So conflicted about this movie

My first reaction when I had just finished it was to think the ending had boosted it from a solid B-minus sci-fi/robotics movie to A-minus level. But then I thought about it some more and wondered if I should actually downgrade rather than upgrade it based on the ending.

So as you can see, I'm sort of talking myself into being mad at this movie, but I can't deny that I was delighted with it as the closing credits rolled. Very weird, can't remember ever having this take on a movie. I can recall movies that had really cool elements and others that at least partly ruined them; I can recall movies that seemed great and were ruined by a poor final act; but I can't remember thinking simultaneously that the ending was either awesome or ruined the movie, and I'm not sure which.

So in the end I just went back to my original grade, even though that represents something quite different from the mid-tier sci-fi film I thought I was watching until the last few minutes.

That's as much as I can say without spoiling, so from here out SPOILERS AHOY:

Ordinarily I don't like it when movies have more than one major twist (and even one can be suspect). This one has two: for a couple minutes, we get the twist of "Ohhh...turns out he's actually kind of the villain!" But before we've really had much of a chance for that to sink in, we learn that he's actually just dead/dying.

Usually I HATE "It was all a dream" stories (there's a Tim Robbins movie, that I won't name so as not to spoil it, that comes to mind). Yet right when this one ended, I was giddy with how cool it was that they "totally got me". But after mulling it over some more, I started wondering if maybe my usual objection to this kind of ending does in fact apply.

Because here's the thing. Obviously the aspect of the film dealing with the Archive company, and his calls with his "dead" wife, had to be in there. The twist at the ending would be completely out of left field, and basically incomprehensible, without that element of the plot. And it also makes sense to have some of the over-the-top elements like the gun, the Blade Runner security guy, and so on: those make a lot of sense in hindsight as his imagination running wild.

But the whole aspect that seemed to be the main plot of the film, with him building this succession of artificially intelligent robots, observing how the "teenage" model dealt with jealousy and ultimately attempted suicide, is actually irrelevant to the "real" underlying story. It could have been removed and replaced with something else--like more scenes of working to try to fix the "facility" as it's falling apart, more calls with his wife, whatever. So it's kind of weird to have what could stand as an interesting story in its own right turn out to be totally nothing. He didn't build those robots, he didn't secretly have a kind of villainous motive, none of that was real, none of it really had any bearing on the Archive plot. And the AI characters we built up feelings for didn't actually have complex emotions or inner lives because they were figments of his imagination.

But that's unfortunately the price of having this cool, mind-blowing twist: your whole robot/AI plot becomes irrelevant. And any nitpicks we might have, any questions about how this or that might work or whether something makes sense (for example, what would be the real difference between J3 as he created her and then "killing" her by adding in the wife's consciousness, since she already seemed to have the wife's memories and personality)? Those are irrelevant too, because "it's all a dream", so none of it has to make sense.