In my second post on this subject, I decided to concentrate on not one director but two – Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. The reason for this is mainly, I wanted to talk about two films – Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Spielberg’s A.I., which is a project of course that Kubrick initiated before handing over to Spielberg.
2001: A Space Odyssey is quite clearly an atheist film, even if it did make Pope John Paul II’s list of the most “spiritual” films ever made. To read God in Kubrick’s film requires an almost deliberate misreading of the film itself. It opens with Apes, who are drawn to a black monolith on earth.
They then learn how to use tools, and use them to savagely attack one another. Kubrick then flashes forward millions of years into the 21st century, when the apes have now evolved into human beings capable of space travel. It is quite clear: the story of humanity is not how far we have fallen since Adam and Eve, but of how far we have advanced since the time of apes.
The movie is all about humans and their tools. From the bones the apes first use to the space ships the astronauts use, to even HAL 9000, who is in effect, the ultimate tool. HAL was built by man in his own image, but HAL is even smarter than his creators. Or perhaps smarter is wrong word, but he is certainly more logical. That is why HAL can mercilessly kill off the astronauts, or tries to stop them from shutting him down. In his own view HAL is the most important “member” of the crew, and therefore, his own existence takes precedence over everyone else. That HAL eventually has to be “killed” could easily be seen as Kubrick’s way of saying that humanity will likely have to suffer a similar fate.
When, at the end of the film, the lone surviving astronaut Dave becomes the so called “Star Child”, it does not represent anything truly religious, but rather it is simply the next step in the evolutionary progress. Are we so naïve, or egotistical, to believe that organisms went through billions of years of evolution solely to produce us? That we are the most advanced being that has ever existed, and
ever will exist. The monoliths are placed on the Earth, and then moon pointing us out past Jupiter, by someone or something that is more advanced then we are. You want to believe it’s God, then go right ahead. I can’t argue with that reasoning, although I do think you’d be deluding yourself to think that was either Arthur C. Clarke’s (who wrote the novel) or Stanley Kubrick’s point of view. The end of the movie brings us full circle right back to the beginning again. When the film opened, the Apes did not have tools, and in a way they did not need them. They lived on earth without them. Now, David has evolved into another being that once again does not need his tools. The movie’s ending is really not The End, but rather, it is a New Beginning.
I could go on about 2001, which is after all one of the greatest films in history, but now I think it’s time to move on to Steven Spielberg’s A.I. To many, the film was a disappointm
ent. Spielberg fans found it too pessimistic. Kubrick fans complained that Spielberg had softened the 
movie, particularly the ending, from what Kubrick undoubtedly would have done had he made the film. To that I say “Are you fucking kidding me!!!???” In many ways, A.I. has more in common with Kubrick’s films than with Spielberg’s, so if you’re more of a Spielberg person, I can at least understand why you didn’t enjoy the film.
A.I. essentially takes the Pinocchio story, and turns it on its head. In the original story, Gepetto represents the benevolent creator God that religious people like to comfort themselves with. He creates Pinocchio, and loves him even when he makes mistakes. He gives him life, but also gives him free will.
In A.I., the Gepetto role is essentially played by William Hurt, as Professor Hobby. His motives for creating David may be similar to Gepetto’s, but somewhere along the way they become colder – almost clinical. He creates the robots to love humans, to make their life easier, without thinking about his own creation. At one point he says “Didn’t God create Adam to love him?” If Gepetto represented the God who loves us, then Professor Hobby is the God who created us simply because he could.
