In Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the Brian Aldiss short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" is adapted and expanded from a singular tale of a family unit in the future to a sprawling epic about a robot boy seeking to belong. In the short story itself, Aldiss only covers what is covered in the first act of A.I. Aldiss' short story tells the sale of the Swinton family, whose little boy David we only find out at the end is a robot. That particular tale wrestles with the ambiguity of what or who David is, why the mother is so cruel and distant ("She had tried to love him"), and the relationship to Henry's company and the work he does in robotics. In that future, David is merely a placeholder for them to have a child in the first place; he is the next level of the plastic dolls teenage girls are given in high school to make sure they are ready for adulthood. In this version of the story, they do not have children yet; David is their trial run, their experiment. In the Spielberg version of A.I., the story becomes solely David's. The audience knows from the outset that he is not a real boy, but a robot; furthermore, the story is changed so that. The Swintons already have a child, but he is comatose and presumed dead. With that change, the first act becomes also about Monica's inability to let go of her own child, with David being made more overtly a "replacement" for her biological child.
After the Aldiss act of the movie is over, the movie is solely about David trying to reclaim that life, wandering through a cruel, destitute world that does not mesh with the comfortable suburban living of the future he is used to. Spielberg accomplishes this change in attitude by displaying the future through lighting and set design as having a comfortable upper-class area and the rotten wilds of the outside. While living with the Swintons, everything is clean, anti-septic; the lighting is very bright, pastoral, sterile. However, as he wanders into the forest and finds the Flesh Fair, for example, the lighting gets much harsher; there is a greater use of darkness and natural light, as well as bright, obtrusive neons to make humanity's presence look even harsher. Once he and Gigolo Joe make their way to Rouge City, Spielberg uses Blade Runner-esque neons and grays to show an industrialized urban area that is slowly decaying. The streets are constantly dirty and smoky, evoking film noir shot compositions where characters like Joe are in silhouette. The stillness of the robot world and the frenetic, chaotic movement of the world of humans are dramatically differentiated through shot composition and lighting, the stillness of David and Joe setting them apart from the more naturalistic humans.
