Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 3
At the beginning of Act III, A.I. appears to change protagonists for a third, or even fourth, time (if you count the prologue). Since this kind of structural gambit is unprecedented in Spielberg, it’s tempting to assume that it began with Kubrick, who performs a similar serial-protagonist stunt with 2001 and has multiple protagonists in Dr. Strangelove. But the serial protagonists in 2001 are four individuals all reacting to the same stimulus (namely, the monolith), whereas the protagonists of A.I. are all looking at a question ("what does it mean to be human?") from a different point of view. In the end, of course, they’re all fakeouts: David is the protagonist of A.I., and when we see parts of the narrative from other points of view, it’s only to give us some contrast or perspective to David’s struggle to become "real."