David Doesn't Die


This is to all those people who think David dies at the end: Don't be silly. Does your computer die whenever you turn it off? No instead it just gets new things, in my computer's case viruses, added to it when you turn it on the next day. Don't forget David is a commercial product. He's built to be durable, that is unless he ingests food. If Monica had accepted him in real life and said, "I love you" do you think he would have died the next day? Of course not. If he had, Cybertronics would have gone bankrupt for making such a defective product. There would have been a mass recalls like a batch of salmonella-ridden lettuce. I think it's fairly obvious he would just wake up the next day being a happier robot.

And did you guys really buy into this "we can only replicate Monica once" bit? If so I have a some swamp land, err a big patch of ice, in Florida I can sell you. You're telling me that a bunch of robots who can simulate a room and emotions down to the smallest detail will suddenly erase this program after it has been run once. I guess maybe the SOP after running one of these simulations it to use BleachBit afterwards just in case the FBI needs to investigate the handling of classified information. I guess these advanced robots don't buy into this data storage stuff. Pfft who needs the cloud? We are a bunch of AI who eschew record keeping.

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Thanks for your post. To tell you the truth, I was never quite sure if David was deactivated or not.

Laugh while you can, Monkey Boy!

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I was left uncertain. I knew he couldn't die however when it is said he never woke up, I assumed he died in a way. His wish was to spend a single day with Monica. What would happen after meant he'd be lonely, maybe he reprogrammed himself into a state where he'd lie next to Monica forever. Either way, I was floored by the film.

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I always wondered if maybe the advanced mech wiped his memory so he wasn't "David" anymore.... and then maybe they studied him? It was my impression that he was very important to them for some reason.



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Robots don't forget, he was shut down after they had downloaded 100% of his memories which were transmitted to every robot, and they made a human gesture to give him one last day of perfection to show that they have come far from simple machines too. But they are not human and his purpose had been served, they felt no emotion shutting him down for good, which is death in the technological sense.

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They did appear to be capable of emotion to me. They clearly expressed empathy, kindness and gratitude to David.

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I think its a fascinating discussion as to whether very advanced robots are mimicking emotion by following their programming or whether its real emotion. I think its the key to the film actually. I can definitely see it both ways. Ebert thinks they are just following their program and humans are the ones bringing the true emotion (in the film and watching it)

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A provocative topic, indeed. Perhaps humans are simply following their program as well.

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Hear hear! Anyone saying those robots had no emotions clearly has no clue.

I like to think the reason David was finally able to sleep and dream, was because his hosts tuned his 'brain' a bit :-)

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He never woke up though, so I don't know how to interpret that. Perhaps someone didn't restart him?

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