Jude Law Played a Robot in This Steven Spielberg Sci-Fi

There may not be another filmmaker working today who has shaped the science fiction genre in the same way that Steven Spielberg has. There are many different subgenres within sci-fi, but Spielberg has mastered nearly every single one of them. He explored the mysticism of extraterrestrial life in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, celebrated the joy of friendship between species in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, warned about misplaced experimentation in Jurassic Park, offered a chilling glimpse at dystopia in Minority Report, and explored post-9/11 terrorism in his remake of War of the Worlds.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence may have initially been dismissed for its sentimentality, but time and critical thought have proven it to be among Spielberg’s darkest and most complex films. There are many qualities that are worth celebrating, but A.I. Artificial Intelligence features a captivating performance by Jude Law as the robot known as “Gigolo Joe.”

Who Does Jude Law Play in ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence?’

A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a passion project for the legendary director Stanley Kubrick, whose death by heart attack in 1999 prevented him from completing his vision. In what is essentially a retelling of the Pinocchio story, A.I. Artificial Intelligence follows the childlike android David (Haley Joel Osment), who is given the strange ability to show pure love. After being separated from his family, David sets out on an adventure to find his way back home. Joe is a robot designed to provide pleasure to humans, who is forced to go on the run from the authorities after he is framed for a murder that he did not commit. Joe ends up befriending David and helping him on his expedition but begins going through a process of self-analysis as he considers what his life will look like when he can no longer fulfill the function he was designed to perform.

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Kubrick had originally envisioned the character to essentially be a toy soldier that came to life, but the idea of making Joe a robot prostitute came from Spielberg, who has always shown foresight into the ways in which technology would progress in the near future. Although it would have been easy to make Joe into a darker character who is distraught over the ways in which he has suffered, Law brought a surprising amount of lightness to the role. His version of Joe has never considered that he could do something other than service humans and ends up opening himself to new ideas as a result of his mentorship to David. Law has always been an actor who shows a deep amount of commitment to his roles, but Joe was a character who was designed to emulate the most famous stars from the “Golden Age of Hollywood.” In order to prepare for the role, Law studied the movements of both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly and performed most of his own dancing.

Gigolo Joe Is Unlike Any Other Robot Character

Although he does provide some comic relief in what is otherwise a pretty heartbreaking film, Joe is a deceptively complex character who is just as tragic as David. David has the capacity to know real love, but Joe isn’t able to understand the complexity of these emotions; the cruel irony is that he was designed to provide temporary pleasure to humans that weren’t looking for a serious connection. Joe ends up becoming the moral center of the film, as he provides David with the guidance he needs during their escape. However, Joe is ultimately a character that does not know how to be selfish and can only work in the service of others. This makes his self-sacrifice to save David even more powerful.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence features one of Law’s best performances, as he had to show a greater depth to a character who is reliant on his material looks. Audiences may have come to expect robot characters in science fiction films to be either as cold as Ash (Ian Holm) in the original Alien or as broadly comedic as Matthew Broderick in Inspector Gadget; the fact that Law fell somewhere in between was a novelty. Had the Academy Awards not been so notoriously biased against sci-fi, there was a chance that Law could have received an Oscar nomination for his performance. As exciting as it is to see Law return to sci-fi in Skeleton Crew, A.I. Artificial Intelligence remains his greatest contribution to the genre.