A.I. and 2001 actually have quite a few things in common. Both are clearly evolution tales, albeit of a different stripe. When the end of A.I. comes, it like the ending of 2001, represents the next stage in the evolutionary progress. The difference being that at the end of A.I. it is no longer humans that are evolving, but rather it is the robots. If Kubrick thought in 2001 that the death of humanity was inevitability – that in order to progress humans first had to die – than A.I. takes an even darker look – humanity will die out, and our only legacy will be what we created. For the robots who come and rescue David at the end of A.I. from his watery grave where he spends th
ousands of years praying to the Blue Fairy to make him into a real boy (which, foolishly, is where people thought this movie should end, because it would somehow be darker, more Kubrick-ian ending, for a robot to spend eternity under water then for the entire human race to be wiped off the face of the planet), David represents their only link to humanity. The robots have evolved so much that they no longer remembered who it was who first created them. Generations of robots have been created by other robots, who eventually lost the knowledge of how they came into existence in the first place. Spielberg, wisely, never explains why humans became extinct. Natural disasters, disease, pestilence, nuclear annihilation, global warming could have all been the cause. Or perhaps, like HAL in 2001, the robots came to the conclusion, that they were more important for the planet, and wiped the humans out (whatever the reason, it is clear that earth has gone through some sort of climate change in the past 2,000 years, as David goes into the water, and comes out ice).
Both films share a preoccupation with mankind and their tools. From the bones, and the spaceships and HAL in 2001 that were covered earlier, to all the robots in A.I. What is Gigolo Joe for example, except for a thinking, feeling man shaped vibrator? And David himself is a tool that allows people to be parents when they otherwise could not be. Where the two differ, is that in 2001, the humans evolve beyond the use of their tools, whereas in A.I., humans are essentially replaced by them. Why does the world need the imperfect humans, when it has the perfect robots, after all? A.I. also takes a much more pessimistic view of humanity than 2001 did. The humans in Speilberg’s film are cruel, thoughtless monsters. This is something Spielberg continued to explore in subsequent films like Minority Report (another film with a misunderst
ood ending), Munich and the much undervalued War of the Worlds, which in part, sought to dispel the notion that in tough times, humanity pulls together. It is no wonder that some people consider Spielberg to be just as much as an atheist director as Kubrick.
2001 also more explicitly rejects the idea of God. For Kubrick, God is just another word for human ignorance – if you cannot explain it, it must be God. Spielberg’s film, for all its darkness and pessimism never goes that far (hell, for we all know, humanity was wiped out by the Rapture!).
2001: A Space Odyssey is quite clearly an atheist film, even if it did make Pope John Paul II’s list of the most “spiritual” films ever made. To read God in Kubrick’s film requires an almost deliberate misreading of the film itself. It opens with Apes, who are drawn to a black monolith on earth.
They then learn how to use tools, and use them to savagely attack one another. Kubrick then flashes forward millions of years into the 21st century, when the apes have now evolved into human beings capable of space travel. It is quite clear: the story of humanity is not how far we have fallen since Adam and Eve, but of how far we have advanced since the time of apes.The movie is all about humans and their tools. From the bones the apes first use to the space ships the astronauts use, to even HAL 9000, who is in effect, the ultimate tool. HAL was built by man in his own image, but HAL is even smarter than his creators. Or perhaps smarter is wrong word, but he is certainly more logical. That is why HAL can mercilessly kill off the astronauts, or tries to stop them from shutting him down. In his own view HAL is the most important “member” of the crew, and therefore, his own existence takes precedence over everyone else. That HAL eventually has to be “killed” could easily be seen as Kubrick’s way of saying that humanity will likely have to suffer a similar fate.
When, at the end of the film, the lone surviving astronaut Dave becomes the so called “Star Child”, it does not represent anything truly religious, but rather it is simply the next step in the evolutionary progress. Are we so naïve, or egotistical, to believe that organisms went through billions of years of evolution solely to produce us? That we are the most advanced being that has ever existed, and
ever will exist. The monoliths are placed on the Earth, and then moon pointing us out past Jupiter, by someone or something that is more advanced then we are. You want to believe it’s God, then go right ahead. I can’t argue with that reasoning, although I do think you’d be deluding yourself to think that was either Arthur C. Clarke’s (who wrote the novel) or Stanley Kubrick’s point of view. The end of the movie brings us full circle right back to the beginning again. When the film opened, the Apes did not have tools, and in a way they did not need them. They lived on earth without them. Now, David has evolved into another being that once again does not need his tools. The movie’s ending is really not The End, but rather, it is a New Beginning.I could go on about 2001, which is after all one of the greatest films in history, but now I think it’s time to move on to Steven Spielberg’s A.I. To many, the film was a disappointm
ent. Spielberg fans found it too pessimistic. Kubrick fans complained that Spielberg had softened the movie, particularly the ending, from what Kubrick undoubtedly would have done had he made the film. To that I say “Are you fucking kidding me!!!???” In many ways, A.I. has more in common with Kubrick’s films than with Spielberg’s, so if you’re more of a Spielberg person, I can at least understand why you didn’t enjoy the film.A.I. essentially takes the Pinocchio story, and turns it on its head. In the original story, Gepetto represents the benevolent creator God that religious people like to comfort themselves with. He creates Pinocchio, and loves him even when he makes mistakes. He gives him life, but also gives him free will.
