By gosh, does that logo bring back a lot of memories. A project/script begun by Mr. Stanley Kubrick, handed off to Steven Spielberg (the ultimate de-humanizer handing something off to the ultimate humanist... an epic scenario from the outset). The movie in itself is a mesmerizing piece, truly awesome and great in so many ways. But Kubrick and Spielberg exist on differing planes, have differing expertise. The disconnect between their world-views showed in the very premise of the movie. Treating a robot's "feelings" with sincerity (and not a single tinge of irony) was Spielberg's M.O., whereas Kubrick's take would have been something much more cynical, cold and bleak. All that aside, I must say I was VERY in to the viral marketing campaign of this movie at the time. It all started with a credit for a "Sentient Machine Therapist" named Jeanine Salla on the movie poster... and ended with a sea-life creature growing itself into a brain the size of the earth's oceans and needing to be lazered to "death" from space. "Cook it! Cook it from space!" was one of the haunting last lines of one of the first and largest online viral/game/marketing thingies ever! I don't think I've seen this since the theatre in 2001. Also, there is a scene that sticks out in my head above all others in this movie. The owner of the child robot, played by Haley-Joel Osment, must read aloud 7 words to "David" in order for him to become attached to his owner. In a certainly more abstract way, I think we humans need to be assured of and hear, from another and from ourselves, certain things before we're there, we're game, we're all in. I darted my eyes with a half-smirk at that scene at the time, but its stuck in my head ever since and, I guess, it makes sense.
A sorta confusing site about the online "game": http://www.cloudmakers.org/
A better synopsis: http://www.42entertainment.com/beast.html
