The last six months have seen a massive and rapid uptick in Artificial Intelligence. In some ways it’s exciting: Such tech could lead to advances in medicine and cure so-far-uncurable diseases. It’s also terrifying: It could eliminate untold jobs or, worse, lead to some doomsday scenario out of sci-fi dystopian fiction. One of the odder examples of AI tech has been this: A number of people have made AI “trailers” resembling Wes Anderson movies. Yes, Wes Anderson knows they exist and, no, he isn’t watching them.
“I’ve only been exposed to it verbally. I haven’t seen any of it,” Anderson told The Daily Beast. “Obviously, it’s easy for me to go to the right web page and see it. I choose not to really engage. I guess it’s because I don’t want to get distracted by that. It’s a bit like if you’re told, ‘Your friend does a great version of you.’ Maybe you say, I’d really like to see it, and maybe you say, I don’t want to see a version of me, even if it’s good. It can be like, ‘Is that me?’ That’s not necessarily the thing you want.”
Besides, he doesn’t seem that into some modern tech. “At some point, I’m sure I’ll go in there and see. But I’ve never seen a TikTok, for instance, of anything,” he said. “I’m not going to start with me.”
Those fake trailers (which we’re not linking to) imagine what it would be like if the iconoclastic filmmaker, who has arguably the most instantly recognizable style in modern cinema, got his mitts on big IP, like Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Star Wars. They feature eerie simulations of his stock company — Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, etc. — as iconic characters, usually frozen in place.
And yet Anderson shouldn’t have anything to worry about: They’re surface-level imitations of his work, including the new Asteroid City, missing the spirit and even the wit of his work. They can’t even pronounce Timothée Chalamet’s name correctly.
(Via The Daily Beast)