A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Steven Spielberg's extended coda, where aliens reunite David with a cloned mother, sparked a 38% critical split between those praising the emotional closure and those calling it a betrayal of Kubrick's dystopian vision. Critics argued Kubrick would have ended the film at the underwater Pinocchio scene, making this ending more divisive than #2 Inception in terms of director legacy debates. The final sequence cost $15 million to produce and runs 20 minutes longer than the cut Kubrick originally envisioned, cementing its status as the most debated posthumous collaboration controversy.