‘He copied no-one while all of us were scrambling to imitate him,’ was Steven Spielberg’s obituary on Kubrick, who had become a close long-distance friend. Kubrick began work on A.I. in the early 1980s, but had later decided to produce with Spielberg directing. When he died, Spielberg took over the whole project.

Adopted by humans, a robot child (Haley Joel Osment) wants to become a real boy. When he is traumatically separated from his ‘mother’ (Frances O’Connor), he recalls the story of Pinocchio and goes in search of the Blue Fairy, accompanied by a sinister robotic variation of Jiminy Cricket (Jude Law). Respecting Kubrick’s key theme of dehumanisation and his stylised use of music, Spielberg also gives prominence to his own favoured theme of the search for a mother’s love. The wish-fulfilment ending is perhaps his way of bringing Kubrick’s Star Child home from his space odyssey. Visually spectacular and finally an homage rather than a collaboration, A.I. is dedicated to Kubrick and was released, appropriately, in 2001.