10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About Them
5. It's Either Death Or Misery -- A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Oh, Steven Spielberg, you cruel, cruel man. As if he hadn't stung us enough with the emotional rollercoasters of E.T. (1982) and Schindler's List (1993), he dragged A.I. off Stanley Kubrick's to-do list and stung us all over again with a tale of post-climate change technological misery that centers around David (Haley Joel Osment), an android child with the ability to love.
After being abandoned by his family, David forges a path spanning the physical and temporal breadth of future USA, seeking Pinocchio's Blue Fairy who he believes will help him win back his mother's love. This culminates in a brief two millennia spent trapped under water and ice before a post-human android species rescue him and find a way to reunite the boy with his mother for one day.
The bittersweet ending sees David reunited with his mother and the pair fall asleep together, seemingly content. But what about when he wakes up? It isn't confirmed whether David dies or not, but either way this ending is far more harrowing than it appears on the surface. Either his life ends here, and in many ways his pain and strife were for nothing, or he lives on, and that one moment of happiness pales in comparison to the endless years stretching out behind him.