Kubrick at 21, then a visionary photographer for Look magazine
 
Stanley Kubrick was a man of wildly variant yet intensely focused interests. He was never prolific—his obsessive devotion to perfection and research wouldn’t allow it. With that kind of artistic dedication, you’d at least hope all his projects were completed. Unfortunately for us, he had quite a few awesome-sounding films that got shelved—some of which he spent years on. This little mini-doc gives a neat little run-down of Kubrick’s unrealized visions.

Kubrick developed A.I. for years, which was later passed on to Steven Spielberg. A simple side-by-side viewing of E.T. and 2001: A Space Odyssey tells you everything you need to know about a Spielberg sci-fi versus a Kubrick sci-fi. Honestly, I don’t mind a little bit of that old schmaltzy Spielbergian glow, but I can’t help but think that Kubrick would have done something a million times more interesting with a movie on artificial intelligence. The man developed HAL 9000, for chrissake!

That’s not the only time Spielberg played a role in Kubrick’s career. Schindler’s List undercut Kubrick’s push for his own film on the Holocaust after the director had already starting casting and scouting locations. Perhaps the most ambitious of his “dreams deferred ” was a Napoleon biopic. Kubrick researched every day of Napoleon’s life and kept a meticulous log. He even had dirt from a Napoleonic battleground, so that he might match the soil color for accuracy in the film!