You know what’s great? The crazy things AI is doing that go viral, like this fake trailer for a made-up Star Wars movie directed by Wes Anderson. Yup, just totally great that AI is inching closer and closer to replacing us all and leading to the inevitable, if slightly delayed, outcome that The Terminator predicted all along. We’re all going to die at the hands of a thing we created. The world is ending and we’re just… I’m being told to just share the video.
AI and Wes Anderson were kind of made for each others thanks to his incredibly signature style that centers every shot and uses bold colors and little movement across the frame. As such, Wes Anderson has been an easy target for AI makers on the internet, but this Star Wars trailer from Curious Refuge, for a made up film called The Galactic Menagerie, is one of the more impressive ones to have landed. Touted as a reboot of the franchise, which is actually currently in the process of rebooting itself, it’s not AI-generated superstars that are the real standouts here, but all the special effects, which honestly look better than half the stuff in the prequel trilogy do now.
Of course, nearly all of Wes Anderson’s regulars show up. The made-up cast includes Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, plus many more. Some of the casting is great and I’m now going to be very upset if Adrien Brody is never cast as a Wookiee, even if it’s just for a Daniel Craig-style cameo. The real question is not whether or not a Wes Anderson Star Wars film would work — it 100 percent would — but if this trailer really captures any of the actual nuances that his films provide. And if it does, what does that mean for auteur directors and art as a whole? If you can make anything in any style and get the same effect, then why does humanity exist at all?…
To avoid tumbling down another existential pit of despair, let’s all watch the charming, actually existing trailer for Wes Anderson’s actual upcoming sci-fi film, Asteroid City.