In A.I., the Gepetto role is essentially played by William Hurt, as Professor Hobby. His motives for creating David may be similar to Gepetto’s, but somewhere along the way they become colder – almost clinical. He creates the robots to love humans, to make their life easier, without thinking about his own creation. At one point he says “Didn’t God create Adam to love him?” If Gepetto represented the God who loves us, then Professor Hobby is the God who created us simply because he could.
A.I. and 2001 actually have quite a few things in common. Both are clearly evolution tales, albeit of a different stripe. When the end of A.I. comes, it like the ending of 2001, represents the next stage in the evolutionary progress. The difference being that at the end of A.I. it is no longer humans that are evolving, but rather it is the robots. If Kubrick thought in 2001 that the death of humanity was inevitability – that in order to progress humans first had to die – than A.I. takes an even darker look – humanity will die out, and our only legacy will be what we created. For the robots who come and rescue David at the end of A.I. from his watery grave where he spends th
ousands of years praying to the Blue Fairy to make him into a real boy (which, foolishly, is where people thought this movie should end, because it would somehow be darker, more Kubrick-ian ending, for a robot to spend eternity under water then for the entire human race to be wiped off the face of the planet), David represents their only link to humanity. The robots have evolved so much that they no longer remembered who it was who first created them. Generations of robots have been created by other robots, who eventually lost the knowledge of how they came into existence in the first place. Spielberg, wisely, never explains why humans became extinct. Natural disasters, disease, pestilence, nuclear annihilation, global warming could have all been the cause. Or perhaps, like HAL in 2001, the robots came to the conclusion, that they were more important for the planet, and wiped the humans out (whatever the reason, it is clear that earth has gone through some sort of climate change in the past 2,000 years, as David goes into the water, and comes out ice).Both films share a preoccupation with mankind and their tools. From the bones, and the spaceships and HAL in 2001 that were covered earlier, to all the robots in A.I. What is Gigolo Joe for example, except for a thinking, feeling man shaped vibrator? And David himself is a tool that allows people to be parents when they otherwise could not be. Where the two differ, is that in 2001, the humans evolve beyond the use of their tools, whereas in A.I., humans are essentially replaced by them. Why does the world need the imperfect humans, when it has the perfect robots, after all? A.I. also takes a much more pessimistic view of humanity than 2001 did. The humans in Speilberg’s film are cruel, thoughtless monsters. This is something Spielberg continued to explore in subsequent films like Minority Report (another film with a misunderst
ood ending), Munich and the much undervalued War of the Worlds, which in part, sought to dispel the notion that in tough times, humanity pulls together. It is no wonder that some people consider Spielberg to be just as much as an atheist director as Kubrick.2001 also more explicitly rejects the idea of God. For Kubrick, God is just another word for human ignorance – if you cannot explain it, it must be God. Spielberg’s film, for all its darkness and pessimism never goes that far (hell, for we all know, humanity was wiped out by the Rapture!).
But why I decided to include these two films in this series is simple – both reflect a world that is devoid of God. For Kubrick, it is because God emphatically never existed in the first place. For Spielberg, it could just be that humanity has essentially replaced God with themselves. For a torture agnostic like me, that makes both films endlessly fascinating.
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