearly as high as they do in the film, might it be correct to think that the poles wouldn't be able to accumulate nearly as much mass as normal once they freeze over again, leaving sea levels higher than normal as in the film?

It would seem to make sense if we consider that. with all ice melted, the poles no longer have a large stockpiled ice mass protruding from the surrounding sea, keeping the sea levels low.
Since the now liquid water will pool in equal levels across the planet, forming a roughly equally levelled surface, if the poles freeze over again during a new ice age, that should mean that the water currently at the poles is converted to ice, but it not being nearly as high or massive as before, and also expanding in volume as it freezes, which will actually further raise the sea levels slightly since the water at the poles gain volume when frozen, giving less room for the rest of it around the planet.

Not expecting an answer unless we have some climatologists on the board, just idle thoughts.

As for the movie, I like it, but I think watching it once is enough. So many scenes in the film seem to have been filmed with a very low pace, when they could have been concentrated and distilled to something more efficient. It's like they filmed the scenes and really liked them individually, but then got to the edit bay and realized that they couldn't cut down or around alot of the longer shots or scenes. They could really have cut a few scenes, or done a few more montage scenes since they already have a voice over element. As it is now the film really feels like slow motion alot of the time. You just wish characters would move a bit faster, get to the point a bit sooner, or the editors cutting around long movements or slow expository scenes.