Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is often referred to as an “auteur,” and I always get the feeling he relishes the serious Artiste cache the moniker lends him. His most recent film, Caught Stealing, seemed to go nowhere when it came out last August. But the movie did have an impressive cast, and actors seem to love working with him. So you’d think Aronofsky would show solidarity with actors as AI encroaches on the most human of all arts. Regrettably, you’d think wrong. Aronofsky has a whole fricking AI animation studio! Said studio, Primordial Soup (apparently the tagline is “it’s soup not slop,” eye roll), has partnered with Google DeepMind and Salesforce to “create” a YouTube series presented by TIME about the American Revolution, in honor of the 250th anniversary this summer. The series is called On This Day… 1776, with each episode profiling the significance of one day in that pivotal year of American history, all in under 5 minutes. The first couple of episodes have dropped… and crashed and burned. I watched them so you don’t have to, and can confirm they truly are garbage.

It is, as you might expect, as ugly as sin. It’s the sort of thing that looks like it was shooting for photorealism, but then either chickened out or blew up along the way. In the very first shot, King George’s hair looks like someone melted down and hardened a plastic badger. And this is a shame because, like so much generative AI at the moment, an awful lot of the episode consists of shots where we see the characters from behind. This is, after all, because the back of an AI-generated head is far less likely to send people into screaming fits of trauma than an AI-generated face, and Aronofsky is a humanist.

Because, good lord, the faces. Since the revolutionary war was largely initiated by older men, On This Day is filled with the wrinkled almost-faces of several well-known figures. And it is truly disconcerting to see, not only because they all have the uncanny dead eyes of people ripped out of The Polar Express, but because the wrinkles keep shifting in colour and depth.

It’s an effect that makes it look like the characters were drawn on several sheets of tissue paper that nobody could line up properly. Benjamin Franklin, who turns up during episode two, is particularly nightmarish. He looks as if someone has genetically spliced Hugh Laurie with Anthony Hopkins, and then covered the resulting monstrosity in a thin layer of roving liver spots. I’m overselling the point here, but it really is extremely creepy to watch. – From The Guardian

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To top this all off, Aronofsky is giving credence to something that will destroy the careers of those who come after him. He made his award-winning movies, spat out a shaggy thriller, and has now resolved to getting a check by pumping out dreck. He’s pulling up that ladder with a quickness, giving studios an auteur’s approval to generate AI actors and shows and movies. I’d say that the negative reception may scare them away, but every studio executive is one step away from greenlighting a Morbius re-release and should be treated as such. – From Pajiba

[From The Guardian and Pajiba]

Yes to all of the above! What we’ve seen so far from On This Day… 1776 should be enough to get anyone kicked out of film school. Even putting aside the AI factor, the episodes are just plain bad. The pacing is off, the music is overbearing, and, inexplicably, so far each episode halts in the middle to show the title card. Factoring in the AI of it all, it’s the usual story: whatever AI “generates” is stolen from original material, and AI gets it wrong. Some of the wrongness takes a minute, you just know something’s off. But plenty of people are breaking down the troubling shots and naming the problems; things like perspective or proportions… or that there was no vinyl siding in 18th century America. Other AI mistakes are just hilariously obvious. Take this gem someone posted on BlueSky: “Happy to see that there is no need to worry about the historical accuracy of new 1776 AI slop because it happens in the mystical land of Λamereedd,” along with a screenshot to illustrate his point. So while the series is inaccurately regurgitated soup slop, the good news is that it’s inspiring fantastic creativity from humans denouncing it!

Photos credit: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Avalon, James Warren/Bang Showbiz/Avalon and screenshots from YouTube